Google adds Yiddish translation - is it good for the Jews?

Some time ago Google Translate added Yiddish to their list of supported languages. Try it out with the Yiddish version of Forward. This potentially opens up troves of Yiddish history and literature to people with a limited grasp of the language. But is it good for the Jews? Or for anyone to have this happen to their language? Does machine translation help preserve a language or does it amerliorate the demise of a language?

Language preservation online

There are two interesting takes on this issue. The first, entitled The Challenges of Language Preservation, gives a good background to the problem and explains how globalisation is merely a step along a long path towards homogenisation of language but the author hopes the internet will be a useful tool for preserving minority language.

The second is a presentation from the TEDx conference, embedded below.

Language Use And Preservation Online

View more presentations from Tadej Gregorcic.

Build your own cellular network

In some countries the existing cellular network providers just aren't reliable. Either the whole network mysteriously fails when you need it most, or you're just not in a position to trust the network providers not to pass on lists of your calls (or even full recordings) to government agencies, phoney lawyers or rival companies. If you value privacy or you are interested in a robust and independent cellular network you might consider building your own.

Looks simple enough, right?

The good thing is - you can do this with some straight-forward commodity computer parts. If you're wanting to provide a (free?) cellular network for your neighbourhood, because of a sudden loss of network connectivity or because you've got a special event happening, you can do that. Want to make sure nobody is snooping on your SMS messages or calls? Route your calls through you own cellular provider!

OpenBTS is an open source Unix application that helps you build a low-cost, flexible cellular network. Field-tested networks have been built with a 10-mile radius for connectivity. That'd be enough to cover... say... downtown Tehran, or Shiraz, or Tabriz. Link up a few of these, making sure they're high enough up and you've got your own city-wide cellular network, capable of routing calls all over the world.

You can buy the kits online. Or, you could follow some instructions and put together your own. The only downside to this is that you'll need an internet connection to plug your cellular network into (which can be a drawback if your country's internet connections are as unreliable as SMS/mobile).

Here are some links to get your started:

• Build your own cellular network
• Fed up with spring-mobileattizon - build your own cellular network
• Starting your own mobile/cellular telephone provider

Iran bans Gmail

News reports are coming out that the Iranian government are banning access to Gmail (WSJ, TechCrunch). Maybe this has something to do with Google turning on HTTPS as a default setting for all Gmail users (and making it harder for snoopers to find out what's in the emails users are sending). That was in response to Chinese hackers (government backed?) snooping on Chinese activists using Gmail. Everyone using secure communication makes it harder for for snoopers to find the needle in the haystack.

The ban on Gmail will probably be as successful as the ban on Flickr, Twitter and the bans on Facebook. Iranian Gmail users can take heart in knowing the Iranian government will be launching its own email service. I'm sure the web-based service will have all the same innovative interface features that have made Gmail so successful such as threaded conversations, keyboard shortcuts and sophisticated filters. I doubt they'll be data-mining the content of emails for targeted adverts, either.

Iranians who do decide to use the government's email service can take some simple steps to ensure secure communications over an insecure service. Tools like FireGPG help you encrypt the content of your communications. Details on how to use it here. It needs a smart Iranian Firefox user to integrate it, in Persian/Farsi, with the email service.

If secure communication channels are criminalised, only criminals will use secure communication channels.

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.