How it functions:

Here are a few quick points you will do well to understand first if you are going to get satisfaction out of these machine-assisted translations:

1. Please understand these are still extremely crude comprehension aids. They are not "translations" in the usual comfortable sense (false comfort almost always, but that's another story). Here is how our friends at GIST put it: "A "GIST" is a computer-generated translation. It is intended instantly to deliver the meaning of electronic texts written in a language a reader does not understand by converting the text into the reader's preferred language. This allows the reader immediately to understand and act upon the information contained in the original document."
2. This means that, if we are ready to do our part, they can help us get a rough understanding of what may otherwise be an impenetrable "wall of words". They may not open up a door all the way, but they can help us crack open a window and have a first look.
3. At present they offer us the possibility of machine translations of the site into the languages indicated to your left. To get your GIST version of the site, just click the language button that interest you. The Gist version will pop up in a second window.
4. Give it time at first. Depending on the speed of your connection, it may take up to several minutes to get the translation going. Be patient. You will quickly get the feel for it and be able to make up your own mind from there.
5. GIST translates only html text, not anything presented in graphics (gif, JPG, etc.).
6. Also it does not translate JavaScript -- which means that the main menu to the left is left in English. To translate, you need to click the "No menu?" link at the top of the menu. The result is rather ugly and a bit awkward, but basically serviceable.

We suggest that before first use you go to the GIST website and review the FAQs and other good (and short) help information and clues they offer.

Another way to do this if you want to have the ability to use the Gist translation system for all your Web work, is to go to here and download their free offering.

Personal Preference

Here's is how we like to do it when we find ourselves over our heads in terms of a given language: (a) we do a gist, (b) print out the translations of the pages that interest us, and (c) read them in parallel with the original language.

This works particularly well for languages that we may only half-know or not used for some time. Recommended cross-check for accuracy of comprehension.

Something wrong?

Make sure you let us know. We may not be able to solve the problem, but we can try to be useful, including passing on your good thoughts to Gist.

Languages and The Commons

From the outset of The Commons back in the seventies, we have been continuously and painfully confronted by the fact that our work is cross-frontier and cross-cultural, and that means that is also involves people whose daily lives center on languages other than English. For us this has been a particular problem, in the first place since our consistent target and concern are the problems and possibilities of technology as confronted by people in their daily lives. Thus our target audience and collaborators are not necessarily international civil servants or experts trained for international work, but individual citizens who live their lives and develop their competence in their own language.

Thus we have today a situation in which a good number of initiatives along the lines that interests us in our various programs and areas of competence are taking place in different places and different language cultures. On the other hand, the common language of the Net, for better or for worse, is, for the time being at least, English… or at least some approximation thereof.

For this reason, we became early supporters and users of machine transactions, which we have both used as a useful tool in our own work and for the last three or four years tired to integrate as best possible into the thirty-plus programs and web sites that we maintain under The Commons. This adventure with Gist is the latest step in this long process. For some background on this if you are interested, have a look at the note on Babel Fish and perhaps our 1998 working note on machine translation.

Of one thing we can be quite sure: our language adventure continues.