THE COMING BABEL

News of the metaverse... en Français.  Wolkam Winger recently sent me a link to the highly polished French-language SLObserver.com, which even comes with its own machinima news broadcast-- with avatar lip-synching in French.

From one angle, the growing internationalization of Second Life is an unalloyed good, bringing together Residents of many nations into the same, pervasive, easily-accessible and readily-experienced space.  From a farther view, however, you can see how non-verbal communication of avatars isn't enough to bring us together.  It's easy to imagine a coming Balkanization based on language, with whole regions of the world playing out dramas, great cultural and social movements, even running businesses and conducting politics, and then reporting on them in their native tongue-- with all of it more or less unknown to others on different continents, since these activities are literally lost in the translation.  (Or lack thereof.) 

And what if a real time translator interface were implemented in the viewer, innovative but still awkward as those still are?  Would it be enough to keep the communication channels open?  Or finally just frustrate us further apart?

Comments

[Marc Thurston]

In my view this is just a enrichment of SL the more different cultures and the more different languages come into SL the more it reflects the RL world we are all living in at the moment SL is still basicly a US dominated platform which is fine but not a true reflection of the world we are living in. I understand communication might be a issue but nowadays alot of the people speak atleast some English and maybe this is just a good chance for people to learn different languages and learn to interact and coexist with each other.

[Wangxiang Tuxing]

A real time translator interface might be of some help but this is a very simplistic and superficial approach of the question. Open-minded people interested in other cultures learn other languages. In my opinion this has nothing to do with "balkanization".

[Cyn Vandeverre]

I have seen people using a translator gadget in SL; some device that they "wore." It was rough but got the basic sense across. When I was learning another language, I would have been very enthusiastic about practicing it in a venue such as SL, as there weren't many opportunities for practice aside from the classroom.

[Kefrens]

Great job of them !

Writing translator operate not very well.
Then imagine with a vocal version...
(Babbler is the translator gadget)

[rikomatic]

Wow, really well produced and informative! I'm very excited about this new French news service. I'd love to see more on-the-scene interviews with the Front Nationale protestors and other in-world francophone events.

If you look at the planet.worldofsl.com aggregator, you see a lot more international blog posts and links popping up in there. I think it won't be long before we need language specific aggregators and search engines to find venues, events and people who speak our language of choice. That's only natural for an evolving metaverse.

Meanwhile, we'll also see more efforts to integrate residents across language barriers, such as through new translator tools and the Diversity Festival being put on in March. I think we'll have more than enough people trying to keep a balance between the "walled gardens" of culture and language and more common public spaces / agoras where residents of different backgrounds can interact.

(On a personal note, I'm also embarassed by how bad my French has gotten. Zut alors!)

[Hiro Pendragon]

That looks like they used CrazyTalk to do the lip-syncing - it's all post-production done outside of SL. I think it clearly illustrates how much lip-syncing would be a landmark gain for SL as a feature.

[wolkam]

Hey all, thanks to Hamlet to make a post about our video, and happy you used it to talk about langage in SL. As the french community grow really quickly actually, we have all tried widget like babbler, but, in fact almost all french speak at least a little bit english, not always fluent, but enought to be understood by others.
I made a post about this long time ago, because i saw something interresting, when 10 people speak in french, they switch automatically in english if a new person come and speak in english... I found this really good for all. English is the internationnal langage, many ppl like me tried to learn to speak better to be understood by all, and it's a good thing.
I hope you understood me, else my comment won't be credible lol

[Jaymin Carthage]

If someone ports the client to Eclipse Rich Client Platform I've got one all ready to go. :-) I've been working with Machine Translation for ten years now. Contrary to expectations, it works reasonably well with chat. Unlike static web pages, if you don't get it, you can ask the person to repeat themselves in simpler terms.