It's a Hard Knock Life (for us)!

So, in addition to the blogs on citizen media that have to be researched and updated on a weekly basis (FYI they start on Monday - I know you have all been waiting with bated breath), our slave-driver lecturers want us to produce 3 feature stories by the end of swot week. Oh, and they want us to try and master CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - which is UBER difficult!! But, you live you learn and who knows one of these days my blog may actually resemble something creative in terms of layout ... we can only wait and hope.

I started my first feature story today and thought I'd keep y'all out there updated. The first story is a about a translat@thon that is happening at Rhodes University this weekend.The SANTED multilingualism programme within the Rhodes School of languages (African Languages Section) is collaborating with the Telkom Centre of Excellence in Distributed Multimedia and award-winning Translate.org.za to organise the translat@thon.

A translate@thon is basically a translation marathon in which participants translate software interfaces online (please see attached documents for details). In this instance, we will translate the webmail system used by Rhodes and already available in a number of other languages, into isiXhosa.

This makes for quite a newsy feature and my interview today with Lorenzo went well. There are a number of issues that I feel need to be raised: The first is the narrow bandwidth and high computer illiteracy levels in South Africa. I mean, it's great to have the technology, but if people are unable to access the technology due to infrastructural issues then it is pretty pointless. These issues I hope to raise with Dwayne Bailey, the head honcho of translate.org.za who is presenting a talk on Friday (will keep you updated).

I also think that this event taps into a larger issue, namely the lack of staff and student support that exists at Rhodes for those who are not English first language speakers. In my experience as a Journalism 1 tutor, I have noticed that students who are not first language speakers struggle with the work, not because they are not intelligent, but because they lack the language skills. A good follow-up article could then be about the student support that is/ not being offered here at Rhodes e.g. the extended studies programme. SANTED works closely with the departments of law, pharmacy and ICT to assist students with poor English skills by providing them with handbooks that translate complex terms.

I'm currently thinking of ways to incorporate some multimedia elements into the article I want to write. I am thinking of taking some photographs of the actual translat@thon and am pondering whether or not to shoot a short 30second video snippet. This would take time and energy and I'll see how it goes ...

So, for now I am going to bed - fare thee well fellow bloggers!

Ciao*