The new bloggers of Rising Voices outreach projects in Colombia, Bolivia, and Bangladesh are more than just up-and-coming citizen journalists. They have also discovered the power of prose to reveal glimpses of the human emotions that bring us together and the local differences that make each of our communities unique.

Cross-posted on Rising Voices and Global Voices.
As we all get ready to enter 2008, Rising Voices celebrates its first six months of existence. Thanks to the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Rising Voices has been able to distribute microgrants to five citizen media outreach projects based in Bangladesh, India, [...]

In the last post of this series, we looked at how producers of open source software and open content are usually faced with three types of translation: software, website interface, and content. This post will take a closer look at some of the processes and obstacles regarding the third type, content. As an example, I’ll [...]

Oh friends, if you had only heard the whining of former nay-sayers like @mari_posa and @jenternational when I first started using Twitter in February. Why does everyone need to know what I’m eating for lunch or when I have to go to the bathroom, they’d complain over and over again. Was it really necessary for [...]

A few weeks ago a very friendly Martina Recchiuti wrote me an email asking if I’d mind if the Italian magazine, Internazionale translated and published my blog post about traffic in the developing world. Mind? I was honored of course.

You can find the resulting blog post here. They have also translated recent posts by friends [...]

One of the main reasons I’m down here in Medellin, Colombia is to shoot a short documentary about the work being done by HiperBarrio, one of the five current outreach projects of Rising Voices. Video editing is a new thing for me and I’ve come to learn that the most time-consuming aspect of it is [...]

In parts one, two, and three, I tried to explain 1.) just what is open source software, 2.) what is open content and 3.) why both are in search of better translation tools. Now it’s time to look at how open source software programmers and open content creators think about translation.
First off, I think it [...]

This morning Steve, Eddie, Juliana, Jorge, Carolina, and I all headed to Itaguí to check out the benefit Rock al Sur festival.
Four hours later we came back. No music was heard.
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Now that we’ve gone over the basics of open source software and open content, let’s take a closer look at what brought all of the participants together in Croatia: translation.
I normally flinch at the word ‘movement’, but I’ll make an exception here: the open source software and open content movements are incredibly international. Ubuntu, the [...]

I don’t complain. I’m allergic to it. Incapable. I don’t know how. I try. And I fail.
I realize that complaining, to a certain degree, is the currency of compassion. We sit, a coffee, a glass of wine, an apertif. You complain, I soothe. Then: I complain, you soothe. We relate, we bond, and we tell [...]