subject: New Website Hopes Automatically Translates Arabic and English [print this page] New Website Hopes Automatically Translates Arabic and English
A new website hopes that the idea of removing the barrier of language by allowing a person to write in Arabic it is translated into English, or the other way around, will help enhance diplomacy of the citizens in the West and the Middle East. Its goal is to reduce the tensions between the two cultures.
The website named Meedan allows users to post comments and stories in Arabic and have them translated into English automatically, or to do just the opposite. With this website, people won't have to share a common language in order to have an online discussion in near real time. It can be considered a social network that is filled with people who don't know each other but want to have a conversation.
The website is effectively bilingual that has volunteer editors conducting the translations after the fact. These machine translations are quite good, but they still have difficulties in handling comments. The website also uses open source to help the state of the art of translation to move forward.
The conversations are currently called Meedan Events. These are developments in a story that can benefit from a conversation that has numerous sources that are translated into a single language. The website plans to open its focus on the Middle East.
A user can submit a link to a related story that may add a different perspective or by comment on the event directly. In addition, they can send each other direct messages, which are translated by machine.
However, as it turns out, mastering the technology of translation is easier than it is to create a discussion forum on the Internet which respects the differences that people have.
It is thought that it is completely possible to create a community that helps people to learn from one another and respect other cultures. Although Meedan is not the first to make machine translation useable by the public, it takes a different tack by allowing the translators refine and fix the translations. Meedan makes the history of each translation available quickly and publicly.
In spite of the fact that Meedan creates free speech zones on the Internet that often involve subjects that have historically been routinely censored by some governments, Meedan has not yet had government firewalls block the translations. The whole idea of the website is to create spaces where people can learn about each other by interacting.
