The BBC experiment connected web users across languages

The BBC appears to be thinking seriously about using translation to connect its global audience online.

On Thursday the World Service hosted a cross-language discussion between English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Persian, Indonesian and Spanish speakers with Google’s Machine Translation service providing translations.

What ensued was a bizarre disjointed discussion about nothing much in particular, resembling a collection of spam attacks.

‘I would l like to use this opportunity to introduce you about Somaliland’ … ‘May we be healthy, live calm and help those who need us most’ … ‘Someone knows Bournemouth, UK? Is an interesting city to visit?’ … ‘I want to tell to the world that Jesus is coming. read Jhon 3:16 please look for in on the BIBLE’.

Full marks for the effort and the vision to think about using translation. But perhaps the BBC should be talking to some of the players in the field who could help them build a more useful cross-language debate with better translation.

They could have used the translation community from Global Voices Lingua for example, with the translation tools developed by Worldwide Lexicon which enable humans to edit and improve MT translations right there on the page, supplying data that is housed on an open source translation memory (WWL has just released a brilliant translation plugin for Wordpress I’ll be blogging about shortly).

It’s also worth comparing what the BBC did with Meedan. Our cross-language Arabic-English interface – which clearly shows the status of a comment translation, the original language it was posted in, the direction of translation, who is author of the comment and who translated it, and whether it is a human or automatic translation – is leaps and bounds ahead of this early BBC experiment.

Still, it’s great to see a major publisher on the internet thinking creatively about crossing languages, which does benefit to everyone in the space working to build the polyglot web.

Syrian school students tussle to be in shot. Picture by Itab Azzam.

A BBC Open University series is providing a UK audience with a rare view of life inside Syria’s schools.

The Syrian Schools series gives UK viewers an unprecedented opportunity to learn what ‘Syrians are really like and what hopes and aspirations they have’, according to the series’ associate producer Itab Azzam.

The first hour-long episode, broadcast last night on BBC 4 and available on the BBC iPlayer, shows students debating with teachers about the importance of the hijab, examines the role of the ruling Ba’ath party in schools and considers the taboo topic of Iraqis Christians living in Damascus.

Azzam says the film can bring an important new perspective on the Arab republic.

“The aim of series is to look at education and show life as it is lived in syria, from the perspective of ordinary school pupils, their families and teachers,” she said in a Skype interview.

“In Britain people rarely see the human face of Syria.”

According to Azzam, the film benefited from the involvement of the British Syrian Society which helped gain official access so that producers could film students and teachers in their daily lives.

The Ministry of Education was given the opportunity to review the films before broadcast but an access agreement prevented censorship beyond factual inaccuracies.

“The Syrian Government didn’t have any editorial rights, only factual, as we signed an access agreement that clearly stated that,” she said.

With an appearance from Syria’s glamorous first lady – who was born and brought up in the UK – the film gives a sense of young Syrians working to reconcile tradition with a modern education.

Asma Al-Assad asks the students of an all-girls school what they would do if a husband urged them to drop their careers and ambitions before marriage.

“We could get married and continue working,” says one.

“If he loves me he has to understand what makes me happy,” says another.

Soon after, Mrs. Al-Assad is talking to the girls about the need for critical skills when the Muslim Call to Prayer begins.

A wry smile crosses her face.

In another scene, a devout Muslim student who memorized the Qu’ran by the age of 14 explains why she believes education is important.

“Maybe people in the west think that Arabs only fast and pray and stuff but we have knowledge,” Dua’a says.

“God urged us to seek knowledge.”

But despite a thirst for knowledge in Syria, teaching could be better, Azzam suggests.

“The education in Syria still suffers. It needs more interaction between teachers and students.

“The education system does not allow students to think for themselves because there is a lot of memorization that exhausts students. It is merely lecturing.

“This year the Ministry of Education is starting to change the curricula to be more interactive, but the key issue is that they don’t have trained teachers who can adapt to the change.

“If a teacher studied history in university for example then they are eligible to teach history in schools. And that applies to all subjects,” she adds.

Read more:

Review in the Scotsman by Paul Whitelaw

Review in the New Statesman by Rachel Cooke

*Disclaimer: Itab Azzam is a friend who I met in Syria 2005/6.

A typical front page of the Daily Mail with shrill anti-immigrant headline. Image by Malias.

One of Britain’s leading right wing newspapers, The Daily Mail, appears to have lost touch with its readers over its criticism of the fascist Islamophobic British National Party and its leader Nick Griffin.

In recent days, Mail readers have overwhelmingly voiced support for Griffin and the BNP on the paper’s website, despite trenchant attacks on the party by the outlet’s leading commentators.

The clash comes on the back of Griffin’s first ever appearance on the BBC’s flagship political debate programme, Question Time, on Thursday night in which the extremist defended his description of Islam as ‘vile and wicked’, repeated his view that homosexuals were ‘creepy’, and failed to refute that he had a record of Holocaust denial.

The Daily Mail, which is renowned for its ability to provide what its right-leaning readers want to hear, will undoubtedly be concerned by the comments, some of which cite Mail reporting as part of an establishment conspiracy against Griffin and his party.

“Most of the idiots writing pieces such as this live in large houses , miles away from towns that no longer look British but more like third world slums,” wrote one reader called Sammy.

“Shops, market stalls,and language are all foreign,” she continues.  ”That is why the BNP are popular and these so called writers have no real concept of what is happening in the UK , rather like the thieving , too busy filling in my fraudulent expense claims to worry about what the voters want , politicians.”

Writing in today’s Mail Online, Edward Heathcoat Amory attempts to debunk Nick Griffin’s ‘empty rhetoric’ casting  a critical eye on the BNP leader’s claims on Question Time.

Amory says: ‘The BNP’s immigration policy is voluntary repatriation of ‘immigrants’ (ie non-whites) regardless of whether they were born here. There is no evidence that any but a tiny minority of British people support such a plan.”

Greg from Coalville in Leicestershire responds: “Well mr amory i dont know where you get this “tiny minority” you mention who want repatriation, i suggest you get out and about a bit more to where the real people live and you will find that ii is a lot lot more than a tiny minority.”

Cedric from Hickinbottom says: “I am totally fed up with this “witch-hunt”.”

“In the past you have stood up for nearly all the points Nick Griffin as said his party would do if elected, all but in a less extreme way.

“You should be criticising the Libs,Labs& Cons. for not pursuing the things that matter most to the British people!”

A Richards in London says: “Mr Heathcoat Amory, where have you been, on holiday? We’ve heard all this before – the usual lies, smears and innuendos wearing thinner every time they’re wheeled out. ”

John Gray in Stamford says: “Reality. Their policies are representative of the mainstream which apparently does not include the author of this skewed dross.”

Earlier, star commentator Max Hastings described Griffin as an ‘empty vessel’ who had nothing to say, and was easily made to seem ’slippery and repugnant’ when asked about his attitude to the Holocaust.

But, in a difficult balance to strike with angry readers, Hastings tried to address their concerns on immigration.

On Tory Baroness Warsi’s suggestion of a cap in immigration numbers, Hastings said: “At last almost everybody in the studio could address what they know is the real issue. ”

“Nobody except Nick Griffin wants to send every immigrant in Britain home. But almost everybody outside the current government knows that the current policy of allowing unrestricted entry has been a catastrophe.”

He also attacked the Labour representative, Jack Straw.

” It was a very bad night for Straw, and for the Government on an issue of vital concern to millions of people.”

But it wasn’t enough for readers.

A reader from Glasgow commented: “Well, I won’t be tuning for Max Hastings worthless opinions on anything in future. Ever”

B Brodie said: “Max Hastings I thought journalists were supposed to report facts! This is a biased and inaccurate piece of writing.”

“Griffin was hounded last night by the so called ‘acceptable’ political parties and a ‘historian’ who came across as an idiot.

“The BNP will continue to do well until people are alowed to state what they really think, NO MORE IMMIGRATION of any colour.”

“I think the Daily Mail should employ Nick Griffin as a columnist,” said Ivor Wynard from Nantwich, Cheshire.

“How about listening to what the man actually said, he was brilliant and represents a growing number of people,” said Hugo in London.

The criticism of Hastings focused on the fact that – in the minds of readers – the Question Time panel and audience was set up to be biased against the BNP by the BBC and that the words ‘repugnant’ and ’slippery’ should be applied to Jack Straw instead.

John Salkfield in Sheffield said: “Last night, as expected, was a concerted effort to shout down Griffin. The establishment will not allow the people a voice.”

Mike in Alicante said: “Sorry Max, all that was exposed yesterday was the levels to which the liberal left stoop.”

“And tonight we abandon the normal Question Time and present the ‘Nick Griffin is a very bad man show’”,” said Patrick Harrington in Edinburgh.

“Mr Hastings – firstly a man of your intelligence should have seen that last nights Question Time, was nothing more then a political show trial, aimed at one man to knock him back from where he came,” said Michael West in Yeovil.

Others described the BBC programme as an ‘asbsolute stitch up’, ‘biased’ and ‘in breach of charter’.

One went as far as to say: “Griffin was clearly set up, hundreds of people onto one man, the room was full of foreigners masquerading as Brits who showed their true colours with their lack of the British sense of fair play, a principle any true Brits would of shown without hesitation.”

The comments suggest the Daily Mail is struggling to keep up with the increasingly right wing, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant readership that it has long tried to stir with articles like ‘Muslim student, 18, banned from college because she refuses to remove her burkha’ which appears on the front page today.

Muslims in particular feature as a source of agitation for the Daily Mail, which seeks to present Muslims as foreign, monolithically determined to undermine Britain’s culture, and incapable of integrating.

But it appears the position has stirred a readership more right wing than the Daily Mail is prepared to go.

One reader, Mike Slaw from Manchester, summed up the growing chasm between readers and the paper’s editorial line: “The Daily mail columnists, almost to a man (and woman) bleat on about immigration, Islamism and Europe and how these are the key issues of the day. But..they never provide any credible course of action.”

The Daily Mail responded to the fracture today by publishing an article turning the focus of its ire away from Nick Griffin to the BBC, stoking MPs’ concerns that the public service broadcaster was  ’playing into Nick Griffin’s hands by stage-managing the Question Time onslaught.’

It is not clear, however, how many commenting readers over the past three days have been BNP supporters defending their man.  The challenge the comments present to Mail coverage would suggest its columnists should engage with readers in a style in keeping with bloggers, rather than remaining aloof.

On an article reporting Griffin’s claim he had been unfairly treated on the show, Simon from Oxford said: “ I was happy that he was going to appear, because it would reveal how his policies are either repellant or non-existent (I’d love it if they’d asked him how his party would handle national debt, or the environment, or anything other than their single-policy of immigration).

“And, having watched it, I felt sure that nobody could come away thinking the BNP viable or anything other than morally reprehensible.”

“And then I come here, and see that the most popular comments are those supporting the BNP, whereas the least popular is a completely innocuous one in support of (the rather wonderful) Bonnie Greer!”

“How incredibly worrying. It just goes to show that people will see what they want to see – did you really see a future prime minister on that programme last night?? Oh, I hope not.”

The comment was one of the most negatively ranked in the thread.

DISCLAIMER: I used to work as a Mail Online producer.  The staff were from different backgrounds, friendly and supportive.

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