You will see the links at the base of the left menu. All that is required to get a rough machine translation of the English language content is to click the indicated language link. The text in that language then appears in its own window, together with some concise counsel on how to get best use of it.
From the outset of Agenda back in the late eighties, we have been continuously and painfully confronted by the fact that our work is cross-frontier and cross-cultural, and that means that is also involves people whose daily lives center on languages other than English.
For us this has been a particular problem, in the first place since our consistent target and concern are the problems and possibilities of technology as confronted by people in their daily lives. Thus our target audience and collaborators are not necessarily international civil servants or experts trained for international work, but individual citizens who live their lives and work and develop their competence in their own language. This is almost always true of people working in local government or in operations projects, who are, we know, the main instruments of the transition to sustainability.
Thus we have today a situation in which a good number of initiatives along the lines that interests us in our various programs and areas of competence are taking place in different places and different language cultures. On the other hand, the common language of the Net, for better or for worse, is, for the time being at least, English… or at least some approximation thereof.
For this reason, we became early supporters and users of machine transactions, which we have both used as a useful tool in our own work and try to integrate as best possible the best of the available tools into each of our web sites, blogs and international projects. But of one thing we can be quite sure: our language adventure continues.
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Bear in mind that what you will generate here are crude machine translations only -- and that they will be as useful to you as you chose to make them. If you are looking for high literature this is not the place for you.
But if you find yourself confronted with a wall of unfamiliar words in a language you do not know -- and if you have a true thirst for getting some kind of idea of what the whole thing is about, a machine translation can help you get a first rough understanding of the page's thrust and content. Then, if you are interested enough, you may find it useful to print out both the original and that very rough machine translation and read them in parallel. Or if you decide it's worth the time and cost get a real translation from a talented human being.
Tips:
1. When you ask for the translation, please be patient. It may take a minute or so (more if you do not have a high speed connection) to get the full text for a longer page.
2. When you get your machine translation, we advise you compare it directly with the original by clicking the "View Original Language" link on a translated web page. You will see it. Reading the two side by side is a great help for those curious enough to work at it.
And piece by small piece you will start to understand. Welcome!
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