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Re: [ga] LatinoamerICANN publica versión en espa ñolde los Estatutos del ICANN



At 09:06 12/03/04, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 03:09:16PM +0100,
 Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
 a message of 19 lines which said:

> that posting in English is a significant additional effort for many
> of us - not to mention speaking in English at physical meetings or
> even from a podium...

It is clearly a problem in every international forum: IETF or RIPE
(which are supposed to allow the participation of everyone on an equal
basis) are quite difficult to master if you are not very proficient in
spoken english.

The additional issue, identified in various studies and our daily experience
is that the same people do not follow the same pattern of thinking when
they use another language. The EUI (University European Institute -
http://uei.it - made some interesting report in comparing the structure of a
report in different languages - I do not find it back right now - I just asked
them).

One of the main problem of the commonly used american is that its
"balancing" is binary - like in Basica (if/then) with short sentences. Most
of the languages are ternary (if/then/else) with some flexibility. Latin
languages (and French is probably the most complex) are more
polystructural.

This makes the strength of American as a international language and
as a language for specialized Research communities. But it makes
difficult to use when describing/investigating complex and multilateral
relations, such as the societal governance of the Internet. There is a
famous joke about this being the reason why multinational
coporations are to be American.

Brains are like CPUs. The used language has an incidence. This is
addressed by most of the World organizations where each person
use his/her own main langage. This is not only to use a language
he/her knows, but also to use an ad hoc analysis/communication
tool.

ICANN - if to become a modern real world internet structure - is and
therefore need to become multilingual. Each of us using his/her
own or another language as he/she feels it appropriate. He/her could
then summarize it in English language for common convenience.

jfc