hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0744.txt

Episode: 744
Title: HPR0744: The Language Frontier Episode 5
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0744/hpr0744.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:49:33

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Episode 5 is a small world.
The world in confusion of the fact that no one speaks the same language
but we're all communicating on a worldwide basis with tools
that are incomprehensibly advanced
is in stark contrast to Disney's iconic theme ride.
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The face of entertainment is changing
with many films and works of art responding to the very real desire
for people to come together and find common ground.
Countless books and films touch on this idea.
But it's pretty hard to reach each other when we can't even understand
what the other person is saying nor they us.
The movie Borat illustrates this point, I think.
Despite the self-titled premise, cultural learnings of America
for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan,
it's actually a film in English and Hebrew,
not English and Kazakhstan.
Sasha Cohen is speaking Hebrew when his character Borat is speaking Kazakhstan.
That's funny and works because so many people have no idea what Hebrew
or Kazakhstan is sound like.
Today, the people of the world have unprecedented access to one another
and yet not only can they not speak the same language,
they oftentimes can't even recognize what language the other is speaking.
One thing's for sure though, subtitles and movies are actually becoming OK,
which was unheard of 10 years ago.
Just go to the multiplexer, turn on your TV,
pans, labyrinth, apocalyptic, the TV show lost.
American audiences, for example, that swore they would not read a movie
or buying tickets for a theatrical experience in Spanish or Mayan.
Some of these films with major cultural themes are making it all the way to the Academy Awards.
Could this be because people are interested in other cultures?
I got an email from a girl in Houston, Texas.
It's about the subtitling that fans do and main movies.
Dear language frontier.
I love the show, it's very interesting and really hits home.
As a fan of anime or Japanese animation,
a lot of us miss a lot of great shows because they don't get translated from whatever reason.
Some of us literally learn Japanese just so we can watch the shows
and some people do subtitle sheets, fan subs, so other people can watch.
But it's a problem and a lot of people are missing out on great shows
because of the language barrier that's Kim from Houston.
Thanks, President Kim.
The information superhighway is paving the way
and people that would never have encountered one another are face-to-face online.
And entertainment, which is the great mirror of the world, is reflecting this phenomenon.
Has this been happening since the next version of the web?
It seems that each day that passes, this ad hoc infrastructure becomes more crystallized.
What kind of infrastructure will it be?
Will it be solid, or will it be weak and thrown together with gaping holes?
Will it be lazily built, fly by the seat of your pants?
Are we going to put some real effort and planning into it?
The Roman Empire used a well-built infrastructure
that was based off of preaching governing principles
on top of a rock solid foundation of the Latin language,
which endured for centuries upon centuries.
Compare that with today's multi-national corporation, economic empire,
and ask yourselves, what foundation is this built on?
Does it have a unifying language?
Obviously not.
There's no standard.
And since that is governing the planet,
the lack of a standard is leaking into every aspect of our lives.
The Romans had an elaborate communication relay system.
We've developed an infinitely more far-reaching and instantaneous way of contacting each other.
The global landscape has changed and transformed completely since the 1960s
when the world population crossed into the 3 billion mark.
The world population has doubled since then.
It is a new world, and with new media like podcasts
and digital information available for free in 24-7,
we finally have an opportunity to know the people who share time with us on this planet.
Obviously that wasn't possible before the digital revolution.
That's exactly what we're talking about here.
Language barrier in a time where we have unparalleled ability to communicate with one another.
The irony is glaring, wouldn't you say?
It's embarrassing, really.
I'm surprised the more hasn't happened already.
I mean, the idea that we can't communicate,
it's so archaic in this day and age.
We are in the advent of a communication revolution.
The communication arena is exploding.
You can actually watch this show on your TV with Apple TV.
Anyone can put out a show and anyone can watch it on the traditional media in their TV.
Oh, hi.
In this episode of The Source, we'll be having our fourth in the series of Central Arity tutorials,
this time talking about rendering and transcoding.
From my kitchen at 3 in the morning, I'm Aaron Newcomb,
and you're watching The Source.
The world is getting so much cooler.
The world is getting so much cooler.
The world is getting so much cooler.
We set up the device the most torturous computing experience ever created,
calling the worst from Windows CE, Windows ME, and Windows MG.
We code named the new project, Windows cement.
The first operating system specifically designed to sync employee morale
and weigh computers down like a stone.
This is not just an entertainment, this is communication.
Just by the fact that you're watching this show in a miles ahead of you,
go out on the screen and ask people if they know what a podcast is or Apple TV.
But what is the obstacle that's ever present?
It's the language barrier, which is why we're doing this show.
We're looking for solutions to help us deal with this formidable barrier,
people collide with on a daily basis.
What if the language barrier were to be eliminated overnight?
How could that possibly happen?
Well, the language frontier podcast was actually inspired by the movie Run,
a film about a primordial language everyone can understand.
Let's look at a clip from Run's Prescott.
Run is about transcending language barriers.
It's like a concept film, and the concept is that we all speak,
we all have an innate ability to understand the mother language,
like the Tower of Babel language.
The film is a mystery type of a story.
It's about the way we communicate with one another.
It's about overcoming the barriers that stand between you and me and anyone.
At the time when there was a lot of talk about oil,
oil, water, energy, the secret meaning, the material sense,
power, force,
and the big power companies.
We love to see all of them,
and that was interested in the language that was shared between us.
Our ancestors were possible together,
and that all lot of the brainers,
that had to be seen on the surface,
where it was very commonality,
the life, the emotion, the vision,
the point of view of the run street.
That was interesting.
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Trick or Treat
that was interesting.
Trick or Treat
that was interesting.
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I had to guess the car was clean and interested in that car.
See, and now this over a copy, and he speaks French and German.
And this fellow, he speaks German and Spanish.
No!
No one.
He's going to ask the questions, and we'll translate them to you.
Oh!
No!
No!
Plano!
Here's what!
Therein lies a problem.
And it's also tied in with geopolitical differences.
Let alone going into the United Nations on any given day and looking in on one of the
discussions they're having.
These non-stop interpreters babbling in no one knows what they're saying.
There have been studies put out on the difficulty of translating in real time.
Translators face, lengthy periods of interpreting, confinement in the interpreters' booth, background
noise, and awareness that major decisions may depend upon the accuracy of their work.
Accuracy, that's the crux of this dilemma.
The interpreter has to remember what has just been said, listen to what is currently
being said, and anticipate what's going to be said next.
One writer put it this way, and I'm quoting.
As you start a sentence, you are taking the leap in the dark.
You are mortgaging your grammatical future.
The original sentence may suddenly be turned in such a way that your translation of its
end cannot easily be reconciled with your translation of its start.
Nimbleness is called for to guide the mind through this syntactical maze, whilst at the
same time it is engaged upon the work of word translation, and that's from our Clement.
It's surprising that once people started doing transcontinental telephone calls that
a common language wasn't used.
It's surprising, I can actually see how that would have happened, but for some reason
it didn't.
What can I say?
And now it looks like we have an opportunity like that, but with a few more billion people
participating.
Then at the time of the transcontinental call innovation.
From what I know about transcontinental calls, they were between Europe and the Americas,
and that was it, and they were prohibitively expensive.
Now with things like Skype, I-Site, Internet phone service, or voice over IP, podcasting
or just online chatting, the world is listening.
So a language like Esperanto might actually start to sound appealing.
Think about it.
Everyone learns one simple alternative language, and they can be understood by everyone else.
Here's an interview sent in by a musician in Indiana who talks about collaboration issues
he's having with regard to language.
I do electronic music that's part of a rather obscure scene.
I compose a lot using low-bit video game consoles and eight-bit home computers.
I like the sounds.
The thing is, I don't know a lot of people who do it, so finding people to collaborate
is a rarity, and not that many people do it.
It's definitely a niche form of making music, it's definitely a niche.
Well I've been trying to collaborate with some guys I know in Europe that I met on my
space, and we have the tools, the web, and many sequences that we can send back and forth,
things like that, but we get hung up with communicating when we're trying to accomplish.
They both speak a little English, but I speak no German and no Czech, so there you are.
I mean they're the universal musical terms like Crescendo and Idagio, which are actually
Italian words.
There are variations on what those terms mean, so yeah, it's hard to communicate.
Even though he can collaborate with these other people in Europe, which is a great opportunity,
it's breaking down for them in terms of just telling each other what they want to do.
How might this be different if they all even read just basic Esperanto?
They're just writing back and forth an email anyway.
Next week we'll bring it full circle and get into these universal languages we've been talking
about, especially the most viable Esperanto.
But it's falling out of the sky, out of the sky, because they drove.
People rain, the rain is dry, out of the sky, because they drove.
But it's falling to the ground, now we can't get up.
There was a bad ball falling down, see our time's sped up.
There was a bad ball falling down, see our time's sped up.
Paper airplane, sailing by, out of the sky, because they drove.
But it's falling to the ground, now they can't get up.
There was a bad ball falling down, see our time's sped up.
I'm on mute, I'm working basically for the language part, localization part,
and I do the Asami's localization.
Presently I'm doing in Rell, Fedora, Geno, Eddie, Mozilla, in Okunovs,
and basically I'm interested in promoting Fedora usage.
I like to see almost all the cyber cafes running on Fedora soon, and hopefully people will interact
with localize interface as well.
I heard that you just got accepted into the Konome project.
Basically there's something like you need to have a coordinator shift for the Konome project,
for the localization translation project issues.
So just recently I got into the ICVS, X-rays, and the coordinator shift for the Konome,
so this will actually basically allow me to free project submission into Chrome,
or I'll get to the localization stuff, and I'm looking for it from a community members
to communicate.
A new speculative fiction film titled after one of the ancient Alphabet's rune poses the question,
what if the language barrier were to be eliminated overnight, what if indeed there were no more
language barrier on the planet?
That's kind of crazy.
Thank you for listening to Acre Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-N-E-C for all of her students.
Thank you for listening to Acre Public Radio.