infundibulum

After reading and translating a bunch of blog posts to prepare for writing “The Race to Wire Brazil” at Global Voices Online (not to mention hanging out with a two wacky Paulistas in London, I’ve found myself getting interested in Portuguese again.

(Don’t worry Nic, I’m still working on the Welsh. ☺ )

I keep my Portuguese-related links here.

One thing I’m interested in is listening more, and I’ve not been able to find massive amounts of stuff with just spoken Portuguese online.

Tem alguem lá em cyberlândia que conheça mais alguma coisa interessante para escutar?

So far I’ve found:

• Odeo: É batata! — sadly, seems defunct?
• Portal da Cidadania — LULA SPEAKS. Heh, wow. Just politico-talk, mostly, but I have to admit that I find this really interesting. I had no idea he had such a strong accent! É ver-dah-dee!
• Podcast Código Livre — a podcast about Linux. Pretty funny and interesting. (I should write more about Linux in Brazil here…)

So yeah, hook me up with suggestions. You can email me if you want: pat.hall at gmail.com. (I should really fix the registration crap on this blog… Chris seems to have found the magic combination of plugins for stopping spam in the work she did building the Blogamundo deeveloper blog.)

Oddly enough, for some reason I stuck a search for Education Equality Act after blogging my response to someone’s post that mentioned it. That was last June.

Well, those two lonely hits finally have a third: The Wonkster: Translation Bill Vetoed.

This move really makes me wonder if people who claim to support “English only” in the states actually intend to promote English. Because no politician would argue that parents shouldn’t be involved in their childrens’ education. It’s a known fact that children tend to learn languages faster than adults.

So, it stands to reason that even if you are completely against use of any language but English at all in the classroom, those children will still need the involvement of their parents. And those parents do not know English.

Thus my suspicion, that what he’s really promoting is preventing education.

And why is it that public volunteers can’t help do translation of things like report cards over the web? If a second-generation Vietnamese American in Fresno saw a website where he could translate a report card (with the students’ privacy protected) for the children of first-generation immigrants in Boston, why shouldn’t they be able to? Why does the government have to spend money on this at all?

Yes, quality control is an issue, but it could happen. As opposed to what’s being legislated now: leave the kids and the parents out in the cold.

Nice.

MIT OpenCourseWare | Sloan School of Management | 15.075 Applied Statistics, Spring 2003 | Home

Google admits that they failed to promote for-sale shows on their video site clearly enough, but they don’t say anything about getting in bed with Chinese government censorship.

Lame.

“Send them home.”

Peru’s Battle for Its History

An article about the revival of Virginia Algonquian for an upcoming film with a significant amount of (subtitled) dialog in the language:

UNC Charlotte linguist restores lost language, culture for ‘The New World’

The revitalization of Virginia Algonquian is likely to have further value beyond the celebrity of being shown to the world in a major motion picture. The production company is turning over the scripts and language CD’s to the descendants of the Powhatan Confederacy, five state-recognized tribes in Virginia. Rudes expects to be working with the tribes on language reclamation programs and is working on a dictionary of Virginia Algonquian with Helen Rountree, an authority on the history of the Powhatan people.

There’s a rather dubious introduction to historical linguistics in there… but even so, it’s cool to see topics like this in the news. Especially since it’s in my neck of the woods!

From a pointer at Transblawg I came across this rather astonishing article:

Daytona Beach News-Journal Online

DAYTONA BEACH — Unable to speak English, Juan Ramon Alfonzo stood before a judge and expected to receive probation for stealing a toolbox. To his surprise, the judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation, for stealing a dump truck valued at $125,000. Now, court officials agree Alfonzo entered the wrong plea because his court-hired interpreter, Marianne Verruno, provided an incomprehensible translation. Two weeks ago, a circuit judge tossed out his plea and sentencing to allow Alfonzo to start the court process over. “Ms. Verruno is far from being fluent in Spanish,” an expert interpreter wrote in a report to the judge. “She may be conversant enough for social situations but her Spanish is not minimally adequate to interpret in a court of law.”

Words fail me.

But words jailed him. Almost.

Good grief.

Editor’s Choice News Article | Reuters.co.uk

That prompted a reporter to ask, on behalf of those whose Latin was rusty, what he meant precisely. Trichet’s response was: “Ex ante means ‘ex ante’ in English and in Latin. In French, I would say ‘a priori’ and not ‘ex ante’, but only in French. In English it would be — it seems to me — ‘ex ante’.”

People really need to learn to relax.

Smart Mobs: FSBO [For Sale By Owner]

A pointer to a good article in the NYT today about a couple of cousins in Wisconsin who have started up a realtor-free real estate website that seems to have struck a nerve.

It’s interesting to see how many sites with rather obvious ideas (”cut the middle man out of industry X”) are only now starting to become successful — it’s not just the concept, it’s the implementation, and, equally important, the people involved, that matters.

And it’s also interesting to see how little the actual design of the website has helped this particular venture:

That is what David B. Zwiefelhofer, Webmaster for FsboMadison, would
like to see, and he constantly encourages Ms. Miller and Ms. Murphy to
expand. “I think this is the one place in the country where FSBO could
overtake” the multiple listing service, he said.

His clients, not surprisingly for a social worker and a nurse, are
embarrassed by their success, Mr. Zwiefelhofer said. “It bugs me to no
end,” he said. “ The Web site still looks like it was designed by some
high school student five years ago. “

I think this is pretty awesome — they went to the library and got some books on how to start a website. (Actually, I don’t think it looks all that bad.) And now between the two of them they’re pulling down 300K a year and are perfectly happy.

Talk about getting real…

A funny article from Hetq Online: Welcome to Armenia, Americano.

It tells the tale of an American Peace Corps volunteer’s first day in Armenia.

Also, what to call the electric thing you stick in a bucket of water to heat it up. (A kipyatilnik, of course.)

Good to know!