I'm so excited to be here with all of you
and to have this conversation
I think we have six people joining us on Skype from around the world,
so perhaps we could bring them up.
Hello!
(June Cohen) Hello!
I'm waving at the screen, I should be waving here, I think,
It's so good to see you all!
You know, I always love to start with a quick round of introductions,
because I'm so fascinated by everyone who's here,
so maybe we can start in Bologna.
All right, that would be me, then.
I'm Alberto, I'm from Italy, obviously.
And I translate into Italian.
Thank you, Alberto.
And let's see if I can pronounce every city up there.
I'm going to try... Pune!
Hey, it's Abhishek Suryawanshi from Pune, India.
And which languages do you translate into?
I translate into Marathi and Hindi.
That is great, and maybe we'll come into the room.
I'm Els, I come from Belgium.
I translate into Dutch, which is my mother tongue,
and also into French and Italian.
I'm Anwar from Sudan, I translate into Arabic.
I'm Kristine from Armenia and I translate into Armenian.
I'm Wataru, I'm from Tokyo and I translate into Japanese.
And we're going to go back around the world.
And can I go to you, Hanna?
Hi, I'm Hanna and I translate into Ukrainian.
And to Christel.
Hello, I'm Christel, I'm Belgian,
I translate into Dutch.
Hi, Els!
(Els De Keyser) Hi!
(Laughter)
(June Cohen) Everyone knows Els.
(Dutch) Good morning!
And to Meric.
(Meric Aydonat) Hello, I'm Meric.
I'm from Turkey and I translate into Turkish.
(June Cohen) I have to tell you that my favorite part
literally of every conference
is getting to talk to some of our translators,
because I just find you to be the most inspiring community
I've ever come across.
But one of the things I'd love to start with
is something some of you know but maybe some of you don't,
which is that the Translation Project was not our idea.
It was yours.
So, we launched TEDTalks almost seven years ago,
and from the moment that we put the talks online,
within weeks, we actually started getting emails from people around the world,
saying, "We want to translate these talks."
And one of the things that struck me was,
we'd get emails that said, "I want to translate these into Polish, Spanish...
Here, I've already translated this into Hebrew.
Here!"
And what was so interesting to me about these emails
was that they, you, weren't asking us to translate the talks.
You were saying, "We want to translate these talks."
"We want to make them available, we want to be a part of this.
We want to help."
And that was a profound moment for me,
the realization of the generosity that was in the world.
And so, we actually eventually listened.
And these emails actually became a little more insistent.
They went from "I would like to translate"
to "Here's what we think you should do.
Launch a project that allows anybody to translate the talk into any language.
And here's some technology you could use for it, come on!
So basically, we have listened to this community from the very beginning.
This is entirely the reason that we launched the Translation Project.
It's because you told us to.
And so, for the last four years, we've been following this community
and [we've been] amazed and humbled to see where you've taken us so far.
So, you all know the numbers.
40,000 translations, more than 100 languages.
We're beginning to move from just subtitling
to translation of the website itself,
we're going to start looking at dubbing or a voice-over at some point soon,
again, because you're telling us to.
And one of the things I also think is really exciting
is that we're now moving in the direction of translating TEDx talks
that are filmed not in English, but in all of your languages,
and bringing the ideas and people that are native to where you're from
back into English and around the world.
So, I think the potential and the possibility
of what's coming out of this community is so profound.
And so, where I would love to start the conversation,
because I always just love hearing this,
is I'd love to start with why each of you translates.
What motivates you, what brought you to the Project,
and why you continue.
Would somebody coming in over Skype like to start?
I'd love to hear why you translate, why did you start?
For me, it started with Brené Brown.
It was such a nice and inspiring talk.
I wanted to show it to my friend,
and she didn't speak English or read English.
So, then I saw that I could volunteer for translating, and I did.
And since then, I'm addicted to translating TEDTalks
because they are so inspiring.
(June Cohen) I love that. Brené will do that to you.
(Laughter)
And Meric, I think you had a thought.
I initially started
because I wanted schoolchildren to be able to understand TEDTalks,
because that is such an important time in their lives
and TEDTalks offer perspectives into so many different professions,
like sociology, psychology, medicine, engineering.
So, they would watch and understand many talks
and in the end, they'd understand what they want in their lives
and do what they want to do with their lives.
So, I started because I wanted children to be able to understand them,
and then, I started receiving emails from so many people,
thanking me for my translations.
And I just love it!
(Laughter)
I love hearing that you're getting these thanks.
We don't always know when that happens.
But Kristin and I talked about this a lot at the beginning,
that we wanted a system set up
so that the community would have access to the translators.
And we view you as big rock stars as the speakers themselves,
so we love hearing that that communication is happening.
What about back into the room?
One or two of your thoughts on why you translate.
For me, it's always about access,
giving others access to knowledge.
The new technologies, the new sciences, the new thoughts in psychology,
in engineering, medicine and all kinds of stuff.
And being from Sudan, this is more sensitive to me.
It's not a matter of choice for someone to consume this content.
It's a matter of scarcity.
There is no content over there.
So by participating and translating this into Arabic,
that gives people access to knowledge.
The original content.
It's one of the things that we find very inspiring,
picking up from what you and Meric said.
We all know the feeling of being inspired by a great speaker or teacher,
and not everyone has access to these great teachers or knowledge.
And to be able to take the best of the best
and make them available to anyone in the world,
which is the fundamentals of what you are doing,
is so inspiring for us and core to TED's mission, I feel.
Do you find that you often have to spend time researching the subject
or researching specific words as you delve into it, to translate?
There's a lot of nods.
(Laughter)
Alberto!
I don't really remember any specific ones.
It happened a lot of times that I was translating things,
mostly, it was technical stuff,
but also philosophical or psychological issues.
And then, I started researching a couple of words,
and then, I started opening up Wikipedia,
and then links from here to there,
and I lost a couple of hours just reading stuff.
(Laughter)
(Alberto Pagani) And it happened over and over again.
And now I know I learned a whole lot about a whole lot of things
just because [of that].
There are a lot of nods for that, both on Skype and in the room.
I feel like you guys should get a bachelor's degree
for each talk that you translate.
(Laughter)
Right? It's like a senior research paper.
Complexity's complex.
(Els De Keyser) Yeah!
Think about it. Complexity is complex.
(Els De Keyser) OK.
You have to translate that into your language.
And then, most of the time, you don't have the words,
the appropriate words to translate into your language.
So, you have to invent.
And it's really interesting.
You jump into the dark.
And you don't know what will happen there.
One day, you might get a thank-you note.
"I didn't find the translation for that word."
Or, you find: "That is not correct!"
(Laughter)
You're like, "Right."
And at TED, we've learned to say "thank you."
(Laughter)
(June Cohen) "We will fix that."
It's such an interesting question, let's follow that for a moment.
Because I feel like one of the probably many interesting things
about translating for TED
is that our speakers tend to be at the edge of their fields,
and therefore they are at the edge of language.
And some of the words are actually evolving.
As you said, there may not be words yet in every language.
Is this something that many of you have experienced?
Sometimes, it's even for the core TED concepts
that it's difficult to find a translation.
Like the concept of "TED talk" or "TED Fellow."
It has to be very short.
"TEDx event" is maybe a little easier.
"Fellow," I know, is a difficult one.
And so now, when we're translating the website,
we have to be careful about how to do that
And in some languages, it appears to be quite a challenge.
Not in mine, but...
Right, I would imagine that, actually.
And we always pick these words that are quite specific.
(Els De Keyser) Yeah.
I find the combination of the way that things work in this,
both the grassroots collaboration within language teams,
and it happens between translator and reviewer...
For the couple of people who don't know,
for every translation, there has to be a reviewer,
you have to agree on the translation.
So there's a one-on-one collaboration.
And then, there's the larger collaboration among your language group
and the larger collaboration among all the translators.
And I'm curious, what have you learned about that along the way?
We have people with different skills
and they each bring something to the Project.
So, someone made a scheme,
somebody else looked at the technical solutions
to give access to information, and so on.
So, it's really this combination,
and like you said, it's a collaboration at different levels.
Yes.
(Els De Keyser) And in the beginning,
it was always only a translator and reviewer,
but for a couple of years, we've also had Language Coordinators.
So, a couple of people in every language group
who act as, I would say, mentors.
(June Cohen) Mentors, and volunteer leaders.
And that has also emerged.
And that's also very interesting,
in that among this community of Language Coordinators,
we also collaborate,
because we face the same issues in our languages.
So, I can learn from him,
I can learn from Kristine even if I don't speak her language.
We have the same experience.
It's so interesting!
So, going on to Skype,
are there any lessons you have learned about collaboration
or things that worked that surprised you,
or situations that you were able to navigate in a twosome or as a group.
Any thoughts there?
So, I have learned the power, as I said, of "thank you" and praise,
because it's so important.
People love it when somebody praises their work
and you can start a conversation from there.
And something that I have done recently
is sometimes, I send the translator some articles
that I read about the subject of the talk.
So, an article from a newspaper that I recently read.
So, I send that article to that person.
"OK, if you're interested in the subject, there's this that I have read recently."
And that person sometimes sends me another article or another talk,
and you start a conversation and you learn so many more things
because of this collaboration that we have
between translators and reviewers and Language Coordinators.
Anyone else on Skype have a thought on that particular topic of collaboration,
what you've learned from each other, how it's worked?
Abhishek?
Yes, it helps specifically when there are difficult words we need to translate.
Specific words like Internet, which are broad,
which we had to use it like Internet only,
but at the same time, the small terms which we need to use.
So, for that, the Facebook group is really helpful.
And the interesting thing which I found is that the Wikipedia community,
the Wikipedians who are active in the local languages,
those people also translate TEDTalks.
So that was a really interesting observation and collaboration.
If I'm having some difficulties, I will post it in the Facebook group,
and within one or two hours, I get the solution.
That's such a great way to use those dispersed technologies.
Because I imagine, all of the translators are dispersed around the world,
but being able to tap into that community and get an answer back so quickly
seems such a great solution.
Before I forget, please allow me to say,
a huge "thank you" to Kristin Windbigler.
(June Cohen) Right?
(Applause)
(June Cohen) I think we all feel the same.
Both with Kristin, who has courageously led this project since it launched,
and to the full team around her,
this is their work but it's also their passion and joy.
And what I always hear from them
is just how amazed they are with all of you.
So, this is something that I hope each of you knows.
I think we're coming towards the end of this session,
so we'll have to wrap up in a moment.
But one of the things we want each of you to hear
is every day, we talk about how inspired we are by this community
and how much we learn from you.
And I think that's one of the things at the core of an open community,
that we're constantly learning from how you translate,
from how you organize yourselves,
from the leadership that emerges from this group.
So excited to see where it goes in the year ahead.
And I would love for each of you who are in this great Skype conversation
to keep in touch with us.
I'm june@ted.com, and also through Kristin.
Where you want to see the Project go, where you want to see TED head from here.
So, thank you all for coming!
(Els De Keyser) Thank you.
(June Cohen) Thank you so much, and to each of you on Skype.
I'm sorry we got cut off by the walk-in music.
Thank you.