Translation Policy Workshop Wednesday, 13 February 2008 ICANN Meeting New Delhi, India >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Hello? Hello. Okay. This is the meeting for the translation program, so with any luck we've got a lot of people here who aren't English speakers and if they speak French, Spanish or Chinese, they will hopefully feel the need to speak in French, Spanish and Chinese. We have translators, interpreters in the back. So if you want to understand what other people are saying, which you do, you'll need to get a headset at the back. So everyone should have a headset if they want to understand what the people are saying. I'm assuming you want to understand what the people are saying in the meeting, so I won't go rushing to the back. Pablo, do you speak Chinese? Oh, you'll probably need a headset to understand the Chinese speakers then, so... Chuck, do you speak Spanish? >>CHUCK GOMES: No. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: No. If you want to understand any Spanish speakers or even any Chinese speakers, you'll need to get a headset at the back. It's being interpreted, translated. Calvin, how many languages, do you have? >>CALVIN BROWNE: Three. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Three. Which are they. So if there was a French speaker and started coming up, would you be able to understand what they said. >>CALVIN BROWNE: Don't even understand the English speakers. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: I think I'm making the point that you'll probably need a headset if you want to understand what people are going to say in this meeting. It's incredible. Hello. Would you like to understand what the speakers in the meeting are all going to say? We'll probably have a few Chinese speakers, probably a few Spanish speakers, probably a few French speakers. Well, we've set up this elaborate system where we have the interpreters at the back translating into whatever language you like. Channel 1 is English, Channel 2 is -- [Speaker is off microphone]. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Yes. >>RITVA SIREN: You are not going to offer Finnish, I think. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Well, I hope you raise the fact that Finnish isn't covered in the main five languages in the program. But 2 is Spanish, 1 is English -- 2 is Spanish, Espanol, 3 is French, and 4 is Chinese. These are the channels on the headsets at the back. It's also talking about, this meeting is about the translation program. We have the programs printed out -- where are they? Where's Tanzanica? Okay. So we have them in five languages. We have the program in five languages. I believe they're at the back of the room. We have it in English and in Chinese and in French and in Spanish and in Russian and in Arabic. So if you want to pick up a copy of the translation program in your language, please just go to the back and grab whichever one you want. Okay. So we're nearly ready to start. I'll give you a brief run-through about what we're going to do. Nick is going to give an introduction to this. Then I'm going to run through the translation program very briefly. Then we're going to ask Sebastien Bachollet, who is over here, to ask us a few questions from the ICANN community perspective, and then we're going to have a Q&A session. Which I hope you will just simply ask questions. This is very important in the sense that this is -- ICANN is going to try and reach non-English speakers by providing through this program, so it's very important to get this right, if you want to understand ICANN and you're not a fluent English speaker. You really want to get involved in this. So we'll be roving around with mics after we've been through the program. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Good morning. Are you all well? Me too. I am the director for the at-large department, and I will now switch to English because my French is bad enough that the interpreters will be unable to render it in any language, if I continue. [Laughter] >>NICK ASHTON-HART: When you, as an organization, embark upon a process to become truly multilingual, it reminds me a bit of whoever the famous person was that said that life is a journey, not a destination. And I see we have the person who owns the copy right on that in the back. I'll pay the royalties later. The end result of becoming multilingual is inter-comprehension, which is a form of communication in which each person uses her own language or his own language, and understands that of the other. And this is very much like life, because it is, of course, impossible for everyone to communicate with language completely abstracted, regardless of what language one speaks. There are all kinds of practical limitations on the number of languages that one can support, and so the objective really is not the end, but the process. To make the work of an organization such as ICANN as easy for anyone as possible in as many languages as possible. And this draft program is the first major step on a road that never ends, which is to make the work of this organization as accessible to nonfluent English speakers as it is to the fluent English community. I hope that you will, like us, see that this is a noble undertaking to deliberately seek out as many voices as one can, in as many places as there are, on as wide a basis as is possible, so that all voices can be heard and all perspectives can be taken into account. To me, it seems it's the essence of what international decision-making and international policy development should be about, and that is what we are embarking on. And of course this effort can only be as successful as you make it, like everything else that we do here. Your comments on the development of this process, your comments on the information you receive, the way in which it is presented in multiple languages, your suggestions for improvements that can be made, and your willingness to send information out to those who may not before have been able to communicate with ICANN, to, you know, attract them to the process is, of course, a key part of the message and it's a key part of ensuring that the message is heard. I could go on in quite some length about this. Of course at-large is a naturally very diverse community and the At-Large Advisory Committee actually holds its face-to-face meetings in three languages and its telephonic meetings simultaneously in two -- about to be three at the moment -- so any of you who visit the rooms that at-large meetings are held in will notice that there are booths and a lot of sound equipment in the back, very reminiscent of this one. It is my hope that someday we see every constituency of ICANN with active participation intersessionally and at meetings in multiple languages representing those communities who may not be physically present but who are present in the decisions that are made. And with that, I'll leave it to Kieren. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Thanks, Nick. Just very quickly, so you can see -- so you'll be able to get at the program, you'll be able to see what we're doing, we put an announcement up. It's also up on the front page but there's an announcement up with regard to this that you can see on the screen: "Translation program put out for community review." Mark should be updated with that with language not just in English. Let's see if he's done it here. Oh, there you go. So we've managed to put it in the various languages. If you also have a look on the Delhi site, the Delhi meeting site, at this session, we have put the program up in all the languages. There you go. So I've got a very brief PowerPoint just to run down what the program is. I've knocked it off. So we set up a translation program. We hired an expert, a guy called Bert Esselink with Lionbridge and he's been an expert in this for about 20 years and we hired to look at ICANN, talk to ICANN. At the last meeting in Los Angeles, he should have met with a few of you and discussed what you think ICANN should do with regard to translation and interpretation. He put together a report. It went through various iterations. That was overseen by the ex-head of translations for the United Nations, Omar Abou-Zahr, who was around earlier but I think he's headed off. And then it was then -- then ICANN reviewed it -- no, that's not Omar. That's Jean-Jacques. And this is the -- you can read the whole report. It's in front of you. But we've just tried to cut it down to the main recommendations. The main recommendations was that ICANN has four main types of documents. It has outreach documents. These are things that we provide to inform the community about what ICANN is, what ICANN does, glossaries, FAQs, et cetera. The recommendation was that we put that into 10 languages. Those 10 languages represent -- I think -- I believe it's 85% -- will get to 85% of the people currently online. Second, we have strategic documents. These are things like the budget, the annual report, these sorts of documents. We provide them in the five languages. That's the five U.N. languages, the five [inaudible] languages. This is Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian and obviously the main language of ICANN will and will remain English and so there's those numbers. And then we have the policy documents, obviously, you know, a lot of ICANN's actual work is working through policy, trying to get to policy. We've got that as a [inaudible] of the five languages, but because policy is not any simple one thing, there's going to be variations on that, and we'll work through a system where we can figure out whether we have fewer languages, more languages, which languages. It will depend on what the -- that policy process is. And then we have other documents, other things such as information on the Web site, surveys, other stuff that doesn't fit in there, and we've put in whatever languages are needed. We'll figure out a system by which we can gauge demand. And interpretation of the main recommendation was that we provide interpretation in the language -- the main language, official language, of where the meeting is being held and then we also -- if you read inside there, we've got it according to region. Omar Abou-Zahr said if you're in this region, you should do it in these languages, et cetera, et cetera. So he's an expert, we've taken his word for it. This is our philosophy. "The mission of ICANN's translation program is to provide those concerned with its work with an equal level of access to influence and participate in the organization whether or not they are a fluent English speaker." That's the aim with this program. That's the aim with what we want to do. So if there's anything in the program that you think should be added to reach that aim, that's what we want to hear. If you think there's anything in the program that we've got to spend a lot of time and trouble and resources on that you don't think will meet that aim, then please raise it. And we will change the program to fit. We want it -- anyone to be able to interact with ICANN and to have an equal level of influence within ICANN. It doesn't matter what language you speak. That's what we want -- that's where we want to get. It's not going to happen overnight. That's where we want to get to. This is with regard to the 10 languages. 85% of Internet users can be reached using these top 10 languages. They are: English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Portuguese, Korean, Italian, and Arabic and those are the 10 languages we're going to stick with for our outreach. We're also planning to produce 10 language-specific Web sites. They will not be the full ICANN Web site but they will be Web sites where they'll be all in that language and you'll be able to find out about ICANN understand how ICANN works and that will bring in participation and then we'll see in the future what we do with it. This is the process which I just outlined. We had Bert Esselink. He was overseen by Omar Abou-Zahr. He interviewed ICANN staff, the community. So a variety of experts. At the Los Angeles meeting and for the next few months, he provided the translation committee -- we have an internal translation committee, cross-departmental -- with the first draft. We reviewed that, and this is the first draft that you should have in your hands, hopefully will have in your hands. If you don't have it in your hands, you will go and download it and read it. So what now? This meeting. There's not a bad number of people. I think we basically -- we may have too many chairs, but there's a good number of people here. So there's this meeting in which I hope you'll be able to raise some points. You won't have read the full program, but that's not the point. We need to discuss, we need to just get people to say what they think. I've outlined very briefly what it is. We are opening a public comment period as of now. I believe it's now open. So you have a month. If you think we need longer than a month, then we will extend it past a month but it's good to try and have a deadline on this. So you have a month to read the document and say what you think. And say it in whatever language you like. I mean, we could have a lot of fun deciphering that, so we'd prefer it in English, but I think as a principle, you should be able to write in whatever language you like and say what you think. The final report, we're aiming at April. We hope it won't be -- this won't be too controversial. We know that there is a backlog of demand for this so we are trying to do it fast. If we need to slow down, we'll slow it down, but we're trying to do it as fast as we can to get this in place. And the idea at this stage is that we'd be able to get it to the board in the Paris meeting in June, definitely for review, possibly for approval. It all depends on what you say, how you feel, and how we move forward. And this is the part where you're going to have to start interacting a little bit with it. What can the community do? One of the fundamental conclusions of this report is that we have to work with the community. Something that we -- we're not joking about. We're very serious. We want to work with the community on -- on making this effective. So what you can do is you can -- you can reply to the comment period. That's what you can do. If you reply, we will read it, and we will make changes. It's as simple as that so this is your opportunity to see how ICANN moves forward in languages other than English. So please put in a comment. Check -- we won't check -- I was discussing with, I forgot his name, Pablo, the guy from dot br. I was discussing it with him and he was saying, you know, Brazil has been working very hard on this for years, et cetera. And I said, "Great! We need to get you in a room." He was saying people translate things like "domain tasting" in five different ways in Portuguese. We're saying, "Well, right. We'll have a meeting. We'll get all the Portuguese people and we'll decide this is how we're going to do it." So we need the community for that. The last thing you want is me deciding how we translate a technical language into languages that I don't speak. We need you to do that. But we need to work with you so that we come up with one, and then we can use that as a template. And ideas. Ideas and participation is what we need. We need your ideas. We need your participation. We need you to work with us on this. And with that, I hand over to Sebastien, who hopefully will have some difficult questions for us. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you very much, Kieren. We are going to try and put to use the tools that we have here because we have interpreters with us today that are interpreters. Thank you, members of the board, for the interpreters that we have today. I think that we must recognize all the advances that ICANN has made since the last few meetings, especially by putting together the interpreters and in offering translations of the documents in various languages. I think that the community, especially those who don't have the -- who aren't in the habit of participating because they don't understand the language, it's great for them to have documents available in the languages that they understand. I'm thinking of the community at-large, the problem that we face today is that we don't have enough documents translated in the required number of languages to allow individual users to really and truly participate in the work of the organization. And the program that you have proposed today is a great step in taking us ahead. You asked us what can the community do at this stage of the work? What can each of us do within the framework of the program? I'm speaking a bit English and French within the framework of the program, that has been proposed, there are people -- the people who speak various languages, how can they participate in this program? >>KIEREN McCARTHY: [Speaker is off microphone] >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: In the program. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: In the program? Well, this is the thing. Surprise us. Surprise us by flooding us with useful ideas and information in your various languages and we'll have to figure out how to deal with it. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Then we are also going to have questions. What do we as the ICANN community -- what do we -- what are we going to do? There are a certain number of proposals. We have to be able to read the program and react to the program. I think it's been a great progress that we have achieved in putting this program together. What I propose is that if you have any questions to ask to our two speakers who have put this program together, we can probably debate together about it. I remind you that even if you speak neither English nor French, you can speak in Spanish or in Chinese because we have interpretation, so this is available in these languages. >>RAIMUNDO BECA: I'm going to speak in Spanish one question. My question is the following: As we have just received the document, I don't know whether it's included or not. If it's already started that any comments can be made -- any public comments can be made in any language, it's not necessarily to translate them. No. It's that when we give our public comments, then you take into account that this comment was made in a certain language. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: [Speaker is off microphone] -- even though we will be translating these things so that we can provide people with information if someone makes a comment in a different language. Do we need to make it clear that it was spoken in -- provided in a different language. I would say probably yes. And I don't think we'd considered that. We have to build this process. We have to build it and we need your help. Now, if that's valuable, if the community thinks that's valuable, that's what we'll do. So this will go into the record. We are -- the translation committee is going to go through all of this, and when we're building up the processes -- at the moment, we have principles. When we're building up the processes, we'll take that into account. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. Two comments and one suggestion. My name is Jean-Jacques Subrenat. The remark is that this subject is very interesting. It is very important not only for ideological and cultural reasons. It's also important for an indirect reason. That is, it is a part of -- it makes up the tools of good governance. I am convinced, now that I am in a part of ICANN and on the board of ICANN, there is a role that ICANN is playing which goes beyond the Internet. It can serve as an example for managing resources or problems at a worldwide global level, and what we are doing in ICANN, if it is a success, it can also serve as an example for other international organizations on subjects of global importance. A few words. On one of the slides that came up on the screen, I think related to the mission statement, the mission of ICANN's translation program, it would be better if it read as, "The mission of ICANN's translation and interpretation program." I think that would be necessary. And if this came up to the board of ICANN, it would certainly have my support. The concrete suggestion that I would like to make is the following: I find at this time at the ICANN meeting, there has been an extremely important and interesting happening this morning. It was the presentation and then the debate within the framework of the IDNs with respect to India and with respect to Indian languages, and we went into the detail and we understood the importance of the subject, the complexity of the subject for India. What I was saying so my neighbor during the session was that I had the impression of seeing emerging in front of me an image, a reflection of the future world. Because choices are not imposed on us by geopolitics or technology. It is subject to our will, to our own choices. What is choice? It is the choice to begin -- become a vast uni-lingual society and a uni-lingual personality, or we try and reconcile the needs of multiculturalism with an efficiency, and, therefore, we need certain methods. It is this realization this morning that leads me to make a suggestion -- not a proposal, just a suggestion -- which is that somewhere on the ICANN site we represent in some way this debate that is taking place within ICANN. The concrete method that we have to reconcile these, you know, technological constraints and cultural implications, we must find on the ICANN site, for example, as a resume, maybe, the problem itself. Details about the problem, what kind of problems do the Indians face, with respect, to the multiplicity of their scripts and their languages. And what are the consequences that need to be drawn from a practical point of view? What implications does that have on language policy, for example? On policies related to the Internet. What are the implications for registrars? And the policy of applied languages for the Internet. This is merely a suggestion and I would like to know, Kieren, or other people who are present here, if it seems possible for you to give an echo on the Web site of ICANN, give an echo, a reflection, a representation of what is happening across the world, what are the best practices in languages that apply to the Internet taking place in different parts of the world. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: That's a very interesting idea. We'll have a look at it. You were waving at me, Sebastien. There was someone -- okay. Could you state your name? That would be great, thank you. >>DIAKITE HAWA: I come from Mali. The first document which you have given us, you would like us to give it to you within a month. You want comments in English. Why in English? If you are giving us documents in our own language, then allow us to give our commentary in our own language, and to clarify the second point is translation of technical words. Translations can be individual or the community has to get together to define the translation which will be approved by all. So do I give you my own translation or do I do it in consultation with my community? >>KIEREN McCARTY: On the first point, I was making a joke. I want you to make comments in your language. I think it is vital for you to make comments in your language. What I was saying it would make my life very much easier if it were in English. My written French is not good. My written Spanish is dreadful and I don't speak any other languages. So I was making a quip. Of course, make comments in your language, that's the whole point. With regard to translations, the way we currently see it working, if you think it could work effectively, efficiently and all the time in a different way, is that we will get -- define the documents and translate them and then we will run a checking system through the community to make sure that you feel that they are accurate and then we will accept that as a translated document. But if the system -- if we run that and it doesn't work or if people have different ideas, we will try them. Whatever ends up approaching -- and, yes, we'll add interpretation, yes, of course. Whatever ends up achieving this goal, that's what we'll do. I hope that answers your questions. Paul Levins at the back there who has a comment in Australian. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: (Speaking in French). >>PAUL LEVINS: Sorry. Did I jump ahead of anyone? As Kieren says, that's the one area we didn't go into, people who could interpret Australian. Just thought it was important to introduce a couple of other concepts here. Of course, the notion of participation is extremely important and the reason I introduced that is because this whole session in many respects is about encouraging participation, particularly from people from non-english speaking backgrounds. And I endorse wholeheartedly my friend and colleague's, Kieren's statements about give us the suggestions and we will do it. Endorse that as a general concept very, very strongly. But we must also be mindful of the budget. Now, I'm not saying that to put some kind of wet blanket on to the discussion. I'm just saying when we introduce concepts, when we make a request for a substantive change to the way we do translation and interpretation work, we just have to be mindful that it is one thing to ask. It is another to realize that there is a resource implication that sits behind that. And to link to a point that, I think, Jean-Jacques Subrenat made earlier about what is the best practice and where could you find it and could we make that resident on the Web site -- or put that on the Web site, this document that you have in front of you, Kieren, nick, and team within the organization has put together with the assistance of Lionbridge certainly works, Jean-Jacques of a knowledge base which is historical and experienced and knowledgeable. I missed Kieren's introductions so I apologize if I am repeating material that he mentioned. But had worked and advice received from the consultant who is the head of the translation and interpretation at the United Nations. The other document which I think is really worthwhile having a look at it, often we produce materials in reports and we put them very briefly after having the moment of glory on the shelf and we tend to forget about them is the One World Trust report. For those of you who don't know what the One World Trust report is, it is a report that was produced by an organization based in the U.K. called the One World Trust, which is an organization committed to the examination of transparency in organizations and accountability in organizations. And that report was produced at the beginning of 2007, January 2007 looking at joining's transparency and accountability. And in that regard, there was a large section as an appendix to that document which outlined a brief review of how some of the major organizations that have issues to do with translation and interpretation and access, how they handle these things. And I think you will find that very enlightening. You can find that on the ICANN Web site. But to sort of link back to what I said at the beginning when I started speaking, what you will find of interest is this is an almighty resource-consuming activity. The U.N., I think their budget runs to 500 million. We're obviously not the U.N. but very, very rapidly requests that seem reasonable and seem easy can be very resource-intensive. So I just mention that not by way of reducing suggestions but by way of keeping the debate within a context. Thanks. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Thanks, Paul. And I think I should do an ad for Doug Brent's session after this which is he will be discussing the budget -- a bottom-up process what ICANN should spend its money on. I understand the translation budget will be increased on the basis of this program, but even so, Paul is right, it is incredibly easy to spend huge sums of money providing something that is not relevant to people. What we want to find out is what do you need to be able to interact with ICANN? What do you need to be able to understand what ICANN is doing in terms of work and we need to do that and we need to do that within a budget. And that's why it is vital that you provide us with feedback "I need this, this is what I am most interested in, this is how I provide feedback ." Otherwise we have to make guesses and we have to make guesses within the budget. That's why your feedback is vital in this. I have Evan at the back. >>EVN LEIBOVICH: I found it rather amusing to talk about the resources and everything, and then to hear that you've contracted with a company like Lionbridge to do this kind of work. I have had the pleasure of working with Lionbridge myself. They are a great company, they are also top dollar. It almost strikes me as rather than, you know, working with a company like Lionbridge, it would strict me should be a last resort rather than a first resort. ICANN has within its community an at-large community. It has ALSs that cover the entire range of languages that you're talking about and then some. I wonder what efforts have already been made to try and approach and, for instance, work with the ALSs to do translation, work with them. You know, that would not only probably lower the cost of doing some of this work but also, you know, help strengthen the ties within ICANN's own community as opposed to having to outsource. >>KIEREN McCARTY: We are doing exactly that. If you read, we are putting out a tender for exactly that. We haven't hired Lionbridge to do our translation. We hired an expert from Lionbridge to do how we approach this matter. >>EVN LEIBOVICH: You have already approached at-large and made suggestions to the contract ALSs? Or has this been a general thing out there to outsource? >>KIEREN McCARTY: Well, I like your critical tone, but could I get back and say that's why this meeting is happening. That's why this meeting is happening. We've got -- we've had -- these discussions have been going on for so many years with ICANN and it has never progressed. What we have done is we have gone out and hired an expert to put an end to the constant, "I know how to do it this way," "I know how to do it that way." People don't know. None of us here are translation experts so we hired a translation expert. And the document you can pick up is what he suggested. Now he suggested this approach. He suggested a tendering approach. And that's what we're going to do and, of course, we are going to approach ALAC, of course, we are. There is no way we can do this without approaching the community. I have just been stressing we want to use the community as much as possible. We have several things here. For one, it is incredibly expensive to do this stuff, whatever way you look at it. The flip side of this is that you're volunteers. You can't spend all the time providing -- doing translations of documents for free. It can't happen. We need -- >> That's what I was saying. >>KIEREN McCARTY: ICANN is a professional organization. We need to provide documentation in a fast turnaround. Yes, we will approach the ALSs. It will happen. It will happen. This is the first draft. >>EVN LEIBOVICH: I wasn't saying to approach them to work for free. >>KIEREN McCARTY: So you want to get paid? Okay. Well, then, please make that in the public comment period and we'll review it. >>EVN LEIBOVICH: Why not here? >>PABLO HINOJOSA: My name is Pablo Hinojosa. I work as a regional consultant for Latin America, and I would like to touch on certain things and contribute because within the principles that were established for translation which are within the framework of accounts and transparency, it has also established the possibility of incorporating the capacities from communities in order to work for translation. In this sense, there are examples, very successful examples. For example, NIC Brazil has translated the Web site of ICANN into Portugese since many years. And these are efforts that could complement with other efforts and the multilingual community has a lot to contribute and it is only a question of knowing how to administer these capacities in an intelligent and efficient manner. And this can be included within the program, and I think this is very important. Another topic is -- we can consider is this topic of the knowledge or a glossary, an efficient glossary so that ICANN has its own language. It is important to create a base, a database of terms and to be conscious when we invent new terms so that these terms can be translatable also. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Thanks, Pablo. >>MARCUS FAURÉ: I'm Marcus Fauré. I am talking on behalf of myself. I want to talk about the quality issue. That's actually one thing I am very, very worried about. I'm approaching the ICANN community for at least five years on that topic. After I felt for some years that no result came out of this, I offered during the Luxembourg meeting to do a check of the translations myself, specifically that was the ombudsman report at the time that was translated into German. I spent a few hours checking it and it did not have a single page that was without error. Many of them changing the meaning. I gave that feedback back to ICANN and, again, heard nothing back. And after some pushing, I received a comment that said, oh, we had an academic review of the translation and it was found to be okay. And then I asked, "oh, can I see that review"? It took me eight weeks to get the review and it consisted of one sentence which said "this translation is excellent." So you may understand that I'm a little worried here. Another infamous example is the dot EU call for proposals for running the dot EU registry. I've read the German version of the call for proposals and I threw it away because it was not understandable. A top-level domain was translated to something like the domain of a highest degree. >>KIEREN McCARTY: I don't wish to talk to you but I am going to talk over you. I have a formal apology from me with the problems of translation in ICANN. You can have it now, we apologize. We are now saying we have done this, we are trying to put an end to it and we want the community to help us. We want to be positive. Yes, in the past, it has been a problem. That's why we have this. That's why we got this expert. We want to solve it. We've got a lot of processes in place. We have a translation committee. We have an experts oversight. We want the community to work with us. We want to try and stop this and I think I can fairly competently say that these problems will not exist in a year, two years' time but we got to work together to get there and complaining about what happened two, three years ago is not going to help us. >>MARCUS FAURÉ: Thank you very much for that. I just wanted to raise some awareness that quality really is an issue. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Yes, it is. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Yes, Roberto Gaetano. I will speak in English because the ICANN program doesn't cover yet my native language but maybe at some future. But let's do first things first. What I wanted to say is just tipping on the comment, I have been involved with the ICANN translation since the period on and off. But the first attempt was done when the CEO was %%%(inaudible). That was many years ago. We thought that could be solved with voluntary effort from the community. That didn't work. Then I was involved in ALAC, and in the early days of ALAC we also tried to do put the knowledge of the people at work. But the problem is that what we need to have is a reliable service. We found out that although there are lots of resources in the community, we cannot ensure that prompt, reliable and adequate service. So I think that -- I applaud the idea of going to a professional service. This doesn't mean that the ICANN community cannot walk in and help in this. That is a different story. I am not saying this. But I think after several things that have honestly failed in the past -- and we had already the official apologies -- I think that we have to -- we have to try to do something seriously and if this will cost a certain amount from the budget now that the budget situation of ICANN allows it, we have to try this action. And then in a couple of years, we can evaluate how things went and then we can figure out how to progress from there. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Thank you very much, Roberto. Raimundo. Oh, Khaled. >>KHALED FATTAL: Thank you. I have a lot of thoughts. By the way, my name is Khaled Fattal. One of my companies does actually translation, but this is not a pitch for translating ICANN or trying to get business or anything like that. I think when you know what needs to be done, it's a lot clearer. When you talk to people who are in the IETF and you talk about technical issues, these people understand what the issue is. When you go to a restaurant and you are speaking to the chef and you tell him you want something in a certain way, guess what? He knows what he is talking about. I have no issues so far with the genuine attempt to actually reach out to the communities so that these discussions or these issues are actually put in the own language. Perhaps I can add where things can be streamlined and become more effective so that we can reach this goal as soon as possible. I think at the beginning you made a comment which you attributed to me, the saying -- and I have been quoted for saying "life is a journey, it is not a destination." I don't own the intellectual property rights to it. I think many people have actually said it many, many years before me, but, basically, what we need to do is the following: Kieren asked "tell us what we need to do;" is that correct? For me I am decently versed in English. I can function in English, but those are not -- they need two facets of the service. One facet is something that is informational which needs to be relatively accurate but does not require becoming perfect. In that sense, machine translation can serve a purpose. When it comes to issues or documents that are, what I would call, the ICANN strategic vision, your budget, things like that, I would say, have it translated by professional human beings so it is as accurate as possible. And the end of the day, what is the objective? The objective in 2004 at the U.N -- and I make this point -- was we want to create the ability of the people at the local community to get involved in their own language so they can participate in issues of Internet Governance as well. It is their lives. It is their future. So by creating these two-tier elements, you are not only spending your money as wisely as you could, but at the same time, you don't have to worry too much about the issues -- you know, content that is translated machinewise having to be perfect because it will never be perfect. One simple example is you get two human beings that are translating and you give them a document, I will tell you what, they will come up with two different texts. So something to learn. That's my comment. >>KIEREN McCARTY: You'll be excited to realize effectively that's what's in the program. So that's good. I see that as a positive endorsement. >>TONY HARRIS: Thank you very much, Sebastien. I think this is quite a challenge you're taking up here. It's talking about translations. That's somebody everybody wants and I can see the use for it. There are some things you might want to consider when you undertake the having translations I do. I do professional translations myself English to Spanish and Spanish to English quite frequently. It is one of the activities I undertake to survive in South America. And you have all kinds of extremes when you come to translations. I recently rented a video from a store I think it was the latest version of "Ocean's Eleven" and it turned out to be a pirated company and the subtitling actually gave me a huge time. I roared with laughter for 90 minutes. It was so awesomely bad and so incomprehensible, I thought it was a great comedy. Basically, the volunteerism of groups who are currently participating in ICANN and who may want to do this must also be balanced against how fluently bilingual are they. You say "I can understand English, I am familiar with this and I can participate in a telephone conference," that doesn't mean to say you can translate a document. Finally -- this is not to make this too long, my simple suggestion is when you do go out into the field to contract people, get references, ask them for references, get an example of their work and, if possible, determine if they know their way through the maze of acronyms that our activity usually encompasses. That's just a situation. And I will be applying as a translator. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Thank you very much, Tony. If anyone is interesting in applying as a translator, there is quite clear what we intend to put out -- I believe -- is it in the back? We have an appendix and I believe it is in the back what we intend to forward to people. Actually what you say fits in quite closely what we have in the program, which is the broad recommendation was that do we have to get a professional company to do this? But we need to work with the community because of ICANN, its fast-moving work, basically, creating languages. We are running out of time. Doug is raising his eyebrows at me. If anyone has got any comments, they have to be very quick comments. I see Jean-Jacques there. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Maybe if we can have one to speak Chinese, that would be very, very well. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Do we have any Chinese speakers? You can say whatever you like. You can sing a song in Chinese, if you like. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: I'm French but I can only speak a little bit Chinese. Just one brief word in response to Paul Levins' point which was very interesting, I don't start from a systematic point of ignorance. I actually do know about the background and I think it is very important what your team has done to set up a sort of policy framework to do all this translation and interpretation. My point was precisely building upon that, which was that we are not the United Nations nor the European Commission, and we don't intend to become that or become the European Parliament. There is a cost consideration, Paul, which you brought up but that's not the only one. I think the other issue here is that, perhaps, we can -- because we are a more recent organization, we are not set up in the 1940s, we have a more innovating way to approach this and, perhaps, simplified, perhaps more efficient, perhaps less bureaucratic as well. That was just my point. And my second point is that I got in here four minutes late so maybe this was mentioned by someone, but in case it was not, I would like to remind all of us that 2008 has been declared the international year of languages. So I think this relates directly to what ICANN is doing. And it is in this context, I think, that it is especially important that ICANN should in a way show the way of an innovative organization or entity and that its very nature of being multistakeholder and really international which makes it an obligation for us in ICANN, perhaps more than for many other institutions or organizations to do the right thing. Thank you. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Okay, so I think we will have to end it there. I will summarize it very briefly how I see it. People can complain. We have a quick comment on the end. I will summarize it very quickly how I see it. As people have broadly said, we need the community to work -- there has been people who have said we tried that. We need to get an organization but we need to put in the community. We agreed. We just have to figure out how to do that. Doug is on his feet. And machine translation was raised. That is covered in the program, and I would just say before we get a final comment that, please, please, do send in your comments, you can also e-mail the translation committee at trans-comm@ICANN.org, if all you want to say is you should speak to these people or your are not communicating with these people, send us e-mail addresses to communicate with people. That's what we will do. We really want your input on this. I know ICANN doesn't get a lot of input on things. We really do want your input on this. This is a chance to make a change here. >> DMITRY BURKOV: Dmitry Burkov. (Speaking non-English language) I have said that first attempt to expand auditorium of ICANN document size and ICANN-related information has expanded so fast. (inaudible) is practically native not only from Russia but from all countries and technical community (inaudible) community on sovereignty territory, and it is a technical language. Such approach when most of the documents, not translations, if you want to cut, expense is not a problem. But access to document in two languages, original and translation, will expand number of participants and clarify what ICANN can do because now it is a problem for most governments and also for communities inside. (inaudible) have only 6, 8% of foreign language speakers in our territory by historical reasons. If you want to get more involvement, not as such today because we minimize it practically -- it's niche involvement in ICANN. Please estimate. Just -- and -- Yeah. And from one side, when you declare United Nations' approach, I'm not -- on one half of government as a person or United Nations approach or something, other ways. So thank you. >>KIEREN McCARTY: I have Paul Twomey with a comment. I think that just about overrides Doug's -- >>PAUL TWOMEY: Sorry. Just very quickly, if you look accountability and transparency framework, and you look at translation, you will see that the policy within is to move to translation including the languages -- the five U.N. languages including Russian, so it is there. We have to move to that stage, and that was a good segue to what Doug is going to talk about because as you pointed out, there are financial implications to this things. >> [SPEAKER OFF MICROPHONE] >> I tried to express I read the report and why I worry because it proposed to exclude Russian from budgetary report, strategic portals, strategic documents. We have (inaudible) today. It is no problem. >>KIEREN McCARTY: Okay, thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for all those who put in comments. I hope that you will put more comments in and I hope you will tell other people to complain that they can't access to ICANN in a language, I hope you will tell them to put comments in as well. And with that, I belatedly hand over to Doug. [end of workshop]