[K. Sargsyan] I started to translate TEDTalks
after seeing William Kamkwamba's talk about how to fulfill your dreams.
And I told [about] this talk to my son.
He wouldn't believe me. He said, "But he dropped out of school."
"He wouldn't know English. How would he do this?"
So I said, "I will translate this."
"I want him to read every single word."
[W. Davis] Language is not just a body of vocabulary
or set of grammatical rules.
A language is a flash of the human spirit.
It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture
comes into the material world.
Everything that we do at TED is driven by the same mission,
which is to spread ideas.
And if your goal is to spread ideas, at a certain point,
you're confronted with the fact that you're only speaking in English.
The very root of what we do is about connectedness.
There's huge numbers of people
who can be part of shaping a better future for everyone.
It'd be crazy to leave them out.
[K. Aparta] I wrote them, saying that these talks
should have subtitles for the Deaf,
and also translations for people from other countries.
There has to be that one person
who's so passionate about a particular talk,
who wants the subtitles to exist in their language.
Initially, I started translating for my sister.
She lives with my parents
in a very small town, where I'm from in Kazakhstan.
And she doesn't get a lot of opportunities in exploring the world.
But then, later on, I realized it's not just my family.
Everyone who speaks Uzbek could benefit from it.
[M. Pagel] Just as wings opened up the sphere of air for birds to exploit,
language opened up the sphere of cooperation for humans to exploit.
All of our speakers are on the edge of their fields,
and therefore on the edge of language,
so many of the terms they use you can't find in a dictionary.
It actually takes a lot of research to accurately translate a TEDTalk.
Depending on how technical it is, and how many words you have to look up,
it could take up to 10 hours.
I go and read about the speaker, and his books,
so I get the whole context.
Because of this community of translators,
we suddenly have the ability to find the greatest ideas
coming from speakers in any language
and bring them into the English-speaking world
and beyond.
I translate because I want more people to have access to these ideas.
It's an act of generosity from many people,
just sharing knowledge.
To inspire people, to give hope to some people.
This changes a lot of things in the world.