Crowdsourced Translation Giving Egyptians a Voice

February 2, 2011 By Aminda

Amidst the chaos in Egypt, technology has enabled people around the world to lend a hand in allowing Egyptians to make their voice heard.

After the government attempted to silence the people by cutting off internet access last week, engineers from Google and Twitter came up with the idea to use Google’s new site SayNow, which had just been acquired by Google on January 25.

The site allows anybody across the globe who has phone access to dial one of several phone numbers and leave a voice message. The messages are hosted on SayNow and a link to the message is automatically tweeted on the Twitter feed @speak2tweet.

The voice messages have then been translated by people from across the globe, with the text posted at a new site called Egypt.alive.in. Response to the need for translation has been so positive, that volunteers have been getting translations posted in real time – working from a Google Docs spreadsheet. (the spreadsheet has been made private due to crashing from overuse)

One of the voice tweets reads, “For every nation comes a birth and with every birth comes pain and we are prepared to bear that pain to see the rebirth of our nation. Victory to the egyptian people! Victory to the egyptian revolution!”

Despite the fact that getting the word out about the service to Egyptians has been difficult, response has been steady. And while the site provides an interesting human element in contrast to a CNN report, unfortunately it can be difficult to determine which messages are legitimate.

“That’s wrong info” comments one user to what would otherwise be a powerful, moving message stating: “I want to say that there are more than 150 people dead in Tahreer square. People are stepping over them and the military is attacking us. What do you want more than that?”


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Reader Comments


Technology is really giving us a lot of reasons to be amazed – such as this one. It is just sad that platforms like this make us vulnerable to false information. If there is a way to moderate posts without discounting the essence of SayNow – then it would really be great. But on the other hand, I think that every individual should be responsible and mature enough not to initiate circulating any false information.

Cheers!
Gina Navarro of iProperty
Posted by Gina Navarro on March 18, 2012

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