Aimee Ansari speaks @TEDx Youth Bath

Aimee Ansari @ TEDx Youth Bath

Few days ago, I had the opportunity to translate a wonderful talk by Aimee Ansari at TEDx Youth Bath. She is the CEO of Translators without Borders. In her talk, she stresses the importance of access to Information in times of crisis. It needs to be provided in the right language at the right time in the right format. Communication of critical life saving information in ones local language is important. Not only this, it needs to be accessible and easily understood by the locals too.

 

If you are having trouble seeing the Hindi subtitles, please see http://www.anuvaadika.com/blog/how-to-view-youtube-video-subtitles-in-your-language/

Some Facts From the Talk

Aimee says that 94% of the world population speaks just 300 languages. And out of these, 100 languages already have online translation systems like Google translate.  Moreover, efforts are ongoing to develop these machine translation engines. Assumption is that they will be of high quality in the coming 20 years or so. But has anybody thought about the two hundred languages that are left behind? If we could learn even one of those 200 languages, we could help develop and improve machine translation engines in those languages.

Our Involvement

This is where each one of us can play a role in reducing these barriers. We can learn a new language from the comfort of our living room. We can help translate information which will be crucial for future crisis. Let us all do what little we can do for humanity. As we all know, tiny droplets of rain make oceans. Translators Without Borders  is a great organization and I take great pride in being  associated with it. Hence, I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to all the readers to volunteer for TWB. You could start today itself by learning a new language and then helping translate critical life saving information.

 

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