Comments on: English blogposts no longer the largest plurality?

By: One Internet or Many? | lessig.org

One Internet or Many? | lessig.org — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:52:40 +0000

[...] just continued — babelization, if not balkanization. Today, David Sifry and Ethan Zuckerman write on “the surprising possibility that Japanese may have unseated English as the dominant [...]

By: El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado » Blog Archive » Language and the Internet

Thu, 17 May 2007 23:05:00 +0000

[...] It’s important to note, as Patrick Hall and Ethan Zuckerman previously have, that this latest data mark a change from the days when English was by far the dominant language of the web. But just because the English slice of the pie is decreasing, does that give us reason to celebrate an increase in language diversity? [...]

By: Sunny’Blöģ® » 做女人挺好

Sunny’Blöģ® » 做女人挺好 — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:02:13 +0000

[...] 怎么没有keso或其他名人的blog？一般来看是很多大陆的BSP不接受Technorati的索引。 [...]

By: Media SITREP » Xu Jing Lei Takes Boing Boing’s Crown

Media SITREP » Xu Jing Lei Takes Boing Boing’s Crown — Fri, 19 May 2006 15:27:05 +0000

[...] Ethan Zuckerman says all thisgoes to prove the need for projects like Global Voices and Blogamundo: All of which suggests that English-language blogging is becoming a smaller plurality each day. Which makes me very happy that we made the decision a few months ago at Global Voices to focus heavily on translating blog posts as well as linking to them. Haitham, Veronica, David, Feng and Alice have been steadily translating content from Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and French, respectively, and we’ll be introducing our new Portuguese translator in a few days. This has let us run fantastic posts, like this analysis of the Spanish blogosphere’s reaction to today’s boycott of US goods in much of the Spanish-speaking world by David Sasaki. But it makes me hungry for even more, including projects like Blogamundo, which promise large-scale systems to help translate blog content. [...]

By: jSpy.us

jSpy.us — Mon, 15 May 2006 04:45:45 +0000

Barbie Blogging Breakout?!

America’s superiority is undeniable. I…

By: …My heart’s in Accra » Your language or mine?

…My heart’s in Accra » Your language or mine? — Wed, 10 May 2006 23:59:18 +0000

[...] My regular readers know that I’m obsessed with the question of how the Internet will change as an additional billion users join the network. It’s a safe assumption that many of these billion users will not read English… and will not create content in English. Recent statistics from Technorati suggest that more blogposts current exist in Japanese than in English; my research suggests that there might be even more blogposts in Chinese than in Japanese. [...]

By: spurrymoses

spurrymoses — Wed, 03 May 2006 03:35:10 +0000

Very interesting, I have some bad news for the commenter who is eagerly awaiting Japanese translation. I am learning Japanese and converse with Japanese friends (at intermediate level), and I can assure you that Japanese is, evidently, impossible to translate properly – so I wouldn’t get your hopes up ;-)

That is, if I pop any letter from my Japanese friends into any translation engine that thinks it can do Japanese, I get utter garbage. Some of the simple nouns are translated correctly but often it’s not even clear what the person is talking about at all, it’s soooo incredibly awful.

I think there’s a lot of reasons for this, which I won’t get into, but suffice it to say, Japanese grammar and usage has grown up completely independently of any western influence. Don’t think for a minute that I’m exaggerating either. If I relied on translation to read any Japanese communication I receive, I simply would not be able to reply at all.

Maybe an example will illustrate: Here’s a translation from a completely understandable but slightly casual Japanese sentence.
1st, I used AltaVista – BabelFish to translate it. What was he actually trying to say do think? (Keeping in mind that I am a male)

Good morning, Peter excessively you do not worry and also the て is all right, when you become pregnant, human Kiyouko who everyone lightly is completed you saw to be, the human one people where the morning sickness is terrible you experience

Google does a little bit better in some areas, worse in others:
Good morning, Peter not worrying excessively, it is all right, when you become pregnant, the human capital child which everyone lightly is completed you saw to be, the human one people where the morning sickness is terrible you experience

What he was actually saying: (my translation):

Peter, don’t worry too much, everything will be alright. Everyone has varying degrees of morning sickness when they get pregnant. Some have a rather light sickness, and others get it quite nasty, like Kyoko. Different people have different experiences, it just depends on the person.

By: Jason Callina

Jason Callina — Tue, 02 May 2006 15:30:55 +0000

The Sifry post confirms a lot of what I have been expecting for some time. The rapid fire moblogging that occurs is a better model for how the upcoming generation will digest information.

Translation services would be amazing, I can’t wait until Japanese is added.

I follow the third party “lost in the shuffle” english translated posts from some Asian blogs because I believe that Asian tech pop-culture is an accurate predictor of social technologies that will eventually stick in the US. Seeing translation done in a more consistant manner would be enormously helpful in getting speedy, accurate news.

By: Lessig Blog

Lessig Blog — Tue, 02 May 2006 06:06:20 +0000

One Internet or Many?

One theme in the book is that an evolving balkanization of the internet is often driven by consumer preference. A good example is the suprising decline in the use of the English language on the Web. A quote from Ch. 3 The Economist confidently stated i…