Translate from Latvian

leefmcleanLeave a comment

Seeing “Translate from Latvian” or Translate from Haitian” under a tweet written in te reo Māori seems silly at first. But it raises the question, why not ‘Translate from Māori”?

Twitter offers the following support to people wanting to see Twitter in specific languages.

https://translate.twitter.com/welcome/signup

I.e. no support. The process of translation appears to be entirely voluntary on the part of people offering translation. And Twitter has made sure the process and the outputs are under their full control.

More Twitter translations support https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169902

The Twitter Forums https://translate.twitter.com/forum/

Note that Twitter only supports some (major) languages, and as far as I can tell (to be confirmed), does not allow for the development of smaller languages. This bites hard for indigenous languages of colonised peoples.

Here’s an interesting post about Facebook in Māori, from Karaitiana Taiuru’s blog. A key issue, “As Facebook no longer recognise minority languages to localise the official platform, the Māori Facebook translation is available to install via a script which will work for users of Google Chrome.” (citation tbc)

And here’s his introduction to Māori activism in NZ’s Internet Domain Name System

 

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Representation 101

leefmclean

Whether your voted or not, your Member of Parliament represents you.

To find out who your MP is, go to  http://www.elections.org.nz/voters/find-my-electorate  and enter your address, or zoom in on the map. Once you’ve found out what your electorate is, click on ‘2014 election results’ and you will see the results and the name of the winning candidate.

To find out how to contact them, go to https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/ and find your MP on the list of names. Click on their name and you will go through to their profile. Their contact details are there on the left of the page.

This page is a good summary of all the ways to contact your MP.

 

The library in the Bay

leefmcleanLeave a comment

In February 2016, I participated in the LIANZA Otago Southland Weekend School, #heartoflibs.

My Storify of the weekend: https://storify.com/leefmclean/lianza-otago-southland-weekend-school-2016

Alas! Storify is no longer. Here’s Fast Company on why and how.

Sarah Gallagher’s post about the event, including Twitter statistics and her analysis of the network of people tweeting.

 

The programme was wonderful. One talk amongst many that I enjoyed was Dr Brenda Chawner’s about her compulsion to visit local libraries, and her subsequent study, ‘The heart of the community: volunteer libraries in New Zealand’. Here’s Dr Chawner’s profile . When the related article is available, I will link to it here.

Her visits inspired in me a desire to visit the two Dunedin community libraries I know about:  Macandrew Bay Library and St Kilda Library.

I visited Macandrew Bay Library this week, during their Friday opening hours.

Librarian Jill is cataloguing the collections using LibraryThing. Her next goals are:

  • deciding collection policies and then shaping the collections
  • addressing the need for improved shelving.
  • working on her own professinal development

I felt I could help Jill by introducing her to people from Dunedin Public Library who specialise in areas she is interested in developing.