Translation Workshop Wednesday, 31 October 2007 ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Nick We are going to start the session for the afternoon. We have approximately an hour to spend together, and so without any transition, I am going to give the microphone to Nick, who is going to talk to us about translation and interpretation and its various possibilities. And then we're going to be talking about various translation and interpretation policies at ICANN and hopefully after that we're going to be able to talk a little bit in the various languages that are presented here today. Thank you very much for your time and attention. (Multiple languages on headsets). I'm going to be talking in French, but the interpreters are going to be interpreting (inaudible) so that everybody is up to par with the various (inaudible). (No audio). >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: We wanted to discuss about policy. We need to have something working. And the technical people, you may help us with that, because it's -- when you have the channel 5, you have English, you have French, and whatever other language. That's almost impossible to work like that. (Spanish translation). >>KIEREN McCARTHY: I believe that the issue is, the interpreters, you need to press a switch depending on which language you are speaking. And if you are speaking in your own language, you need to push one set. If you are then speaking in English, you need to switch. And you need to switch back after you start speaking in English, or we have several languages on the same channel. Is that -- I'm having a look -- I'm hoping for some nodding heads. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I think it'll work. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: We're going to try to make another -- we're going to try once again. Would you please be so kind as to. (Multiple languages). >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: What is going on is that we have -- we can hear the interpretation from the French right now into English, and at the same time, we can hear the Spanish. [ Applause ] >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Maybe if we can actually start listening to - - if we can start speaking in Spanish, I don't know what's going to happen. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Sebastien, I suggest we try in English until we get the thumbs up from the translation person that they've understood the system. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I'm not sure, because I get Spanish when I speak French, I get the translation in English and in Spanish. And then everybody here will have this problem. And we need to fix it, because if not, it -- the English will not be able to listen what we will say in the different language. I am sorry about that, but -- Okay. We will -- let's start, because, anyway, we will start by English speakers, and we will see if it works at the end for the French speakers, Spanish speakers, or other non-English speakers. You are the first one to speak. May I give you the -- >>KIEREN McCARTHY: No. So I will just quickly outline the agenda that we have today. First of all, if you haven't picked up a sheet at the front in your language, please do so. It outlines this mission statement of ICANN's translation committee, plus a series of things that we are doing and have been doing to improve multilingualism within ICANN. There's a set -- the second page is a set of translation principles that are within the accountability framework, and they outline what ICANN's principles are. And that's currently a draft and up for discussion. So if you are interested in changing that, you should come to the meeting at 3:00 in Carmel where that will be discussed. And, last, on the back is a feedback sheet, which we would like you to write what you think. And then we will use that and feed that back into the system. After -- speaking after me will be Nick Ashton-Hart, who is ALAC representative. ALAC, obviously, is the most multilingual at the moment of the different constituencies. And he'll be outlining what ICANN is doing and will be doing. After that is Bert Esselink, who is the translations expert that we have hired to draw up ICANN's translations policy. It's currently effectively a blank sheet, our translations policy. And we have hired Bert, who is an expert with LionBridge, who is one of the largest translation companies. And he will be outlining what he intends to do and the system behind what he does and we'll explain how we're going to draw up the translations policy for ICANN as an organization. After that, we will have an open discussion in which we hope that you will feed us information about what you think about translation and how ICANN can improve, and other issues that you wish to raise. Very briefly as well, we have -- many of you, hopefully, in this room will be part of a community of checkers, we call them, but we're trying to build a community of people interested in in improving multilingualism within ICANN. And, hopefully, you've had e-mails. But also if you wish to join that group, just send us an e-mail to the translation committee, which is transtrass-COMM@ICANN.org. And that goes to the translation committee, and we will involve new this community where we will all try to work together to improve multilingualism. With that, over to Nick. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: I should just say that I'm actually not with ALAC or an ALAC representative, and the ALAC representatives in the room are undoubtedly happy to hear me saying this. And I see the incoming chair of ALAC is clearly happy. I'm the director for at-large on the ICANN staff as the secretariat for the at-large community. Hopefully, that's sufficiently disclaimed now, Cheryl. Good, I see that I've done that. As many of you know, the individual Internet community is pretty evenly spread in terms of the membership of the community around the world. And there is -- they are regionally organized in a way that the ccNSO is. But in every region, including North America, there are individuals whose first language is not English. And in some regions, there are many participants whose English skills are not comfortably sufficient to follow detailed policy discussions of the kind ICANN engages in routinely. And so we had to come up with a response to allow, to the extent we could, as quickly as possible, equal access to participation for those who were not native English speakers or very comfortable dealing in English. And the result of this was sort of three different initiatives. One was simultaneous interpretation of At-Large Advisory Committee and RALO face-to-face meetings, which began last December and continues to this day, the At-Large Advisory Committee operates in English, Spanish, and French. There are actually members of the committee who are very much happier, very much more capable of communicating in their native tongues. We are the first community within ICANN where we have standing teleconferences that are actually simultaneously interpreted. This has had serious teething pains, through no fault of anyone. The conference call vendor, perhaps, has had some challenges with the technical provision of services in which you have multiple conferences that are actually connected by the interpreter so that each person hears the -- one of the three languages of their choice and everyone is able to communicate relatively fluidly. We're still working on a better solution which allows a completely transparent dialogue between meetings that are telephonic. But this is -- you can expect that in the future, there will be more briefings in which you will be given an option of languages to listen in. The other main area of work is, like all ICANN communities, at-large works in mailing lists. And for two of the five regions, all mailing list postings are actually machine-translated into three languages. Obviously, this is not a perfect rendering. A machine translation is not a perfect rendering of the original text. So the original text is visible alongside the translated editions. And this is a -- the technology was an experiment, really, at the request of the African RALO, and especially the Latin American RALO, where about half of the participants in LAC RALO much prefer or really need to work in Spanish, and the other half, it's English. So when you have half and half, you really must do something. And it's not been perfect, but it's been much better than just continuing to have to operate in English. So we've used these experiences in at-large to work on a couple of initiatives that are in testing, which can then be used by other ICANN communities. One is an interface to e-mail, which allows the sender to send in their language of choice, for instance, to a public comment address. And if you picked English, for example, you would send it to whatever the public comment address is, dash EN for English. When that arrived, it would be machine-translated into any of several other languages. And, likewise, if you sent your comment into the dash DE list, the German list, your comment would then be available in the archives of all the other public comment lists. And this could be similarly used for mailing lists. So our hope is that once we get through with the testing phase, we will be able to leverage this for other communities that wish to use the technology and for public comment periods to allow it to be transparently easy for people to send in comments in any of up to 16 languages which the software we have supports. Though I don't know that we're going to take public comments in all 16 languages. But that is the potential number. So this is a basic summary of what is going on in perhaps the most distributed, globally distributed, community in ICANN. Please don't all throw things at me if you think that's incorrect. I said "probably." But I think that it's likely that some of the technological issues that have been useful in one community, we hope those can be leveraged for other ICANN stakeholder groups and communities to enable them to communicate on a basis of equality, irrespective of the language that they either need to speak or wish to speak, because I think it's an important -- there's an important distinction to be made there that, when speaking on a very technical subject, such as is often done in ICANN, it should be possible for people to use the language they are most comfortable speaking in, not just to support languages for people who don't speak English. And that's it, really. >>BERT ESSELINK: Okay, I'll take it from here. My name is Bert Esselink. I'm from the Netherlands. And as a good Deutsche citizen, my second language is English, but it's not my native language. So I'll hopefully speak slowly for the interpreters as well. I've been hired, as Kieren said, as an external consult to develop a translation policy and strategy. And primarily concerned to all the documentation that is available in the ICANN world. So everything on the Web sites and all of the policies, all of the comments being generated on the policies, et cetera. The translation policy still is something which is totally open. I mean, there's nothing really now. So it's something that we hope to develop and define over the next few months. Yesterday was my first day at ICANN, my first sort of introduction to the ICANN world. And I must tell you, I'm quite shocked. I am still learning new acronyms every hour and every meeting that I am entering. So I can sort of feel the pain of people who are nonnative speakers of English trying to deal with all of the English language documentation that is produced by ICANN. So a good thing is that ICANN recognizes the problem. That's a big first step, you know. The strategic plan for 2007/2010, and I'll read this aloud for you, says specifically that "ICANN is going to implement a translation policy designed to effectively meet the objectives of the organization that takes into account stakeholder requirements, the need for effective and economic programs, and the goal of raising participation levels." And I think this -- the key word here is "participation." Right now I mean, when you're an English-only document company, I mean, really, the only people who can actively participate in providing feedback and providing comments on the documentation are English native speakers. So when you start providing information in multiple languages, the barrier for other language speakers becomes much lower to, you know, be an active part of the ICANN community. So I think that's probably the key reason for developing a translation policy. So what is the translation policy? There's -- of course, there's many different definitions for that. And a translation policy which is not, you know -- if you don't have translation policy, you are pretty much saying, okay, the working language is English. Everybody who is contributing, participating, has to learn English. The other extreme is the European Commission, where they say all the countries are at equal level, so let's just translate everything that the European Commission produces. So in the European Commission today, I mean, there's 3,000 translators working on a daily basis, you know, millions of Euros to produce translations. And I think ICANN, of course, wants to end somewhere in the middle. There's no budget, there's no scale to get that many people to translate everything that ICANN produces. So the translation policy should really create a set of guidelines of what documentation has to be translated into which languages. I mean, that's really the most important part of the translation policy. And it shouldn't be based on gut feeling, you know, I think this is probably necessary in this language. It should be based on hard facts and hard criteria of which people need it most and which documents are most relevant and important to ICANN. So in terms of the classification system, which is going to be part of the translation policy, so defining the documents that are going to be translated. There's, of course, going to be a proactive set of documents where we say these documents are so important for ICANN, we will always translate them into these languages. The second part is more the reactive part, where, you know, on request, documents may have to be translated or policies may have to be translated when needed. So it's especially the second part where we need to define some rules to make sure that, you know, the money is wisely spent on translations that are actually being used. Other alternatives that we're looking into is, you know, we may not always translate full documents, but maybe just summaries or abstracts, just to, you know, reduce translation cost. Because translation can become very expensive very quickly. The second part of translation policy is really the process of how the translations are being produced. And a lot of organizations, you know, use a pretty ad hoc process, like, you know, people know a translator who lives around the corner, or some people in the office speak another language. But a translation policy that we will develop for ICANN really will define a more, you know, work flow-driven process, like this is where the decision is made to translate a document. This is where requests need to go. This is the person who is actually going to produce the translation. So that could be somebody in-house, on staff, or it could be an external agency. All of that is still up for discussion. And it's still -- you know, anything could happen there. Also, the involvement of the community. I think Nick or Kieren already mentioned that we're looking for people from the ICANN community to actively contribute to the terminology that ICANN uses, to reviewing translations, to, you know, implementing language standards. Because the experts are in this audience, not necessarily translators. Of course, translators need to know what they're translating. But input from the community is going to be key in that policy as well. The last part, really, in the translation policy, which I want to mention -- because there's a few other things. But the source content. I've looked at a couple of documents that are being published by ICANN. And, honestly, if they're difficult to read, they're even more difficult to translate. So I think, you know, somebody needs to take a careful look at how documents are being written and published within ICANN just to make sure that it's understandable in terms of message and also in terms of language use. So at a high level, to sum up, what is the translation policy? It's about scoping. What do we translate? It's about execution, like who does it, who is involved. Ownership, who owns the budget, first of all, and who owns the decision of translation. And, finally, the process. So the people and the tools and the work flow that we're going to use. So I will be here until Friday. So if you have any input -- and I'm really here just to listen to people and to gather requirements and expectations from translation policy. If you have anything to add, feel free to grab me in the hallway. And I'll be sitting for the rest of the afternoon opposite of ombudsman office on the second floor. What was the name of the office again? Santa Monica A. So I'll be sitting there. If there's anything you'd like to add or tell me about, you know, what you think should be done in terms of translation within ICANN, please come up, and I'll be happy to listen. Thanks. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Thank you, Bert. Now, we're going to tentatively try to speak in foreign languages again that aren't English. So if you don't have a headset, please do get a headset. Sebastien is going to be leading -- emceeing this open comment. We're going to be wandering around the audience. And we would really like you to say what you think about what ICANN needs to do from -- to get to a -- to a multilingual organization. Any issues that Nick or Bert have raised, please raise them, and we will look at them. But we'll produce the policy. And that's how ICANN will move forward. So, hopefully, we have a few people who want to say a few things, and Sebastien will be leading it. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you very much. I would encourage you to speak in your own languages. Today we have four languages being interpreted. So I would really encourage you to be honest and candid in your opinions and use your own languages and tell us what you expect from a translation policy. So I will start. And it's going to be tough, because all of you will have to -- actually, emphasize going to give the floor to a Chinese speaker. >> The channel that is become very noisy. I have heard several languages from this channel 4, this Chinese translation channel. >> I'm sorry. I really can't hear -- I hear so many languages on channel 4. >> In all my years, almost ten years -- (Multiple people speaking simultaneously.) >> First time I'm going to speak in my native language, Chinese. [ Applause ] >> I have the following suggestions. I believe ICANN's translation policy is going through a correct direction that fulfills the internationalization of ICANN's purpose. But I believe the current system, there are still problems, issues, because currently we don't have very comprehensive, extensive ICANN translation policy. Why some languages are chosen as the translated languages at the meeting, yet some other languages were not. Is this determination based on the U.N.'s selection of the languages currently? We don't have the answer. If it's chosen based by official method, well, at least the Arabic language is not chosen. That's my first issue. The second issue is about machine translation, because I believe ICANN should be very serious considering using the machine to translate. The reason I say that is because of my personal experience. ICANN not too long ago published internationalization, globalization document for promotion about the technique and the policy status. Unfortunately, what's provided to us was translated by a Chinese translating machine, and it was not comprehensible by Chinese speakers because public domain was translated into "GAUGI," a high-level name which is very different than the usage in Chinese. So when you use the machine to translate, it will be very confusing, and you will be the opposite of what we are hoping for. Therefore, I offer the following four suggestions. One, the first suggestion is ICANN meeting, the language chosen for the ICANN conference should be the same language used locally. For instance, next time will be held in New Delhi in India. In that area, the official language is Indian. Therefore, for the local user we recommend to use the local language to translate without -- not being limited by the official languages chosen by the -- by ICANN. Therefore, we can promote the usage of the language that's promoted by ICANN. The second thing is ICANN provides many translations by different languages, and currently here we have information over-the-counter, we see many different languages including Arabic and Chinese. My recommendation is to offer more oral translation, more oral interpretation instead of written document translation because language is a live language. Therefore, for people to communicate, we should offer more oral for more direct involvement. Third is I like to emphasize that interpretation and translation should be very flexible. It's not to increase the budget. It's not the budget can solve, because interpretation and translation can be done in many different method which includes the speakers want to use, so that we don't want to be limited by the expert's method. For instance, the expert should be able to -- allowed to come with his own interpreter, but I want to emphasize -- policy discussion. The last proposal I want to say is that ICANN should really use the volunteers for the translation services. There's a lot of people out there who are really willing to help, to help the people who have language difficulty. And for that reason cannot effectively participate in the discussion. So I don't really agree with the gentleman that we need a lot of budget, we need money, investment. Actually, we should use the people. Use the power of the people to resolve this problem. >>KIERNAN McCARTHY: Thank you very much. I have a comment over here. [ Applause ] >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Hello, my name is Liz Williams. I just wanted to address one of the points that Bert made before. I have been responsible for much of the documentation in the GNSO recently, particularly with respect to new TLDs and policies for contractual conditions. And I understand the point that you have raised about the length and the style of the document. But I would have to say that this is -- there is no way that we should ever produce something that is superficial and two pages long. Because that does no justice to the depth of the conversation, the complexity of the issues, and the stakeholder interests that need to be represented in reporting for instance in a PDP process. And if anyone was in the room this morning when the GNSO was speaking, you will see how diverse the views are. And it is -- I challenge you, it's a challenge to reduce those discussions to a simple and synthesized version of events that reflects the appropriate complexity of what's actually being discussed here. So -- and Nick and I have had many conversations about this, about what ought to be translated and when and in what process. And it's a very, very important piece of the puzzle to include to be more inclusive about the discussion about difficult policy issues. But the delicacy of it is that there's a balance between -- and I'm very much a proponent of plain language, simple language. But plain and simple requires highly sophisticated debate. Because it's actually easier to reduce -- it's actually easier to write 5,000 words than 100. It's actually easier to write a dissertation than it is to write a succinct 500-word summation of what's been going on this morning, to take in all the nuances. So I encourage enormously the translation policy, but be very, very aware that what is being talked about -- and I marketplace make a distinction here between translation and interpretation, interpretation in a setting like this. So the documentation is, indeed, difficult and complex. Not all of it needs to be translated, but we, indeed, to work very, very hard -- and I come from an Australian parliamentary environment. What I have described is explanatory memoranda. So that may be a first step in a transition towards a translation policy that is more realistic in a very, very diverse group of people. But there is no getting away from the fact that you produce documentation that reflects the input of a variety of stakeholders that is by -- on its very face, it cannot be reduced to two pages long. So I am happy to discuss it further, but there's very, very significant disconnection here between translation and simplification of documentation. And it's a philosophical commitment to plain language in the first place, but plain language that is then translated. >>KIERNAN McCARTHY: Thank you, Liz. >> Good afternoon. I am (saying name) from Mali from the At-Large community -- committee and I fully support this initiative because I have been following ICANN's activities for the past two years. And it was in Sao Paulo that I was able to have an interpreter interpret the meetings. Let's not forget that ICANN is an international organization, and, therefore, should embrace all languages. I don't think it should be limited to the English-speaking community, because all of us want to make suggestions and all of us have something to say. So I think it is -- I'm here to encourage this new strategy. And I have one suggestion, if I may. Please work with experts when you work on some documents so that when documents are translated, we still understand what people mean. Because I have read translated documents and it was difficult to understand. And I have nothing against translators. They do their best. But sometimes I have seen translations that were not perfect. And so therefore, there should be an in-house review process by us, by ICANN, just to make sure the translators have done a good job so that we can all ensure quality of the final document. >>KIERNAN McCARTHY: Thank you very much. There have been issues in the past with translation and (inaudible) -- I have another comment here. Do you have a comment? Yes, a comment at the front here. >>MATT HOOKER: Yes, hi, my name is Matt Hooker. And I strongly believe in translation. I happen to speak about five languages myself. Chinese is not one of them, so therefore, I have this, but the other languages I think I could deal with here. What I don't want is to see domain name prices being raised to pay for all of this. Because I support a group that is calling for a bill of rights for Internet domain name owners. And basically when we register a domain, whatever price we pay for it, whether $7.95 or 9.95, we believe we have the right to continually renew that domain at the same price, each year, forever. And we are going to the courts, if necessary, to have the courts put that in writing. Because we don't buy something and then let the seller tell us how much more it's going to cost us in five years and how much more it's going to cost us in 20 years. A domain that can be bought for $7.95 today is going to cost $80 to be renewed in 30 years because ICANN has done this 7% price increase with the registries. So I'm all for translation, but I'm not willing to pay for it out of domain name costs. And I think there's a lot of people who would agree with me on that. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you. Would someone else be ready to take the floor? >> Happy that I am here to speak in Chinese. Today is a very good start for us. I hope ICANN will continue and make sure this becomes a success. I believe to make it a success we need to follow the following items. Number one, sufficient fund, but more important is number two, to have a really good infrastructure as a promise. For instance, we, the Chinese-speaking community, we would like to be led -- we would like to contribute under the leadership of the ICANN translation policy committee. Thank you. >>RAIMUNDO BECA: I am Raimundo Beca, board member. I have to speak in my native language. As somebody spoke in -- I think it was in Kuala Lumpur, we had simultaneous translation. I used a French speaker there to -- at that time, I spoke French, but at this time, thank goodness I can finally use Spanish. I have quite a bit of personal experience working in a multilinguistic world. Mainly in the CDEs, that is the European community, the E.C. I have gotten some tips from this experience that I would like to offer to you right now. Basically it's two of them. The first is it's very important work the help of experts and the help of translators, to build a glossary, a dictionary. That's basic, for this institution. And obviously I would like to offer my services to participate in the development of such a dictionary. But my other tip is this one. ICANN works an awful lot with comments and commentary. so it's really important that this be written out in the language of each person. I know it's expensive, I know it's complicated to get translations done. In the early phases, in fact, it will be enough to have summaries of the commentaries at first of those comments that are written in other languages. And anyway, there's people who will only read the summaries in the first place. Let's face it, it's not that important to have every bit of everything that every comment says because, let's face it, some people are only reading the summaries up front. I'd like to express my satisfaction, besides all this for the fact that as the chairman of the finance committee and some of the staff personnel that's here, I struggled a lot to get personal financing for this -- excuse me, for personnel. It was up to $100,000, and I am very happy to have gotten it and I just want to say thanks. >>KIERNAN McCARTHY: Thank you very much [ Applause ] >>KHALED FATTAL: My name is Khaled Fattal. I will try to be as brief as possible. Although I could speak to you in Arabic for the purpose of reaching out I will speak in English. I am not trying to make any political points here. That's why I will speak in English. I think, first and foremost, I congratulate ICANN and what I think they are doing is an excellent step forward, and I give credit to this gentleman in front of me because that falls onto his shoulders. The translation, not just the policy, the principle of providing translation so that the outreach is to those who have been left out of the Internet that we have been calling to bring them in for the last ten years or so, everybody remembers this, is definitely the right step. The first thing I would like to remind those who are trying to develop a policy is the policy should actually reflect the needs of those communities, not necessarily what ICANN wants. So that's number one, if I may sound as if I am preaching. So listen to those who actually have those needs and fulfill their requirements, not necessarily what ICANN would like to see happen. Quite often, if ICANN is on the right track, guess what? The two are actually congruent. So there will be no issue. Secondly, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Whatever is available that can give this process a push forward, use it, and you will be amazed at the level of good will of people who want to help. One thing, for example, and this is not pitching my own service, about eight or nine months ago I actually launched a new service which translates live and online English Web sites to Arabic with the adherence of syntax and grammar. A lot of the translation costs would be factored to try to bring in documentation so people can read would not be as catastrophic as we would have to sit down and have somebody do that. So I would be happy to help. My interest is not just helping ICANN. I want people who want to read to be able to read. So along the way, let's recognize one thing. This is a journey, and this is the first step. The fastest way we can get this inclusion and the participation and people being able to post their comments so you can hear what they have to say, the better chance we have to fulfill their needs. Thank you very much. >>KIERNAN McCARTHY: Thank you, Khaled. Also, Khaled raised the point that of course we don't have Arabic here. The question I would ask in this room is where -- do we have Arabic speakers who would like to have Arabic? That's the question. If we had Arabic, would Arabic speakers arrive? >>KHALED FATTAL: Let me answer that question in a different way. There are 400 million or so Arabs around the world. I haven't counted them all but that's supposedly the number. You can assume about 90% don't speak English in any proficient way so that they can really read the content that exists on ICANN. But there's something else. You have 1.5 billion Muslims out there that actually are able to read Arabic because they learned to read the Koran even though their Native language is not Arabic. Why this is relevant? If you're asking, is there a need? Well, if we are really trying to reach out to those people who have been left out that cannot be able to participate and let you know what they want, well, guess what? It's inevitable, you've got to provide it. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you. Thank you. Please, I would ask you to wait for a minute before you take the floor so the interpreters have the time to switch buttons in the booth. It's not because I want to have a blank. But let's make sure that the interpreters can do their job as well. First of all, let me give the mike to my neighbor -- and I apologize to you. We don't provide interpretation into Australian English. So I will ask you to make an effort and speak English English, British English. [ Laughter ] >> -- none of which I would wanted interpreted. As someone who speaks only English -- and I will be the first to admit, not necessarily good English, and certainly not all that well all the time -- I'd like to -- and I could certainly reaffirm over and over some of the excellent points that have been made, and particularly harkening back to the points that Liz made on simple language, as well as interpretation. But rather than do that, I'd like to share with you some of the positive aspects of our experience with the ALAC. And I'll just take our one-day workshop that we did on Sunday. Our first time when we were using translated documents and a couple were missing in all the language, the change in productivity that happened in the flow of our output was incredible. It wasn't a full stop, but it was an enormous change in our productivity. In our meetings -- and here we're talking about meetings that start after eight hours of ICANN meeting, when we are tired, when we are not really thinking our best in any language, let alone our second or third skill set -- to have the interpretation and the expert interpretation services that we have here hasn't just been a productivity and personal benefit to those who have used it by being able to use their native language and first language; it's been an enormous benefit to people like me, because it's ensuring, with this coming into one ear all the time -- and I like what we're doing here at the moment, where English Channel is English Channel and I don't have to switch between them -- it actually helps me when I'm tired and I'm cranky and I'm thinking about why I didn't have breakfast, lunch, or now dinner and it is 9:00, to focus and still be an active listener. And I think many of the constituencies here would benefit from the internal workings of taking this exciting first step forward and really supporting it 110%. And there wasn't a piece of colloquial language in any of that. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: (inaudible). >>MARIA FARRELL: I'm Maria Farrell from ICANN. My French is not so good, but I'm trying to make an effort. [ Applause ] >>MARIA FARRELL: I'm from ICANN, from the staff, so I'm trying to do my best. First of all, let me say that I've organized French and Spanish classes for ICANN staff, for my team, actually. So the reason why I've been doing this is that I know it is very difficult to be fluent in a language after one or two years of learning that language. But my experience is that when you try to express yourself in another language, then sometimes you feel powerless, you have the impression that people do not understand you very well, and so I can totally relate to those of you who feel like this. And we should also respect those who use English every day and they're making that effort for us, for the English-speaking community. And we do benefit from that effort. And so this is why we're trying to make an effort within the staff. And I hope that you realize this. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you, Maria, for these very useful comments. And also because Maria speaks a few languages, she's been using French, which is not her mother tongue. And if you all tried to, for instance, when you attend an international meeting, say, you know, even when I speak in English, I'm speaking in a foreign language, you know, it would be already easier to understand one another. Another comment, anybody else? >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Yes, one more comment. I think we are going to need to start wrapping up. We've already run slightly over time. So if there's anyone else who's dying to make a comment, put up your hand now. Okay. There's one at the front there, Jean-Jacques. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. >> AXEL MAJIA: Thank you very much. I am going to speak in Spanish. My name is Axel Majia. I'm coming from Honduras. I'm very happy to find out about the efforts that are being made here so that you can integrate more people and communities to ICANN. The benefits are for those of us who are going to be part of ICANN, but ICANN benefits as well. Because when there is more integration, maybe what you can achieve is that maybe they do not charge for the efforts of translating certain documents. As was mentioned by Eric and ICANN personnel, it's important to have a dictionary, as somebody mentioned. It's very important to have a dictionary, because between ICANN and the industry, they define what are the standards regarding Internet vocabulary. And I think it is very important to take advantage of this, because we are going to be able to see what the interest is, to measure the interest of those communities who do not speak English and what is the need to have this documentation in their mother tongues. That's all I have to say. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Gracias. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you very much. My name is Jean- Jacques Subrenat, and I am a member of the ICANN committee. Languages used to be my tools when I was a diplomat. Everything I heard in the debate today is absolutely true, but it's true depending on the level that we're talking about because of the nature of ICANN and its top priorities. And that's why I'd like to suggest some kind of methodology. There are some needs and criteria, depending on whether you're talking about national sovereignty or from the perspective of the user, for instance, a business or a company. I can see that there are both perspectives here represented in this room today. So let's talk first of all about the question of the national sovereignty and the linguistic sovereignty. It is absolutely logical - - and, of course, it's been mentioned several times today -- that everybody would like to actually find in such an organism such as body as ICANN, which is an international body the reflection of all the languages of the world, and particularly of their own language. But at the same time, I believe that at the other end of the spectrum, it is totally understandable that a principle that Mr. Hooker reminded us of earlier today, that it is not part of ICANN to want to reproduce, to mimic, and absolutely not at this level, the complexity, the whole characteristics of the linguistic needs by the U.N. and the European community. So I believe that we have to make sure that there is a need and that this need be understood in a better way, in a clearer way. I believe that it's pretty easy to see in the world there are so many hundreds of thousands of speakers of this language, and somebody actually mentioned that earlier today, in order to say that it gives you automatically the right to a quota. Ideally, that's true, Mr. Khaled. Put at the same time, I believe that it is definitely true that the director of the financial committee of ICANN will agree with me that at this time, we cannot reach such a level. So more concretely, what I'd like to see is this clearer need. Maybe we could actually launch some kind of survey or study based on all the speakers who are here represented today in order for all the needs to be understood, counted, so that all the people from all over the world be able to actually keep talking in English, Spanish, or French, or Chinese or Russian, which are the languages that are currently used. If that's not the case, then it would be part of ICANN's responsibilities to launch the mechanisms in order to provide translation, interpretation services. But I do not believe that we should believe that absolutely every single request or demand should be met, because I do not believe that it's the clear reflection of what is actually necessary right now. The second point that I'd like to make is that there be some kind of clear distinction, which has already been mentioned, between the various levels of linguistic complexity. First of all, there's the oral expression during the debates and the discussions, or the written comments on the Internet. I do not believe that in this case, in the second case, rather, the translation needs to be absolutely perfect. The linguistic research does not need to be as significant as for debates and discussions. I'm not sure if we actually say "ICANN" in French, but ICANN, I believe that every single document that needs to be published as part of ICANN, every single thing that needs to be published needs to be proofed, checked, especially when it comes to notions, vocabulary, and the clarity of all the information that's being furnished, but also the quality of the style and the linguistic clarity of the expression as a whole. Thank you very much. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Thank you very much, Jean-Jacques. We're going to have to wrap up. I'd like to make two points with reference to all of the discussions. One, it's quite clear we need a lot more information about what the needs are of other languages other than English. We're pretty sure about what we need in English. And we need you, as a community, to tell us. And we need you, as a community, to help us make those translations and check the translations as well. So this is what we hope we'll be able to build. Again, these sheets are at the front. If you grab hold of them, there's a feedback form in the back, we will read them and we will incorporate that into what we do. So please do make the effort. I'd like to hand over to Sebastien for just a quick summarizing, and then we'll have to head out, because I think people are coming in very shortly. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you very much. I would like to actually thank every single person who participated in this meeting, because I'm sure that they helped us to progress in this regard. I'm sure there will be a lot more meetings, and I'm sure you will all be happy to fill out all the forms that are here next to me. I believe that all -- that the main ideas that we mentioned is that, first of all, there's a need, a clear need, a strong need for translation and interpretation. Translation for written documents. Maybe it would be interesting to actually summarize them in the various languages rather than actually translate all these documents in the various languages. But also we need to make sure that the base document be in English that's clear enough and understandable enough. Also, we talked about what languages we should choose. This is an open question. It remains an open question. What are the languages that we should translate the documents into? What languages should we hire interpreters for, depending on the region, depending on the area of the world where the debate is actually going to be taking place. But we also need to make sure that we develop a kind of glossary, a kind of dictionary. It's absolutely crucial and essential. There are a lot of people who actually talked about being able to help. There's a kind of group that's already set up with a lot of people who actually volunteer to do a lot of translations. And I believe that it's an open group. And I'm sure you can actually join. And so maybe we can ask people to participate more once again. I do not believe that we have enough time to actually talk about this into more detail. But, first of all, I'd like it thank three or four board members who are represented here today, who are present here with us in this room. I believe that it's kind of too bad on the one side, because I believe that a lot of people who are here today already are aware of the linguistic problems, and I'm not sure that all their English-speaking colleagues are also here right now just because I believe that there's some kind of educational necessity. There are a lot of people whose language is not English who don't actually need interpretation and translation. But I hope that all the English speakers will be -- will understand this problem and this need and will more and more use translation and interpretation and express themselves into other languages. I'd also like to thank all the speakers, all the people who are here today, all the participants, but also because we could not have had this meeting today, all the interpreters into all the four foreign languages, or, rather, all the non-English languages. Thank you so much for your hard work. And thank you for participating, for taking part in this meeting of ICANN. So I know that ICANN in French actually means "I can." So maybe we can also thank you very much. [ Applause ]