Open Echoes - Development as Freedom

Review of Various Projects against Open Echoes Criteria

2005-12-04T12:45:00.000Z

Open Echoes has a methodology for selecting languages to support to ensure resources are target at those with the most and poorest first language speakers. This post is a quick review of progress of a small selection of Open Source and other projects against Open Echoes target languages.

Project	Debian [1] [1a]	SourceForge [2] [2a]	Mandrake [3] [3a]	KDE [4] [4a] [4b]	Google in Your Language [5]

Bengali	4%	0%	77%	21%	100%
Chinese, Mandarin	39%	13%	98%	82%	99%
Hindi	8%	1%	89%	61%	100%
Panjabi, Western	10%	0%	5%	38%	100%
Urdu	0%	0%	1%		100%
Amharic	2%		22%		100%
Telugu	1%	0%			100%
Marathi	2%	0%			100%
Tamil	9%	1%	48%	82%	100%
Hausa					51%
Somali	0%				96%
Burmese	0%				12%
Yoruba	0%				100%
Sindhi					73%
Gujurati	6%			0%	100%
Ibo
Oromo, Western Central					29%
Arabic, Sudanese Spoken
Javanese		0%			92%
Nepali	4%				93%

This demonstrates a lack of support for Open Echoes target languages, especially those with less than 100 million speakers, and confirms the basic premise of behind the project.

Notes:
[1] Debian 2005-11-19, Comparison with French Translation
[1a] Standard Arabic is 6%
[2] SourceForge Projects at 2005-05-12, Percentage comparison with French translation projects
[2a] Standard Arabic is 2%
[3] Mandrake Linuxtools 10.2 2005-02-12
[3a] Standard Arabic is 98%
[4] KDE GUI stats 2005-11-16
[4a] Standard Arabic is 44%
[4b] Indonesian is 9%
[5] Google in your Language 2005-12-04
[5a] Standard Arabic is 100%

Initial Consultation Feedback - 4 - One World Foundation Africa

2005-11-27T13:24:00.000Z

One World Foundation Africa (http://www.oneworldfoundation.co.uk) is a UK registered charity working in London and in Africa to empower and promote the independence of the socially excluded. It aims to promote their independence through training, advancement of education, community support, advocacy, advice and research into their conditions to inform its intervention.

Feedback about Open Echoes confirmed that ICT is vital for NGOs working in the field and has changed their way of working. Being able to work in local languages would be useful.

There is also a high degree of volunteerism in Africa but members of the diaspora are more likely to seek to volunteer within their own industry than to offer help with a general initiative such as translation. Volunteers would also need assistance with technical terminology through provision of technical dictionaries and other resources.

Prioritising Languages for Development

2005-11-07T21:45:00.000Z

Open Echoes works with the languages of the poorest people of the world. What methodology should be used to determing which languages are a priority when considering the objective of promoting development?

Firstly a measure of lack of development is needed. The measure used in this article is the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) from its 2002 assessment. This rates countries on a scale between zero, very underdeveloped, to one, very developed. The measure is based on multiple factors such as child education, morality and access to clean water. Like most economic statistics its assessment is based on country boundaries and assumptions about the role of the state in development. Language is no respector of boarders and so any language selection will be distorted by the use of the country based HDI. An HDI measure is not available for all countries, for example Afganistan, Somalia and Iraq, and in these cases a neighbouring country's HDI is used as an estimate, most likely too high an estimate.

Secondly we need some measure of the number of users of a language so that effort can be focused on providing support to the highest number of people. The measure used in this article is the number of first language speakers totalled across all countries. Figures are taken from the 15th Edition of Ethnologue [1]. We also only consider languages with over one million native speakers of which around 350 are catalogued. Speakers of course may not be literate but the assumption is made that speakers will become literate and that Open Echoes' work will play a small part in that process. Support for first language speakers is also a political issue as it may well conflict with state language policy in certain countries. Ignoring second language speakers will also cause many important trade languages, such as Swahili, to be excluded but again Open Echoes is an initiative to support more languages rather than less so this bias is a lessor issue.

Next we need a way of combining these two measures to produce a ranking from large poor speaking populations to small rich ones.

From experimentation with ranking countries by HDI and population, a low HDI needs to be given a much higher priority or weighting than a large population to get a sensible ranking. Without this countries with large and relatively or highly developed populations such Mexico and the USA appear too high in the ranking. Using (1-HDI) to the power of three (i.e. cubed) produces a sensibly weighted ranking, for example Burkino Faso with an HDI of 0.3 produces 0.7 x 0.7 x 0.7 = 0.343.

HDI is a country measure whereas the number of first language speakers of a language is not. Therefore a method of determining the HDI of a language is needed. Here the HDI of the 'main country' of the language is used, with 'main country' as defined by Ethnologue. So for the Spanish language the HDI of Spain is used rather than say the HDI of Spanish speaking Chile. This may seem odd as it tends to associate each language with its highest HDI or most developed speaking country but it results in the desired effect of ranking higher the most isolated languages and underdeveloped countries. For example if Spanish as a language is associated with the high HDI of Spain then it would be expected that Spanish would be a well supported language to the shared benefit of Spanish speaking Chile with its lower HDI. This applies even though the Spanish used in Chile differs from Spain.

So what are the results of the ranking exercise? Lets take two examples to illustrate the methodology - Bengali and Somali.

Bengali has 171.1 million speakers in all countries with 100 million in its main country Bangladesh. Bangladesh had an HDI of 0.51 in 2002 making it a medium rather than low ranking country in development terms (just 0.01 above the low category). So the Bengali language is rated as (1 - 0.51) cubed times 171.1 population = 20.53.

Somali has 12.7 million speakers and Somalia has a much lower HDI than Bangladesh of 0.36 (using Ethiopia's HDI as an estimate) making it a low ranking country. So the Somali language is rated at (1 - 0.36) cubed times 12.7 = 3.3.

So the Bengali language ranks above Somali even though Somalia is less developed than Bangladesh because of the much higher number of Bengali first language speakers.

So which are the highest ranking languages? Here are three top tens: the first top ten is drawn from all languages, the second ten is drawn from all languages with main countries in the least developed half of HDI rankings, the third ten is drawn from main countries with an HDI regarded as low.

All:
Rank, Language, Main Country, Popul., Rating
1) Bengali, Bangladesh, 171.1, 20.5
2) Mandarin, China, 873, 17.5
3) Hindi, India, 180.7, 10.8
4) Panjabi, Pakistan, 60.8, 7.9
5) Urdu, Pakistan, 60.5, 7.9
6) Amharic, Ethiopia, 17.4, 4.5
7) Telugu, India, 69.7, 4.2
8) Marathi, India, 68, 4.1
9) Tamil, India, 66, 4.0
10) Hausa, Nigeria, 26.2, 3.9

Lowest 50% HDI Only:
Rank, Language, Main Country, Speakers, Rating
1) Bengali, Bangladesh, 171.1, 20.5
2) Hindi, India, 180.7, 10.8
3) Panjabi, Pakistan, 60.8, 7.9
4) Urdu, Pakistan, 60.5, 7.9
5) Amharic, Ethiopia, 17.4, 4.5
6) Telugu, India, 69.7, 4.2
7) Marathi, India, 68, 4.1
8) Tamil, India, 66, 4.0
9) Hausa, Nigeria, 26.2, 3.9
10) Somali, Somalia, 12.7, 3.3

Low Category HDI Only:
Rank, Language, Main Country, Speakers, Rating
1) Panjabi, Pakistan, 60.8, 7.9
2) Urdu, Pakistan, 60.5, 7.9
3) Amharic, Ethiopia, 17.4, 4.5
4) Hausa, Nigeria, 26.2, 3.9
5) Somali, Somalia, 12.7, 3.3
6) Yoruba, Nigeria, 19.3, 2.9
7) Sindhi, Pakistan, 21.4, 2.8
8) Ibo, Nigeria, 18, 2.7
9) Oromo, Ethiopia, 8.9, 2.3
10) Nyanja, Malawi, 9.3, 2.1

Of course when it comes to providing support we should expect that Bengali, Marthi, Mandarin and others already receive significant support and so lessor used langauges such as Somali will benefit instead.

The next exercise is to identify the support to be provided and identify those languages with the least current support.

References:

[1] Gordon, Raymond. Ed. (2005).Ethnologue, Languages of the World (15th Edition). Dallas: SIL International

Object - Preservation and Revitalisation of Endangered Languages

2005-10-09T15:13:00.000+01:00

One of Open Echoes' "Objects" is "assisting in the preservation and revitalisation of endangered Languages using ... [Open Source] Software" as part of a programme to give the world's poorest people freedom as the means to develop, a programme inspired by Amartya Sen.

In researching how to assess the feasibility of this preservation objective and to provide an outline approach for working towards it I have referred to David Crystal's book Language Death [1], particularly Chapter Five, 'What can be done [about language death]?'. It is taken as given that language death is a problem we should care about and a problem which contributes to lack of development in some communities in the poorest countries.

Language death is also an issue in highly developed countries such as the USA, Australia and members of the European Union not just in less developed ones. As Open Echoes works with the languages of the poorest peoples of the world many endangered languages will be beyond its remit. In these cases considerable common cause exists and much experience can be shared. It needs noting that many of the causes of language death and problems relating to revitalisation (practical, political and economic) are more extreme in the poorest countries.

Crystal provides six primary factors for revitalising a language. He states that an endangered language will progess if its speakers:

1) increase their prestige within the dominant community;
2) increase their wealth relative to the dominant community;
3) increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community;
4) have a strong presence in the educational system;
5) can write their language down;
6) can make use of electronic technology.

It is striking how these factors reflect Amartya Sen's basic premise that people need freedom to develop, the basic freedom to communicate and participate in civic society. It is also striking how making use of electronic techonology can support the other factors by providing a sense of cultural vitality and modernity. Crystal also quotes two other authors' lists which support the Open Echoes premis that technology is important in language vitality and promoting development.

Yamamoto's nine factors "that help maintain and promote the small languages" [2]:

1) the existence of a dominant culture in favour of linguistic diversity;
2) a strong sense of ethnic identity within the endangered community;
3) the promotion of educational programmes about the endangered language and culture;
4) the creation of bilingual/bicultural school programmes;
5) the training of native speakers as teachers;
6) the involvement of the speach community as a whole;
7) the creation of language materials that are easy to use;
8) the development of written literature, both traditional and new;
9) the creation and strengthening of the environments in which the language must be used.

Landweer's eight "indicators of ethnolinguistic vitality" for an endangered language [3] :

1) the extent to which it can resist influence by a dominant urban culture;
2) the number of domains in which it is used;
3) the frequency and type of code switching;
4) the existence of a critical mass of fluent speakers;
5) the distribution of speakers across social networks;
6) the internal and external recognition of the group as a unique community;
7) its relative prestige, compared to surrounding languages;
8) its access to a stable economic base.

Crystal also provides a list of steps a language revitalisation team should take. Many of the early steps such as engaging community members, conducting language surveys etc upto steps such as a process of standardisation of speech and writing and divising a publicly usable alphabet need to occur before any steps can be taken to provide localised software. It is interesting to consider how localisation of software into dialects and the creation of technical terminology could play a part in language standardisation.

Once a language has been broadly standardised technology can begin to be involved in the following of Crystal's revitalisation steps in the project:

1) reinforcing the use of the language in homes and other domestic settings;
2) expanding the use of the written and language in the public domain;
3) giving the language a presence in schools with the aim of making it a medium of instruction;
4) curriculum materials are written and published for child and adult use;
5) texts in the language, of general public interest (such as stories, poems, newpaper articles), are written and published;
6) principles are established to get the language recognised as an official regional language.

In conclusion their appears to be a consensus in this small sample of linguistic literature that language preservation and revitalisation, economic development and technology are interrelated. Crystal's revitalisation project steps also provide a clear framework for selecting the most appropriate software for localisation and a series of pre-requisite linguistic steps as a guide to selecting languages for localisation.

It is clear that languages with many speakers can also be in danger of losing domains of usage which in turn threatens their long term survival, the new technology domain being an important one. A limited number of languages may therefore meet the combined objectives of language preservation and of promoting development for a significant population size. However identifying such languages will be difficult as they are unlikely to appear on lists of endangered languages. Identifying those languages subject to hostile official policies such as assimilation could provide an alternative approach to identification, albeit a politically charged one.

The following is a list of relevant organizations taken directly from the appendix of Crystal's book.

Ad Hoc Committee on Endangered Languages
c/o Université de Québec à Montréal
CP 8888,
succ. Centre-ville
Montréal
Québec
H3C 3P8
Canada
email M366050 at er.uqam.ca

Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CLEP)
c/o Linguistic Society of America
1325 18th Street
NW
Washington DC
20036-6501
email lsa at lsadc.org

The Endangered Language Fund, Inc
c/o Doug Whalen
Department of Linguistics
Yale University
New Haven
CT 06520
email whalen at haskins.yale.edu
http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/~elf/study.html

Endangered-Languages-L Electronic Forum
c/o Mari Rhydwen
Graduate School of Education
University of Western Austrailia
Nedlands
Perth
WA 6009
Australia
email majordomo at coombs.anu.edu.au
email mrhydwen@decel.ecel.uwa.edu.au

Ethnologue
c/o Barbara Grimes
Summer Institute of Linguistics Inc
International Linguistics Centre
7500 West Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas
TX 75236
USA
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue

European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages
c/o Information Centre
rue Saint-Josse 49B
Sint-Jooststraat 49B
1030 Brussels
fax +32 2 218 1974

The Foundation for Endangered Languages
c/o Nicholas Ostler
Batheaston Villa
172 Bailbrook Lane
Bath
BA1 7AA
email nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk
http://www.ogmios.org
was http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/CTLL/FEL

Gesellschaft für bedrohte Sprachen (Society for Endangered Languages)
c/o Hans-Jürgen Sasse
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität zu Köln
Germany
email GBS at uni-koeln.de
http://www.uni-koeln.de/gbs/e_index.html

Institute for the Preservation of the Original Languages of the Americas
c/o Executive Director
713 1/2A Canyon Road
Santa Fe
New Mexico
87501
USA
email ipola at roadrunner.com

International Clearing House for Endangered Languages (ICHEL)
c/o Kazuto Matsumura
Department of Asian and Pacific Linguistics
Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1
Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113
Japan
email kmatsum at tooyoo.L.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://www.tooyoo.L.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Language Documentation Urgency List
c/o Dietmar Zaefferer
Institut für Deutsche Philologie
Universität München
Schellingstr. 3
D-80799
München
Germany
email: ue303bh at sunmail.lrz-muechen.de

List Endangered-Languages-L
http://www.carmen.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/ell-websites.html

Logosphere
c/o David Dalby
Observatoire Linguistique
Hebron
Dyfed
SA34 0XT
UK
email logosphere at aol.com

Network on Endangered Languages
c/o T. Matthew Ciolek
Computer Centre
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Canberra
Australia
email coombspapers at coombs.anu.edu.au

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
c/o Victor Golla
Department of Native American Studies
Humboldt State University
Arcata
CA 95521
USA

Terralingua: Partnership for Linguistic and Biological Diversity
c/o David Harmon
PO Box 122
Hancock
Michigan
49930-0122
USA
http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/terralin/home.html

UNESCO (Study of Endangered Languages)
c/o Jean Biengen
Secretary-General
CIPSH (International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies)
1 rue Miollis
75732
Paris
France
fax +33 1 406 559 480

UNESCO (World Languages Report)
c/o Paul Ortega
UNESCO Centre Basque Country
Alameda de Urquijo
60 ppal. Dcha
E-48011
Bilbao
Spain
email unescopv at eurosur.org
http://www.unescoeh.org

Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights
c/o Follow-up Committee
Rocafort 242 bis 2n
08029
Barcelona
Spain
email dudl at linguistic-declaration.org
http://www.linguistic-declaration.org

The following organisations are mentioned in the text but not included in the Appendix:

Colombian Centre for Study of Indigenous Languages, Bogotá
Museu Paraense Emîlio Goeldi at Belém, Brazil
Academy of Mayan Languages in Guatemala
Hokkaido Ainu Cultural Centre in Sappora
Centre for Endangered Languages at Jos, Nigeria

References

[1] Crystal, David. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
[2] Yamamoto, Akira Y. 1998. Retrospect and prospect on new emerging language communities. In Ostler [4] (ed.), 114.
[3] Landweer, M. Lynn. 1998. Indicators of ethnolinguistic vitality: case study of two languages - Labu and Vanimo. In Ostler [4] (ed.), 64-72.
[4] Ostler, Nicholas. ed. 1998. Endangered languages: what role for the specialist? (Proceedings of the Second FEL Conference, University of Edinburgh, 25-7 Sep 1998.) Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages.

Initial Consultation Feedback - 3 - Individuals

2005-09-12T21:56:00.000+01:00

Initial feedback regarding Open Echoes' strategy has also been sort from a small sample of two individuals who are foreign nationals living in London - one a national of Myanmar (Burma) regarding Burmese, the other a national of Morocco regarding Tamazight (Berber).

The feedback regarding written Tamazight was that the written form is not standardised enough to be translated outside academic institutions and another two or three years would be needed before wider participation in translation would be possible. For more information on Tamazight see http://www.geocities.com/lameens/tifinagh/

The feedback regarding Burmese concerned the difficulty in typing Burmese characters and that most uses of computers in Myanmar are reasonable English speakers. The political situation in Myanmar also makes any form of trade difficult.

Initial Consultation Feedback - 2 - Computer Aid International

2005-09-06T20:11:00.000+01:00

Computer Aid International (http://www.computeraid.org) is the world's largest non-profit supplier of refurbished computers to schools and community organisations in the developing world and is based in North London.

Computer Aid shipped almost 12,000 PCs to partner organisations during 2003/4 financial year. Income totalled £790,000 - 75% from handling fees, 13% from grants. Major expenditure items were 30% salaries, 20% shipping.

Feedback regarding Open Echoes objectives and strategy included a recommendation to retain at least a professional project or programme management capability. Strong partnerships were also seen as essential - Computer Aid itself has strong links with the British Council, British High Commission and the UK Department for International Development. Operations based in local countries were also highlighted as key to developing donor income.

The vital issue of demand was stressed - content of whatever form must be requested or pulled rather than simply published or pushed with no demand. The politics of Open Source and commercial software in developing markets were also highlighted as complex and related Open Source projects and organisations were identified.

First Consultation Feedback

2005-08-28T14:47:00.000+01:00

So far two organisations have provided feedback;

- Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund - http://www.emergingafricafund.com/
- CAWD - http://www.cawd.info

The Emerging Africa Fund intends to make a real and lasting impact on the development of sub-Saharan Africa’s infrastructure to facilitate economic growth and so, both directly and indirectly over time, contribute to the alleviation of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

It aims to do this by focusing on the development of infrastructure and the involvement of the private sector. The fund's core product is 10-30 million US dollar denominated senior-ranking term debt with lending tenors up to a maximum of 15 years, some flexibility in loan repayment profiles and commercial (not soft) terms to finance greenfield projects with 80% equity or less equity for less risky projects.

The Charity for African Welfare and Development hosts Cawd, a network which combines networking on the Internet with community networking in rural Africa.
- Linking poor rural communities with resource-communities
- Enabling collaborations for practical problem solving
- Studying and tackling key issues regarding community development in rural Africa.

These two organisations represent the two extremes of development approaches, from large scale projects on commercial terms at one end of the scale to small scale locally based initiatives at the other.

The consultation and feedback from EAF focused on the definition of 'infrastructure' in the modern age and concluded that the current scope of the Open Echoes project does not include 'hardware' and so does not fall within the EAF's remit.

There is certainly scope for extending the project to include development funding for translation of software and then leasing of hardware and software bundles. One possible approach would be to solicit commitments from multi-nationals and governments for the supply of translated software and then finance the projects once these are in place.

The consultation and feedback from CAWD focused on the practicalities of rural African life. For example refurbished PCs do not last in the hot and dusty rural environment with intermittant power - CAWD itself has a project to provide a rugged, solar powered PC. In such poor communities expensive assets such as a PC are also expected to last 10-15 years if they are to be affordable, much like a car. This does not fit well with the current commercial operating system market which makes hardware obselete in around three to five years.

Insights into social issues were also relevant. CAWD provides training for teachers in computer awareness to prepare them for their first encounter, which may be years away. As in the world of letter writing those who are illiterate or can't access an internet cafe for cultural reasons use others to compose and review their messages before they are sent.

Nigerian graduates spend a year working in rural areas after graduation and sorely miss the internet access from their student days. They provide a source of demand for connection with the outside world and also education for local people about computers.

The historical relationship between Open Source Software and old, long-lived and esoteric equipment makes it very relevant to such poor rural environments.

Consultation on Strategy

2005-07-31T16:18:00.000+01:00

We are now looking for feedback on the proposed strategy through a consultation exercise:

Two phases-

Phase one: informal consultation undertaken face to face by a single volunteer with a limited audience to refine consultation process. Finishing by late August 2005.

Phase two: telephone, email and postal consultation undertaken again by a single volunteer but to a wider audience. Finish by end September 2005.

Proposed topics for consultation:

- Building local translation industries
- Volunteer groups to provide translation capability
- Attitudes to ICT in development
- Attitudes to ICT and local languages
- Building Diaspora links - community and refugee organisations etc
- Willingness to help
- Newham, East London as location

Phase one candidates for consultation:

Umbrella non-for profit:
NVSC - http://www.nvsc.org.uk/

Diaspora organisation:
One World Foundation Africa - http://www.oneworldfoundation.co.uk/

Members of a diaspora:
speakers of Myanmar, Berber

UK government:
DFID Development Awareness Fund - http://www.dfid.gov.uk/funding/daf.asp
CILT The National Centre for Languages - http://www.cilt.org.uk

Translation organisations:
Newham Language Shop - http://www.languageshop.org.uk/languageshop.htm
Transperfect.com - http://www.transperfect.com
Asian Absolute - http://www.asianabsolute.co.uk/contact.html

Overseas government:
TBC

Related charity:
Computer Aid - http://www.computer-aid.org

Public/Private:
Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund - http://www.emergingafricafund.com/

Draft Statement of Strategy

2005-07-10T14:51:00.000+01:00

The following post is a draft statement of our strategy which will be open for consultation shortly.

-----

Open Echoes helps set the world's poorest people free with Open Source Software in local languages.

People need freedom to develop. Open Echoes provides the tools of freedom; software tools to communicate, to print, to publish, to spread knowledge, to promote new ideas and to engage in debate and civic society in the modern age. This technology is important for cultural vitality, self esteem and economic development. Once given this freedom endures.

Open Source Software is accessible for translation and once translated it does not wear out. Translation is a linguistic task, not a technical task, and it can be undertaken by members of the community as part of a supported team to build a permanent capability.

Currently this software is not widely available in local languages nor do poor countries have the capability to translate it. We address this systematic bias.

We do this by:

- translating Open Source Software into local languages;
- developing self-sufficient local software translation industries;
- supporting other local projects which use Open Source Software.

Our aim is to turn the adhoc volunteer effort to translate Open Source Software into a professional international development programme of projects which leaves behind as its legacy a self-sustaining software localisation industry for each poor country.

To make this happen we focus on:

- Education;
- Developing capacity and skills;
- Supporting enterprise and trade;
- Providing facilities; and
- Revitalisation of minority languages.

Our strategy is to:

- engage the diaspora of each language to initiate translations and build trade links;
- align our work with national programmes with a country-by-country focus;
- turn volunteers in poor countries into commercial translators;
- use suppliers from poor countries where ever possible;
- own and distribute the world's most multilingual translations of software;
- translate key packages first, then progress to distributing an entire operating system; and
- base projects on the freely available Debian GNU/Linux operating system distribution.

Our income is derived from:

- individual and corporate membership;
- donations, grants and sponsorship; and
- sales of related products and services and mechandise.

Our expenditure pays for:

- grants to individuals and organisations;
- purchase of products and services;
- donations to other projects; and
- administration of project offices.

We are structured as a not-for-profit Company Limited by Guarantee and incorporated in England (no. 05490399). We operate from the London borough of Newham, the most diverse borough of one of the most diverse city in the world.

We intend to incorporate another entity in the US which is tax-exempt under IRC Section 501(c)(3) to receive US donations and to exploit the diversity of major US cities.

We intend to operate project offices in diverse, regional cities in poor regions of the world which will manage the work of volunteer groups and commercial suppliers in local poor countries.

OpenI18N Spec - Comments on Annex B Supported Locales and Codesets - An Open Letter

2005-07-05T21:29:00.000+01:00

From:
Jon Vyse, founder, Open Echoes

5th July 2005

To:
The Steering Committee
Open Internationalization Initiative

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to comment on 'Annex B Supported locales and codesets' of your specification 'OpenI18N Globalization Specification 2.0' which identifies the locales (i.e. languages and countries) to be supported by an operating system to achieve conformance to the Linux Standard Base (LSB).

I am writing in my capacity as founder of Open Echoes, an organisation which aims to set the world's poorest people free by translating Open Source Software into their local languages.

I would like to make the following major comments regarding the locales mandated in the Annex:

1) That the set of locales selected for inclusion be chosen using a systematic and transparent approach and not be based on the locales currently availability;

2) That, for languages used in more than one country, particular care is taken to ensure the major country's locale is included as a minimum;

3) That coverage is extended to ensure all major scripts and language families are represented;

4) That locale names are based on ISO 3166 country and 636 language names to ensure your organisation remains politically neutral by deferring name choices to the ISO maintenance agencies and ultimately the United Nations;

5) That to promote further and extensive internationalisation of Open Source Software you identify additional levels of conformance over and above the current two levels, for example Level 3 for supporting every language with over 50m native speakers, Level 4 for all languages with over 10m etc.

In particularly I noted the minimal number of African languages and locales supported in the Annex with Afrikaans supported whilst major languages such as Nigeria's Hausa or Zimbabwe's Shona are not.

In terms of choice of locales for major languages I noted that Urdu in the India locale is supported where as Urdu in the Pakistani locale is not. This is despite Pakistan being the world's major Urdu speaking country. Similarly Bengli in the Bangladeshi locale is not supported whereas Bengali in the India locale is.

In terms of lessor languages the Manx Gaelic locale is included (even though Manx is an extinct language) but Guarani, spoken by over four million people in Paraguay, is not.

The following list, which should not be considered definitive, identifies (by ISO 636-3 code) the language in each major scipt with the most native speakers:

Area: Script [lang]
Europe: Latin [spa], Greek [ell]
Former USSR: Cyrillic [rus], Georgian [kat], Armenian [hye]
West Asia: Hebrew [heb], Arabic [arb], Urdu [urd], Maldivian [div]
India: Devanagari [hin], Gurmukhi [pmu], Gujurati [guy], Oriya [ori], Bengali [ben], Tamil [tam], Telugu [tel], Kannada [kan], Malayalam [mal], Sinhalese [sin]
South Asia: Burmese [mya], Khmer [khm], Thai [tts], Lao [lao], Javanese [jav]
East Asia: Chinese [cmn], Yi [iii], Tibetan [bod], Mongolian [khk], Korean [kor], Japanese [jpn]Africa: Amharic [amh]

Of the four major language families only the most widely spoken Niger-Congo language, Hausa, needs adding to the above list to ensure representative coverage of both scripts and language families:

Language (Family, Script)
Mandarin Chinese (Sino-Tibetan, Chinese script)
Spanish (Indo-European, Latin script)
Javanese (Austronesian, Javanese script)
Hausa (Niger-Congo, Latin script)

From your specification I am not able identify your reasoning for choosing some particular locales over others but I would like to suggest that this Annex needs further and careful consideration to ensure it meet its objectives of promoting systematic and wide spread support for internationalisation without provoking controversy over support for particular languages, countries and cultures.

Yours faithfully,
Jon Vyse
BSc MEng MBA CEng MBCS MInstD FRSA
Founder, Open Echoes

http://www.openechoes.org
A not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee and registered in England no. 05490399

Live 8 and African Diaspora and Development Day (ad3)

2005-07-03T16:41:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was Live 8 day. I spent the day in North London at the African Diaspora and Development Day (ad3), a great event organised by AFFORD www.afford-uk.org - the African Foundation for Development.

The keynote speaker was Professor Wangari Maathai (www.wangarimaathai.or.ke), the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate from Kenya honoured for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace through the grassroots organisation The Green Belt Movement.

I attended to see if the Open Echoes project was of interest to the African-UK diaspora. Any diaspora has great language skills, resources and interest in preserving their language and culture and so could make a massive contribution to translating software into their local languages. Open Echoes is also a great example of a grassroots project - organising community translateathons. The theme for the day was supporting enterprise and job creation - another key aim of Open Echoes - providing translation and software related employment in poor countries.

The mood of the day was very much one of self-reliance. Their was certainly an feeling of irritation at Sir Bob Geldof and Live 8 but since Sir Bob's aim is to goad everyone into doing something, anything, I think he would be happy to have got under the delegate's skin and spurred them on.

Everyone was proud of the fact that remittances sent home from the UK amount to over 75% of UK Overseas Development Assistance; real self-reliance topping 2 billion pounds (over 3 billion US dollars or Euros, 400 billion Yen). See the UK Department for International Development Send Money Home (www.sendmoneyhome.org) website for more information.

After my discussions with delegates and exhibitors and participation in a workshop I feel very confident that members of any diaspora would be keen to help. This makes the decision to base Open Echoes in London's most diverse borough, Newham in East London, very sensible.

In the evening on TV I watched Birhan Woldu, the 'Face of the 1984 Ethopian Famine' or 'Miracle Girl', address the crowd in what must have been for many people the most moving moment of the Live 8 event. Fifteen minutes from death by starvation as a three year old to a proud graduate today. Sir Bob saw her as a symbol of how aid works but Birhan was supported by personal donations made by Canadian reporter Brian Stewart through a UK charity the African Children's Educational Trust not through a large aid project. If anything Birhan's survival shows individual efforts count for more than large projects. Make a donation to A-CET by visiting http://www.a-cet.org.uk/star_student and see CBC News for more background information on those 1984 famine reports.

All hunger is political - making the world realise that is a noble aim. See for example Red Tears: War, Famine, and Revolution in Ethiopia by Giogios Dawit and Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation by Amartya Sen.

How is a project like Open Echoes relevant? Well people need freedom to develop and freedom is about communication and debate. Tools like email, the web, chat, blogs, editors, word processors and typesetting are examples of software supporting free communication.

One of the greatest benefits of a gift of software is that its a tool that never wears out - a gift in perpetuity. If the translation is created by the community it serves it really is self-help that last forever.

Since Birhan Woldu is from Mek'ele, the capital of Tigray in Ethiopia, her message to the world was most likely in the language Tigrigna.

If I refer back to my posting some time ago on software translation projects I find Latin has 18 projects underway and Tigrigna has precisely none.

Open Echoes aims to correct this systematic bias against all of the world's poorest people, most of whom reside in Asia not Africa, by giving them the powerful tools to communicate and develop.

Open Echoes Incorporated - 05490399

2005-06-29T08:56:00.000+01:00

Open Echoes Limited is now incorporated in England as a private company limited by guarantee and having no share capital, registered number 05490399.

This can be confirmed by searching the register of companies at
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/WebCHeck/fastrack/

Final Charitable Objects

2005-06-15T20:59:00.000+01:00

3 The Charity's objects (the Objects) are to promote general charitable purposes relating to

- the languages of the poorest peoples of the world (the Languages);

- speakers of the Languages (the Speakers); and

- Open Source Software (software distributed under an Open Source Inititive approved license herein know as the Software) in the Languages;

to be furthered by all or any of the following means:

3(1) advancing the education of the public in the subjects of

a) the Languages;

b) translation studies relating to the Languages;

c) provision of the Software in the Languages;

3(2) assisting in the preservation and revitalisation of endangered Languages using the Software;

3(3) developing the capacity and skills of the Speakers in providing and using the Software and related services in the Languages in such a way that they are better able to identify, and help meet, their needs and to participate more fully in society;

3(4) relieving unemployment for the benefit of the public by supporting employment and enterprises using the Software in the Languages;

3(5) relieving financial hardship among the Speakers by providing such persons with access to the Software and related services in the Languages which they could not otherwise afford through lack of means.

Draft Charitable Objects Legalese

2005-05-29T21:22:00.000+01:00

Open Echoes will be registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee in England prior to registration as a Charity. As such it will need a Memorandum of Association documenting what the Charity will do and Articles of Association documenting the internal rules governing how it will do it.

The most important clause of the Memorandum is the clause documenting the Charity's reasons for existing, known as the Objects.

Here's my latest draft of Open Echoes Objects:

3 The Charity's objects (the Objects) are to further general charitable purposes relating to the languages of the poorest peoples of the world (the Languages), speakers of the Languages (the Speakers), and Open Source Software (the Software) in the Languages by all or any of the following means:

3(1) advancing the education of the public in the subjects of
(i) the Languages;
(ii) translation studies relating to the Languages;
(iii) provision and use of the Software in the Languages;

3(2) assisting in the preservation and revitalisation of endangered Languages using the Software;

3(3) developing the capacity and skills of the Speakers in providing and using the Software and related services in the Languages in such a way that they are better able to identify, and help meet, their needs and to participate more fully in society;

3(4) relieving unemployment for the benefit of the public by supporting employment and enterprises using the Software in the Languages;

3(5) relieving financial hardship among the Speakers by providing such persons with access to the Software and related services in the Languages which they could not otherwise afford through lack of means.

Whilst Open Echoes is primarily intended to relieve poverty the education and preservation objects provide access to additional sources of funding and ensure a good supply of supporting translators.

More information on English charities and their regulation can be found at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk

Wrap Up for a While

2005-05-14T14:06:00.000+01:00

This project has been in my head for some time but was born on 25th January 2005 when I created a folder with the snappy title "0023 - GNU Poorest Country Languages".

After that I spent time investigating whether it seemed like a project which would fly. On 2nd May 2005 I decided to start this Blog to document the research and progress so far and to record progress towards real project take off.

Now I'm going to take a break from Blogging and get down to some basic work - forming the Charity legal entity and getting a bank account open. I will also tweak my Blog links to get the donate button etc in a better position whilst I'm away.

Then I'll be back and Blog our progress in getting from an idea to a running programme to change the world. Whilst I'm gone feel free to send us some money, some thoughts, comments, advice and guidance. Thanks.

Before I go I'll just recap my Blog entries:

In FAQ 1 I looked for inspiration to Amartya Sen - "Development is the process of eradicating the remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression in the world which exists despite our unparalleled prosperity. Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development".

In FAQ 2 I described Open Source Software and what makes it great for this project.

In FAQ 3 I looked at who the billions of the poorest of the poor are and in FAQ 4 I looked at the lessor known languages they speak.

In FAQ 5 I reviewed what the UN thinks needs doing to Eradicate Poverty and in FAQ 6 I looked at how we at Open Echoes fit with that strategy.

In FAQ 7 and FAQ 8 I documented exactly what categories we fit as a Charity to help people give us donations.

In FAQ 9 I highlighted who else apart from me thinks this kind of work is a good thing and in FAQ 11 I pointed to some example projects.

In FAQ 10 and 15 I looked at what, apart from software, is needed and how it might be provided.

In FAQ 12 and FAQ 13 I looked at what the Open Source Software world is doing already and how Open Echoes can help. In FAQ 14 I outlined some of the actual software packages we might work on.

So that's it - help us translate Open Source Software and set the world's poorest people free to develop.

See you again soon.

FAQ 15 - What about Services like Power, Networks and Servers?

2005-05-14T13:04:00.000+01:00

Its true that the world does not run on software and hardware alone - at some point someone has to switch on and start paying for the power, network etc.

Generally as an Open Source project we can use the same resources as any other project, for example SourceForge.net. With this kind of support we will seek to pay our way through donations to such hands that feed us. We should also look to support the projects we translate, such as Lynx, the simple text web browser.

When it comes to the users of our translations we expect them to be paying for its use, even a trivial amount, so that other people in their neighbourhoods can make a living too by providing a service and covering the cost of power and networks.

When it comes to hosting supporting services our philosophy will be to pay providers in the poorest countries, after all the project is to enable development and set people free to help themselves. Providing a real job for someone is what development is about.

Such support will probably be backed up by support from larger scale providers in bigger markets. There should be no shortage of Corporates to help here. We should obviously aim to look for solid technical and operational support from developing countries such as India or Malaysia.

That brings us to other service providers such as Google which are freely available web services funded by advertising revenue. Yes, I realise they are not Open Source so they are a bit off target but we will be asked so let me discuss it a bit here.

Google has a translation project which asks for the participation of volunteers (https://services.google.com/tc/Welcome.html) and it has already partially covered some languages which we will focus on (See https://services.google.com/tcbin/tc.py?cmd=status)

Now when I checked a few moments ago Google had a market capitalisation of over sixty billion dollars (See http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=GOOG). So should we spend a lot of our time and effort getting together groups of the world's poorest people to make Google look good? Think of the value of the publicity for Google. I think "No" is easy to translate into many languages, including English (American).

They should look in the mirror and pay us to do translations for them and feel good about doing so. Any translation done for them would assist in translations of other software as well.

Yes, I know they won't make zillions from selling advertising targetted as such poor people but point six in their philosophy "You can make money without doing evil" is too weak - "do some good for a few cents for the worlds poorest of the poor" would be my suggestion (See http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html).

Take a look at Google's legal agreement (See https://services.google.com/tc/legal.html). For us to help we would need a seperate legal agreement which provides compensation (Clause 3) and where they pay for our indemnity and legal costs (Clauses 2 and 4)

I'm not intending to just pick on Google here - its just they were to hand when I was thinking about the issue.

If anyone from Google or similar service providers want's go get all that great free publicity by supporting our translations they can email us. We love to be paid too!

FAQ 14 - What Exactly will You Translate?

2005-05-14T12:17:00.000+01:00

This question is a bit ahead of the progress of the project - a bit like which languages will you translate. These both need working out and prioritising.

We can however have a stab at a final answer to the question of which software will we translate:

- complete GNU/Linux distributions in the fifty (say) languages of the largest numbers of the poorest of the poor

We can also guess at a mid-point:

- Desktop, e.g. KDE
- Browser/Email, e.g. Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird
- Office suite, e.g. OpenOffice

and we can also have a stab at a starting point:

- Text mode web browser, e.g. Lynx
- Web based email send/receive, e.g. Mailreader
- Web based forum and bulletin boards, e.g. YaBB

See the following links for details of these simple packages.

http://lynx.browser.org/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/mailreader/
http://www.yabbforum.com/

Remember simplicity is power - simplicity works (generally really robustly) on older, slower, cheaper hardware.

From this starting point of a simple browser, backed up by two other simple, killer web based applications like email and forums we can go a long way to enabling many other projects like distributing health care information.

Slightly more complex is a simple desktop publishing suite for use in publishing books and leaflets etc.

I don't want to put too much techical stuff in this blog but I thought an example of what Open Source Software translation actually is at the most basic level would help.

So here it is:

The web browser Lynx at some point says hello with the message "Welcome". The Brazilian Portuguese translation of this is stored with many other strings in text file called pt_BR.po (as in 'Portuguese language, Brazilian variant") as follows:

#: LYMessages.c:30
msgid "Welcome"
msgstr "Bem Vindo"

So that's what the coal face looks like. There are obviously lots of issue around technical tools, training etc, etc and lots of issues around the difficult task of translating itself but at the coal face its really simple - getting a group of bi-lingual people together to translate a bunch of sentences.

FAQ 13 - What Types of Open Source Translation Projects Exist Already?

2005-05-12T21:22:00.000+01:00

Open Echoes exists to turn existing translation projects into a mass movement of translators of the languages of the poorest of the poor, hopefully paid and working in their own country's, to complete these projects more quickly.

What follows is a short description of the types of projects which are already underway. All of these efforts have yielded great results but as they are undertaken by volunteers their progression depends on too many factors and the languages chosen are usually those of industrialised countries, not the poorest of the poor.

There are several sorts of projects out there:

GNU/Linux vendors/distribution level: Redhat, Suse, Debian etc. These are umbrella projects to translate the complete operating system, desktop and office environments. Of course commercial distributors have the same motivations as traditional software vendors to focus on translations which drive sales in industrialised countries.

http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/translations/
http://www.nl.debian.org/international/l10n/

GNU/Linux Language Level: Bengali, Arabic, Farsi, Igbo etc. These are umbrella projects to translate the entire environment into one specific language.

http://www.bengalinux.org/
http://www.arabiclinux.com/
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/arabic/
http://www.linuxiran.org
http://igbo.sourceforge.net/
http://oriya.sarovar.org/

Big package level: Mozilla browser, OpenOffice, KDE Desktop etc. These projects are run by the teams providing the software packages themselves.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/l10n/
http://l10n.openoffice.org/
http://i18n.kde.org/

Language package level: Mozilla into Luganda etc. These are projects translating specific packages into specific languages.

http://www.translate.or.ug/

And thousands of other volunteers working on individual small applications and with various languages.

These existing translation projects are often great examples of communities taking initiatives to empower themselves. Open Echoes looks to build on this spirit of self-help.

Here are some articles of the people involved in the projects and their motivations.

Se habla open source? By David Becker Staff Writer, CNET News.com

http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5159179.html?tag=nefd_lede

"A small team of developers in Rwanda was just beginning work on a project to produce a localized version of OpenOffice, an open-source alternative to Microsoft's market-leading productivity software, when they realized they had a problem."

http://www.translate.org.za/
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org

"Translate.org.za is a non-profit organisation producing Free and Open Source software that enables and empowers South Africans. The Translate Project started in 2001 with the vision of providing Free Software translated into the 11 official languages of South Africa. Free Software in your language is true empowerment. We would like to thank our sponsors: Department of Communications, The Shuttleworth Foundation, Obsidian Systems, St James Software and Hewlett-Packard (South Africa)."

FAQ 12 - What's Already Happening with Open Source Translation?

2005-05-12T07:43:00.000+01:00

Open Source Software has a long tradition of translation and many packages have been translated into major and minor languages. However Open Source Software is largely produced by volunteers, who have their own language interests, or by the more recent wave of commercial suppliers, who have the same interests as traditional software vendors. Both the commercial and volunteer efforts have their own biases.

As an illustration on SourceForge.net today (May 12th 2005) there were 19063 translation projects in 62 languages (excluding English at 50547). Of these the 20 least popular langauges were:

Malagasy 0
Kirghiz 1
Javanese 1
Maltese 2
Swahili 2
Mongolian 3
Albanian 4
Irish Gaelic 5
Macedonian 7
Marathi 7
Belarusian 8
Panjabi 10
Icelandic 11
Bengali 12
Bosnian 13
Telugu 13
Galician 13
Urdu 16
Estonian 16
Latin 18

So Latin and Bosnian are more popular languages than Bengali with its over 200 million very poor speakers. This suggests a systematic re-balancing of effort is needed. No disrespect intended to Latin speakers and our Bosnians, Galician etc friends everywhere but speakers of these languages have the capability to help themselves or to learn to speak second languages.

At the other end of the scale the 20 most popular languages (again ex-English) were:

German 5118
French 3301
Spanish 2318
Russian 1191
Italian 1012
Brazilian Portuguese 696
Dutch 653
Polish 477
Japanese 474
Chinese Simplified 442
Swedish 298
Chinese Traditional 249
Portuguese 236
Czech 208
Hungarian 185
Turkish 157
Danish 156
Catalan 149
Norwegian 148
Romanian 133

So there is clearly a bias towards technically highly literate languages - which is not at all surprising.

Indeed English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese all appear in very poor countries, often as a second language. Languages projects in Russian, Chinese Simplified and Turkish will play a part in development of a large number of poor people. Just not the very poorest. Of course we should look at these language projects and learn lessons from the progress, methods and development impact.

FAQ 11- Can You Really Show Benefits?

2005-05-11T21:30:00.000+01:00

Perhaps the most widely quoted example is the eChoupal project. This helped Indian farmers get better prices at market for their crops by simply providing them prices before they left their village. This enabled them to choose to stay at home or try a different market offering a better price rather than incur the expense of transporting their crop only to be at the mercy of the merchants. Knowledge as power.

A good place to read about other projects is the book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits" by C. K. Prahalad (cue another Amazon link).

There is even a magazine devoted to the topic "Mainstreaming ICTs: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals". See http://southasia.oneworld.net/section/mict

After water and sanitation, shelter and literacy, perhaps IT should come next as a capability. Freedom to know leads to development.

All these projects depend on the basic software being usable in the language of the user. That's where Open Echoes comes in - providing the basic Open Source Software to enable other projects.

Here's some more links to resources on using technology in development. One area I feel is not addressed is the use of desktop publishing to produce printed resources such as literacy aids or leaflets on health care. IT enables so much.

ICT for Poverty Reduction
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/poverty/rc/BrowseContent.do~source=RCContentUser~folderId=3315

The Internet could help reduce poverty
http://rogharris.org/JakartaPost.htm

How to Use ICT for Poverty Alleviation through Wealth Creation
http://www.seco-cooperation.ch/imperia/md/content/publikationen/10.pdf

FAQ 10 - How will People Afford the Hardware?

2005-05-11T20:57:00.000+01:00

It is not necessary for an individual to own their own hardware - it could for example be owned by a school, college, library or a cybercafe in a local town.

The cost of new and second hand computer hardware is also constantly reducing. In fact Open Source Software is very well suited to running on very old and low powered hardware.

There are also many organisations dedicated to providing free computers into developing countries. I would personally like to see them supporting local re-sellers rather than just giving them away and undermining the local market.

If you are interested in donating old computers here's a list:

http://opencollector.org/freecomputers.html
http://www.computer-aid.org/
http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/
http://www.computers4africa.org/
http://www.ateliersansfrontieres.org/

The UK publication Computing from VNU supports Computer Aid.

In the article titled "Computer Aid helping to change lives in Africa" Computing reports from South Africa and Mozambique on how the PC project is helping access to education in two projects:

- SchoolNet Mozambique
- Community and Individual Development Association (CIDA) University's City Campus - largest IT lab in Africa

RSA Lecture - Water and sanitation

2005-05-10T22:27:00.000+01:00

I spent this evening at the RSA Lecture - Water and sanitation: the quickest route to prosperity, part of the RSA's project Engaging Enterprise in Water and Environmental Sanitation Development.

Professor Himanshu Parikh, Director, Buro Happold India and former winner of the UN world habitat award and technical advisor to the project, lectured about the "infrastructure networking" techniques he has developed and outlining the reasons why the corporate sector should get involved in this area.

The key points from the lecture relevant to Open Echoes include the ability of poor people to invest in their own infrastructure and the importance of engaging them in doing so and also the importance of looking for multiplier effects as a result of the project as good projects yield massive knock on benefits for communities.

As an aside Open Echoes fits with the following RSA manifesto challenges:

- Fostering Resilient Communities
- Developing a Capable Population
- Advancing Global Citizenship

For more details about tonight's event and the project see the following:

http://www.thersa.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=1624
http://www.thersa.org/projects/engaging_enterprise_in_water.asp

FAQ 9 - Who Else Thinks this is a Good Idea?

2005-05-09T23:40:00.000+01:00

Open Source Software as part of the development programme is a major focus for many organisations.

Take a look at the Soros Foundation working mainly in Central and Eastern Europe
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus_areas/opensource

and the Shuttleworth Foundation working mainly in Africa http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/

Then there are a whole series of organisations tackling the broader issues of access to IT known in the jargon as the "Digital Divide". See for example:

http://www.bridgethedigitaldivide.com/about_program.htm and http://www.bridges.org/about/index.html

FAQ 8 - What about Geographic Scope?

2005-05-09T23:21:00.000+01:00

Hmm, seems to be missing from NTEE (See FAQ 7).

I think Open Echoes will help people at the following geographic levels:

Global - promoting internationalisation of software and open source software helps everyone and many users of lessor known languages are refugees or immigrants all over the world.

Regional - the poorest of the poor are located in regions such as Africa and Asia (See FAQ3). Regions such as Europe and North America are richer and speak widely used languages which are catered for by the mainstream IT industry.

National - identifying the languages to translate software into is likely to rely heavily on national statistics for wealth and development and so programmes are likely to be targetted at individual or groups of countries

Local - within nations lesser known languages are often associated with only a portion of the population, maybe spread across several nations. Also a key aim of Open Echoes is to build capability to translate software in the nations themselves and so our focus is likely to be regional and capital cities.

Community - within localities there are many more even less widely known languages which are very unlikely to receive translated software in the near future. However projects which build on the translated software we can provide will be likely to offer services beyond major cities and into small villages and communities.

FAQ 7 - Exactly What Kind of Charity Are You?

2005-05-09T22:23:00.000+01:00

To answer this I'm going to use a US taxonomy called the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE), developed for the National Center for Charitable Statistics. The NTEE is primarily a tool for classifying all organizations exempt under certain sections of the IRS code (US tax code).

The information about NTEE primarily comes from the website of the Foundation Centre in the US. See http://www.fdncentre.org/ and http://fdncenter.org/research/grants_class/

Firstly the taxonomy divides entities into 10 basic divisions and 26 major field areas.

I think Open Echoes comes under:

VII. PUBLIC/SOCIETY BENEFIT
S. Community Improvement/Capacity Building
T. Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Grantmaking Foundations
U. Science and Technology Research Institutes/Services

S - as capacity building is a major aim
T - as making grants to other groups and projects is a major aim
U - as software is our primary tool

In terms of Organisational Code I think Open Echoes comes under:

02(B) Management & Technical Assistance Services
12(J) Fund Raising and/or Fund Distribution
13(K) Equal Opportunity and Access
14(L) Information and Referral Services
15(M) Public Education (increasing public awareness)
16(N) Volunteer Bureaus

B - as we will help other projects to use our translated software for their projects
J - as we will raise funds for other projects which contribute to our goals
K - as giving the poorest of the poor, people who use lessor known languages, access to the most liberating tool there is - knowledge is about as good as it gets
L - as we will act as a knowledge source for open source translation
M - as we will campaign to promote English and other major language speaking software developers to internationalise their software and so make our work possible
N - as we will organise volunteers to help build capabilities in our target countries

In terms of population groups we help I think Open Echoes helps the following groups (I have not included any disability areas although software is a great enabler so maybe this list will be expanded):

A2 CHILDREN AND YOUTH (infants - 19 years.)
A5 ADULTS
E0 ETHNIC/RACIAL MINORITIES — GENERAL
O2 IMMIGRANTS/NEWCOMERS/REFUGEES
P0 POOR/ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED, INDIGENT, GENERAL

In terms of the type of support Open Echoes is looking for we come under a broad range of heading which will need to be narrowed down as our strategy is defined:

10 GENERAL/OPERATING SUPPORT
12 INCOME DEVELOPMENT
13 MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
20 CAPITAL CAMPAIGN
22 EQUIPMENT
23 COMPUTER SYSTEMS & EQUIPMENT
25 ENDOWMENT FUNDS
40 PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
41 CONFERENCES/SEMINARS
42 FACULTY/STAFF DEVELOPMENT
45 PUBLICATION
46 SEED MONEY
47 CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
4C ELECTRONIC MEDIA/ONLINE SERVICES
50 STUDENT AID
51 FELLOWSHIP FUNDS
52 INTERNSHIP FUNDS
53 SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS
54 AWARDS/PRIZES/COMPETITIONS
60 RESEARCH
70 TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
78 PROGRAM EVALUATION
80 PROGRAM-RELATED INVESTMENT/LOANS
83 OFFICERS & TRUSTEES DISCRETIONARY GRANTS
85 EMPLOYEE MATCHING GIFTS
86 EMPLOYEE-RELATED SCHOLARSHIPS
87 FOUNDATION-ADMINISTERED PROGRAMS
90 GRANTS TO INDIVIDUALS — NEC
91 SCHOLARSHIPS — TO INDIVIDUALS
92 FELLOWSHIPS — TO INDIVIDUALS

In terms of affiliation or auspices code we will seek support from everyone:

G = GOVERNMENTAL AUSPICES
R = RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION/AUSPICES
N = PRIVATE NONSECTARIAN AUSPICES

Google Adsense in Place

2005-05-09T22:05:00.000+01:00

Well after a long stag weekend in Munich I've found the energy to put the Google AdSense code in place in my template.

It didn't seem to work too well in my sidebar using the location specified in the Blogger help but looks okay when placed at the end of the sidebar2 div. Netscape 7.1. Technical nonsense.

Google Adsense Acceptance

2005-05-05T00:09:00.000+01:00

The nice people at Google have accepted our AdSense application. Can't get the ads to appear in the right place though and its too late tonight so will try again later.

FAQ 6 - Does Open Echoes hit the Eradicate Poverty Buttons?

2005-05-04T21:08:00.000+01:00

Yes. In terms of the UN's dimensions for national strategies to eradicate provity (see FAQ 5) Open Echoes does hit the buttons.

It:

a) creates an enabling environment (think Web, Email etc) and so promotes economic expansion and employment;
b) improves skills and training and enables access to health information and so increasing incomes and economic participation;
c) provides free, useful tools and so enables work;
d) targets the poorest and hardest to reach speakers of lesser known languages;
e) provides free, useful tools which help the aged, disabled and infirm too;
f) provides free useful tools which enable labour intensive work;

In terms of the ten priorities it also hits the buttons:

1) Empowerment, especially women; yes, think blogs...
2) Ending discrimination against women; yes, think discussion groups...
3) Employment; yes, think of business without email...
4) Ending under-nourishment; yes, think freedom and democracy preventing it..
5) Clean water and environment; yes, think of co-ordinating a protest...
6) Good basic healthcare; yes, think of a label on a bottle of pills...
7) Education; yes, think of publishing a text book without software...
8) Social services; yes, think of online community groups...
9) Good governance; yes, think of democracy and blogs...
10) Global teamwork; yes, think of everyone participating...

So yes, Open Source Software can play a part in eradicating poverty. Its not the whole answer but its an enormous 'productive factor' (really useful tool to you and me).

FAQ 5 - How do you Eradicate Poverty?

2005-05-04T20:55:00.000+01:00

Big question. Here's the UN' strategy:

"The United Nations Report on the World Social Situation 1997 sets forth the dimensions of national strategies for dealing with poverty:

a) Promoting the high and sustained rates of economic expansion and employment creation through policies designed to create an enabling environment for poverty reduction;

b) Increasing incomes and participation in the economy by the unemployed and working poor through targeted measures to improve their skills and training and upgrade their health status and living conditions;

c) Expanding opportunities for the poor to engage in gainful economic activity by widening their access to land, credit and other productive factors;

d) Targeting those localities and intervening in those areas where the poor reside and where needs are greatest in terms of priorities for poverty reduction;

e) Addressing the pressing economic and social problems of the aged, the disabled, the infirm and those otherwise unable to engage in productive economic activity through programmes of public assistance and income maintenance;

f) Channelling the benefits from increased participation in the world economy towards the poorest segments of the population through policies promoting an expansion of labour-intensive exports and a reduction of trade restrictions on consumer goods."

Source: http://www.un.org/rights/poverty/poverty1.htm

The United Nations Economic and Social Council has also provided ten priorities for poverty eradication.

1) Empowerment, especially women;
2) Ending discrimination against women;
3) Employment;
4) Ending under-nourishment;
5) Clean water and environment;
6) Good basic healthcare;
7) Education;
8) Social services;
9) Good governance;
10) Global teamwork;

Source: http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/ten-cn.htm

FAQ 4 - Who Speaks What?

2005-05-03T22:43:00.000+01:00

Language is why Open Echoes exists. Here are the raw facts quoted from SIL (http://www.sil.org.uk) about why what we are trying to achieve is so important.

"Literacy: the facts

- 860,000,000 people are non-literate
- 476,000,000 people are non-literate speakers of lesser known languages
- 2 in 3 non-literates are women

There are over 6000 languages in the world, of which only around half have been put into a written form. In our western world, we take reading and writing skills for granted. We read newspapers and bank statements, write letters to business contacts and family: knowledge is always at our fingertips. But in many countries, the situation is completely different. The poor are caught in a cycle of deprivation and have few skills to improve their situation. Illiteracy deprives them of an education, helps to perpetuate injustice and poverty, and denies access to basic health information. According to UNESCO figures almost a sixth of the world’s population, 860,000,000 people are non-literate of which an estimated 476 million (approximately 50 per cent) are speakers of lesser-known languages."

Now you might think that with so much illiteracy how can software help? Think about how desktop publishing could be used to produce teaching materials. Think about how the written word can be spoken by software. Think about how much knowledge could be made available once a basic vocabulary and a web browser in a local language is given to someone, maybe just a teacher in a classroom.

Now if a language has only a few thousand speakers and no written form we are unlikely to be able to find the resources to help but that leaves over 3,000 other languages and millions and millions of the world's poorest people.

For reference SIL is an organisation which promotes "literacy and development" and publishes Ethnologue - Languages of the World", an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages.

For more information about SIL see http://www.sil.org.uk/newsil/index.php?id=faq and
http://www.ethnologue.com/

FAQ 3 - Who are the Poorest of the Poor?

2005-05-03T22:17:00.000+01:00

We will be aiming to help as many of the poorest people as possible. This is obviously a balancing act between the number of speakers of a language and their relative poverty. Measuring who's the poorest is a job for development specialist but here's an rough guide.

The International Labour Organisation thinks "Indigenous People still the Poorest of the Poor" but here the populations speakers of any one language could be small. See their release at
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/region/asro/bangkok/public/releases/yr2001/pr0105.htm

Another option is to look at country GDP and populations. For example the ten biggest populations in the UN's 2004 50 poorest countries are:

141,340,476 Bangladesh
67,851,281 Ethiopia
42,720,196 Myanmar
39,148,162 Sudan
36,588,225 Tanzania
28,513,677 Afghanistan
27,070,666 Nepal
26,404,543 Uganda
20,024,867 Yemen
18,811,731 Mozambique

In Nepal there are over a million speakers of Bhojpuri and two million of Maithili.

Another option is to use a more sophisticated measure such as the Human Development Index. This is the measure used to identify the Least Developed Countries. Here's the lowest ranked 10 countries from the 2003 Human Development Report.

166 Guinea-Bissau
167 Congo, Dem. Rep. of the
168 Central African Republic
169 Ethiopia
170 Mozambique
171 Burundi
172 Mali
173 Burkina Faso
174 Niger
175 Sierra Leone

In Mozambique there are 30,000 Portuguese speakers who may be able to translate to various Bantu languages more easily than from English.

Anyway working how to prioritise resources will be a hard job and depend on language, relative poverty and availability of translators.

Google Affiliation

2005-05-03T21:13:00.000+01:00

Google have accepted us as an affiliate - how nice of them.

Site Meter Added

2005-05-02T22:14:00.000+01:00

Added a visits counter from (http://www.sitemeter.com)

FAQ 2 - What is Open Source Software?

2005-05-02T20:51:00.000+01:00

Open Source Software is software licensed in such a way as to prevent its future use being restricted. Open in this sense is used to mean free access as in free speech.

In the context of helping the world's poorest people this freedom can be used to access and translate software into their local languages without any permission being required from anyone. It can just be done by people who believe it should be done. Almost by definition this activity is not likely to be a commercially viable project.

The freedom guaranteed by an Open Source license ensures the software can be given away and its use can not be restricted from any fields of endeavour or from use by any persons or groups. These are important rights when economic development is so closely linked to lack of freedom.

A more formal definition of Open Source is available on the Open Source Initiative's website (http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php).

Open Source is a software engineering philosophy with the underlying purpose of promoting software quality.

"Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. To be OSI certified, the software must be distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software freely."

It has the fortunate side-effect of allowing us to help the world's poorest people.

FAQ 1 - Why the strapline "Development as Freedom"?

2005-05-02T20:14:00.000+01:00

Development is the process of eradicating the remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression in the world which exists despite our unparalleled prosperity.

Development as Freedom is the title of a book by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning economist. To quote from the synopsis on Amazon: "The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens".

To quote the book itself: "Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development".

This fits well with the freedom to use philosophy of the Open Source community and the play on development as a term in both social policy and software.

What better way to improve the world than with freedom enhancing software such as the Internet?

To buy a copy of Professor Sen's book from Amazon follow the link below (all revenue to the Open Echoes project).

&lt;br&gt;

SourceForge Account Open

2005-05-02T19:24:00.000+01:00

I've set up an account at SourceForge. To quote the good people themselves:

"What is SourceForge.net? SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development web site, providing free hosting to tens of thousands of projects. The mission of SourceForge.net is to enrich the Open Source community by providing a centralized place for Open Source developers to control and manage Open Source software development. To fulfill this mission goal, we offer a variety of services to projects we host, and to the Open Source community."

You can support the Open Echoes project by donating through the Open Echoes SourceForge page (http://sourceforge.net/users/openechoes)

You can support SourceForge.net themselves with a donation (http://sourceforge.net/donate)

For more information about SourceForge donations see their documentation.

I should disclose that I own an insignificant number of shares in VA Software, owners of OSTG who in turn are the owners of SourceForge.net from the days when VA Software was VA Linux.

AdSense Application Done

2005-05-02T18:52:00.000+01:00

Okay - now I have to wait 1-2 days for Google to approve me for AdSense.

Donate Please...

2005-05-02T18:25:00.000+01:00

Okay - here's the Paypal Donation button. I'm sure we will find a free gift for the first person to donate. We will eventually have restricted funds to support different languages, tools, countries etc but for now just one general fund.

Getting Started

2005-05-02T17:04:00.000+01:00

Since January 2005 I've been thinking about this project as a way to occupy myself and to do some good in the world. Earlier this year I stepped down as a volunteer chairman of another charity after a three year hard stint and last month I finished moving home and on Saturday I moved office. So now is the time to get things rolling a little faster. I thought a blog would be a good way to document the early days.

We (really me at the moment) have a name - Open Echoes - inspired by the Open in Open Source and by Echoes as reflections of the original. Thanks to Paul Barnett (www.pbarnett.co.uk) for assistance with getting the name right.

We have some ideas for a logo based on the Open Source Initiative logo (www.opensource.org) - modified to include reflections or repetitions and maybe the earth's surface to reinforce our global focus.

We have a domain - OpenEchoes.org (www.openechoes.org) but not a website yet - it just links back to this blog (or it will in a minute when I've posted this). We're global so we looked for a .org TLD.

We have email (jon.vyse@openechoes.org) so next will come a Paypal account for donations and maybe a project on SourceForge and Google Adsense since I'm here.

We will be a charity domiciled in England and regulated by the English Charity Commission (http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk) and probably use the services of the Charity Aid Foundation (http://www.cafoline.org) for our administration. I'll investigate US tax exempt status or maybe someone can help.

We are bound to sell merchandise so if any companies out there wish to pitch for that contract please email me.

I'll write some more about the project itself in my next posting - maybe I'll try an email post....