Interview with K-Von from Persianesque Magazine

There's a short interview with Iranian-American comedian K-Von in Persianesque Magazine:

The often-monikered “Bad boy” of Persian comedians, K-von whose name means: “Saturn”, in Persian, is by far one of the smartest and funniest Iranian comedians coming out of the West Coast. While he did grow up in Las Vegas, we assure you, you will not sense even an inkling of teardrop-drought while enjoying his side-splitting and constantly overflowing fountain of stand-up.

However, being able to send you into a roller-coaster of laughter via his hilarious comedy sets is not the witty Persian comedian’s only talent. Kayvon Moezzi (his real full name) is half Scottish, but he can also cook and teach you how to make ”Zereshk-polo with Joojeh Kabob” - thanks to his ammeh (aunt: dad’s sister) – on a budget.

Real, good-looking, fresh, and hilarious are just a few words that come to one’s mind when watching K-von’s authentic and unquestionably rare comedic style...

"No, no, you must stay." - 30 years on

The NIAC blog has a link to a video which includes a great exchange between US Ambassador Limbert (at the time a hostage in the US embassy in Tehran) and Ayatollah Khamenei. Here's the money quote:

For non-Farsi speakers, the exchange between Limbert and Khamenei here is incredibly interesting. To paraphrase: Limbert politely welcomed Khamenei, who was being treated as a guest since he was visiting the hostages at their “residence” where they were being held. Limbert remarked about the Iranian cultural quirk known as “taarof,” which characterizes the uniquely Iranian version of hospitality, saying: Iranians are too hospitable to guests in their country, when we insist that we must be going, you all tell us “no, no, you must stay.”

Tehran Bureau website moved and relaunched

Tehran Bureau has been a unique and interesting source of news and information from Iran. During the election unrest it carried a lot of insightful coverage from within Iran, much of it translated from Persian. The website has been relaunched with the backing of PBS Frontline in the States.

Iranian comedians - helping you find the right one

From time to time I go through the referrer statistics to find out what people coming to this blog from search engines are looking for. Many people have landed here following searches for Iranian comedians. That's good because this blog has the ultimate list of Iranian comedians.

Looking for 'Persian comedians in Los Angeles'? You'll be wanting Peter 'The Persian' Shahriari.

'Iranian comedian who does accents'? - that's probably Omid Djalili. He does some great accents ranging from his normal London 'geezer' and his wife's most refined English, Nigerian English (particularly a Nigerian parking attendant), Turkish, Indian, through to his career-defining high-pitched Arabic accent. Maz Jobrani, Ali Salimi, Elham Jazab all do accents too.

'British Iranian standup commedienne' (or 'shappi khorsandi hot', I'm sure she'd be happy to know that's what you think), 'comedy Iranian women UK' would all be looking for Shappi Khorsandi. Here's a snippet of Shappi Khorsandi on BBC Persian.

'Tissa Hami on YouTube'? You'd actually do better to search on YouTube, but this is the Internet, so I've done it for you! You want this, this and this.

'Best comediennes list' - might feature Shappi Khorsandi, Tissa Hami, Sheila Vossough, Mona Mahani, Elham Jazab, Negin Farsad who are all 'Iranian standup female comediennes'.

'Iranian comedian at the Laugh Factory'? I thought that was Kinner Shah, but I think I was wrong about that.

'Gay Iranian comedian'? Ali Mafi.

'Iranian comedians in the UK' - Patrick Monahan, Jody Kamali, Omid Djalili, Shappi Khorsandi and her brother Payvand Khorsandi. Matthew Nouriel has a British accent and links too. So add him to that list.

'Iranian comedian on Comedy Central'? Probably Maz Jobrani.

Looking for an 'Jewish Iranian comedian' or 'Iranian Jewish comedian'? That could be Dan Ahdoot, Marvin Karrazi or Matt Kazam.

'Middle Eastern 3 comedians'? Probably the Axis of Evil comedy tour with Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader and Maz Jobrani. Other comedy tours in a similar vein include Allah Made Me Funny (with Preacher Moss), Negin Farsad's Bootleg Islam, Co-exist? featuring Tissa Hami.

'List of Arabic comedians'? Not yet.

Real-time Google Translate for Twitter

Following on from my previous post about how to use a Greasemonkey script in Firefox to auto-translate Persian tweets in Twitter here's another way to get Persian tweets into English. The Google System blog has a good overview of how to do this but you're here, and this can be a little clearer.

Go to Google Translate and copy the following string of text http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23iranelection&lang=fa (it's searching for tweets with #iranelection in Persian) into the search box...

Twitter's front-end interface doesn't give you the option of searching only Persian/Farsi tweets, but the search does seem to support it by adding lang=fa to the query string.

Sadly the AJAX updater won't tell you if new tweets have come in since you've been looking at the page, but you can just refresh your browser and it should pull out any new ones.

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And you can get a Google Translate button for your web browser here. Once you've got the button, just click it whenever you have Persian text on a page and it'll translate it for you.

Translate Persian Twitter messages with Google Translate... automatically!

UPDATE: Cyrus Farivar has refined this quick tutorial. Having trouble with this? Follow his instructions on How to use Google Translate to translate Twitter messages from Persian.

Twitter is being used to provide real-time updates about what's happening in Iran. Following the exciting news about Google Translate now supporting Persian it's now possible to automatically translate Persian tweets into English (or any other Google Translate supported language).

Quick overview

To be able to automatically translate Persian Twitter messages, you will need...

• The latest version of the Firefox web browser
• Greasemonkey plugin (a Firefox plugin that allows you to customise web-pages with little bits of Javascript)
• Google Translate user script for Twitter messages (add Google Translate button to your Twitter page)
• Make some minor tweaks to the user script (because Twitter switched to HTTPS and the script was written before Google Translate supported Persian)
  

Step by step guide

1. Download and install the latest version of Firefox. Skip this step if you already run Firefox.

2. Install the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox (you may need to restart Firefox after this step). Visit the page and click Add to Firefox...

3. Install the Google Translate user script. Visit the page and click Install...

4. Update the user script. It was written before Google Translate supported Persian and before Twitter ran on HTTPS. Do this via the form that appears when you install the script, or select Tools > Greasemonkey > Manager User Scripts. Or right-click the little monkey-face icon in the bottom-right corner of Firefox and choose Manage User Scripts.

5. Add in support for HTTPS by selecting Google Translate and then add in https://twitter.com/* and https://*.twitter.com/* to the list of Include Pages...

6. Edit the user script by clicking Edit in the bottom-left corner on the bottom right (above). Or you can edit google_translate.user.js. Add a new line at line 88 with fa: 'Persian',

7. Save your changes to your script and close the Manage User Scripts box

8. Check Greasemonkey is switched on (you may need to restart Firefox first) by going to Tools > Greasemonkey > Enabled...

9. Go to your Twitter page and login.

10. Find a tweet in Persian from one of your (new?) Iranian friends. Hover your cursor over the tweet and you'll see the favourite and reply icons appear, along with a new friend a lowercase 't'.

11. Click on the 't' icon and your friend's tweet is automatically translated from Persian into English!

Extra

If you don't speak English or want to translate into another language, you can set another language as the default.

This script doesn't just work for Persian/Farsi, it works for all Google Translate supported languages. And it auto-detects them. So, you can add new friends from around the world to your Twitter friends list!

Google Translate's Persian very far from perfect. Bear that in mind when you're using this script!

Google Translate, Facebook and iPhone now support Persian/Farsi

Google Translate adds Persian

I started writing a blog post just before voting began in the Iranian presidential election about the lack of a Persian option in Google Translate. With so much content on the web in Persian, it would have been great to be able to do a quick and rough machine translation into English.

Searching Google brought up no news about any new languages coming up in Google Translate. There are questions on mailing lists asking if it was going to happen, but those asking were always redirected to this FAQ saying large volumes of bi-lingual texts were needed.

But now Google Translate supports Persian (even though it's a very rough alpha version):

We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone's access to information.

Being a machine translation, it's not perfect. It will certainly lose some of the flavour of Persian, the flourishes and idioms (which always lose something in translation), but it's a start. Cyrus Farivar has more on the accuracy, but seems glad it's finally here (as am I!). You can use Google Translate to translate BBC Persian into English, translate Persian tweets into English and now, the entire Persian blogosphere!

YouTube relaxes rules to help Iranians

Google also relaxed its rules on classifying videos on YouTube after graphic videos of violent attacks by Basij members on demonstrators were removed. Google lived up to its "don't be evil" motto (especially after the hurdles Iranians had to clear in order to upload their videos in the first place).

Facebook launches a Persian interface

hanks to the work of 400 Persian-speaking volunteers Facebook now has a Persian interface that automatically detect browser language and displays accordingly. The company says...

Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran — but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.

Great news and a triumph of collaborative working from those involved.

iPhone 3.0 supports Persian

People in Iran were some of the first to get jailbroken iPhones. With the highly anticipated version 3.0 of the iPhone OS, they've now got a legit Persian interface!

Pic taken from Cyrus Farivar's blog

Twitter switches to HTTPS for added security

Twitter switched over to HTTPS to ensure extra security for its web-based users. It could just be a coincidence, but I suspect its also a response to the popularity of the #iranelection hashtag and coverage the service has been getting. I'll be uploading a user guide to getting Google Translate and Twitter to work together.

Iranian presidential elections - from the blogs

Tomorrow sees the culmination of Iran's presidential campaigns. Millions of Iranians will go to their polling stations and vote. Millions won't. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora will vote too.

The BBC does have a review of a documentary about Iranian teens and their lives, Mousavi and women's rights, a background to the election, questions about Ahmadinejad and how much support he still has, on the campaign trail (although it describes Ahmadinejad's supporters as salt-of-the-earth types and Mousavi's as internet nerds), the economy and rural communities versus debauched urbanites. New York Times has a video about the election. POMED is doing a good job keeping track of the election news in the Western press (more, more and more).

The opinion from a lot of Iranian English-language blogs has been there people should vote...

If even for one day, for one hour, for one minute over the past four years you have worried about a possible attack on Iran, if you have felt shame about things that have happened in Iran, about the way Iran has been represented to the world, or for words that were said by someone else but whose weight you have carried, consider participating in the elections and showing that you care. (source: From Berkley)

For many, this election is more than a renewal of allegiance. It's something with a real, tangible outcome. Maybe not the end of the Islamic Republic, but certainly an opportunity for a shift in power. And that's why the different factions are competing so fiercely and will stop at nothing to win.

Tehran has painted itself green. Mousavi voters are showing their support. And the support for Ahmadinejad from the trendy young people who've suffered so much (for fashion) under his presidency, boggles the mind.

Mousavi and Karroubi are not the ideal reformist candidates. They may have been able to pass the Guardian Council, but both have history.

Mousavi's political transformation from the President at the time of the 1988 massacres of political prisoners to becoming the hope and aspirations for a more open society is impressive. Azarmehr reminds us who Mousavi's (current) supporters were back then. Even giving Mousavi the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was weak, isolated, unable to interfere... he's still surrounded himself in his campaign with some disreputable thugs.

Blogs seem to be doing a better job than larger media outlets to give some insight into what's happening in Iran and also Iranian opinions on the election.

• Hairy is back in Iran and looks at the elections, lies and woman, the green wave sweeping Tehran, Shiraz and the Ahmadinejad/Mousavi debate.
• Ali looks at the small window of freedom that opens up around election time, everyone's new favourite colour and Dr. Sadeq Zibakalam's defence of Obama's first 100 days in office.
• Ali covers Rafsanjani's letter to Khamenei, the BBC's poorly written documentary about Ahmadinejad and some of the candidates that never made it past the Guardian Council.
• Pedestrian sees this election as Mousavi's second chance. He's changed, Iran has changed and Islamic Republic has changed. There's that colour again, too.
• From Tehran Live, more green fashion.
• Shahrazad asks who really won the Mousavi/Ahmadinejad debate. It was certainly the most important and talked about of the debates. How are Iranian bloggers picking their candidates? And this election belongs to the people of Iran.
• Tori finds the election campaign has given Iranians their mojo back, might help stop the brain drain and maybe people who once backed reformist candidates can be coaxed back to voting, if only because there's something eerily familiar about those cranes holding Ahmadinejad's campaign pictures.
• Kamran is reminded of the importance of this election, but he's a realist and not a fantasist.
• Change has come to Iran and a quiet, non-velvet, revolution is already underway.
• See also Elections and nostalgia.

The daily news updates on the Iranian election campaigns from Iran Tracker have been really useful, especially for giving a flavour to the press coverage inside Iran.

Swedish-Iranian stand-up comedians

It seems that stand-up comedy is popular in Sweden too. With several Swedish-Iranian stand-up comedians. And, even in Swedish, you can tell what the first joke is...

Maz Jobrani explains ta'arof

Looking for a good, quick introduction to the Iranian concept of ta'arof? Starting at 8:10, Maz Jobrani explains ta'arof...