Currently translators take a text in one language and create a rendering of it in a language that’s accessible to their readers. There will never be a perfect mapping from one language to another. As such, a text can be rendered in multiple ways. For example, there may be multiple ways a term can be translated. Each may have different connotations and there may be arguments in favor of each of these terms. In the print world, a book can only contain a single rendering, and thus a single choice must be made. The reader is left with that choice. Compromises will also need to be reached between literary flow and literal faithfulness. The translator makes this choice, and again the reader is stuck with it. Translators may try to mitigate this limitation by offering rationale for their decisions in introductions, including footnotes with alternate translations, or providing the original language term in parentheses, but a printed translation will always be very much a single rendering.

In the world of eBooks, things could be different. Instead of taking a foreign language work and producing a single rendering of it in the reader’s language, the translator could annotate the original work in order to provide data that could be used by different readers to render different versions of the work according to their individual criteria. Readers would be able to have their own bespoke translations.In this post, I use the bible as the primary example of a translated work. There are both technical and theatrical reasons to use the bible as our example. Firstly, if its various translations/editions are treated as a single book it is the best selling book of all time. Secondly, the bible is read and studied at a deeper level than most other books, as such translation decisions that would seem trivial in other cases are actively debated. The bible’s interpretation has been filled with political and religious controversy. Whether they intend to or not, its translators are arguably making a political and religious statement. Indeed, the first English translations of the bible altered the existing power structure in such a way that their mere existence was controversial and they were initially violently oppressed. Finally there are also some interesting technical aspects to bible translations: that are multiple source documents whose languages are no longer spoken, there is no living author to be consulted, and the source material is out of copyright.

An example of a biblical translation decision is the translation of the Hebrew יהוה. The Oxford Annotated Bible translates it as “The Lord”. In college, my religion professor disagreed with this translation and instead used the term “Yahweh” going so far as to say “Yahweh” when reading aloud even though the translation said “The Lord” on the printed page. Others have used “Jehovah”. Since a printed page can only contain a single term, he and his students were stuck with this rendering. Reading an alternate term was his only and somewhat Quixotic form of protest. Imagine instead that readers were free to choose whatever translation they desire — either one of the three terms above or something else of their own devising. If a book is electronic, there’s no reason an alternate term couldn’t be selected. ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh for more discussion of the translation of  יהוה.)

Other examples might include aesthetic and stylistic decisions such as modern vs. archaic pronouns i.e. ‘you’ vs ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘your’ vs. ‘thine’ . Or the use of the phrase “become the father of” vs “begot”. The former uses modern conventional language while the latter is more concise and easier to read if used many times in the same paragraph. The decision to use archaic language (or not) is effectively a political and religious statement. The use of archaic language is a stylistic attempt to give the bible a status as an ancient and venerated text.

An interesting challenge of bible translations is that there’s no one authoritative original text. Different fragments come from different surviving documents. Translators must decide what source to use as the basis for the translation of a given passage if multiple sources contain it. However, if the translation is rendered electronically, readers could choose how different documents are weighted. For example, they might decide that the dead sea scrolls should be used where-ever possible or they might think the dead sea scrolls should be avoided.

Dynamic Translation for Other Works

Differing translations for a term is a common problem in many religious and philosophical texts. Sanskrit Śūnyatā though now usually translated as ‘emptiness’ was once translated as ‘void’ — a subtle but important difference that is thought to have led to confusion.

One decision that translators make is whether to use the original language terms instead of less exact translations. Scholars and serious connoisseurs are likely to prefer original language terms while the casual reader is likely to prefer translations. In the anime community Otaku (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku) often prefer fansubs to studio translations because they retain more Japanisms.  (A pet peeve of mine is movies that insist on translating the local currency into US dollars.)

Why not just have more print translations?

There are a few cases in which multiple print translations of a work exist. Though readers cannot create a bespoke translation, they can at least chose among the different static translations available. However, translating a work requires significant time and expertise. The number of different translations will always be limited. Additionally, with a copyrighted work, there may also be rights issues that limit the available translations. It is unlikely that a reader will find precisely the translation she’s looking for.

An objection is that readers do not want to make translation decisions. Indeed, many readers will happily accept a default rendering just as many users accept the default software settings. However, a set of translation decisions could be packaged by experts and shared with others. To make an analogy to web browsers, few users write their own add-ons but many use add-ons written by others.

Conclusion

E-books have the potential to change the nature of translations. The key is to effect a paradigm shift and shift power from the translator to the reader. Instead of being someone who produces a single rendering the translator would annotate the original word in such a way as to provide data. This data could then be used by the reader to create the precise rendering she desired.

Iris Speed Reading Class Review

This summer, attended a speed reading class offered by Iris. This post is a short review of my impression of the class. The goal is both to help people evaluate whether the class is right for them and to refresh my memory of the material.
(Note: I started this blog post shortly after the class but it was left partially finished due to other events distracting me from blogging. However, I’m recently began rereading Getting Things Done — something that I attempted because of my increased reading speed — and decided to close the loop by finishing the review and posting it.)

The class was offered at a hotel in downtown Boston and started at 10:00 in the morning and ran for 5 hours with two half hour breaks. There were 10 students in the class which I was told for smaller than the usual number.  There was an eclectic mix of people including a firefighter hoping to study for exams more efficiently, a 17 year old student at Philips Academy, and a gentleman preparing for med school. There was only 1 female student, which our instructor said was an unusual gender ratio.

The class aimed to teach 3 skills of reading: speed, comprehension, and retention. Our instructor had a background in linguistics and did a good job providing background. The average adult reader reads at 150 – 250 WPM. Most people top out at 1000 WPM. A few people can read at 2500 WPM but our instructor felt that those people were naturally gifted and that wasn’t a realistic goal. Interestingly, people read faster in the 1980s — then the average speed was 250-350 WPM.

The theory behind speed reading is that in elementary school, they teach you techniques that are good for learning to read but become bad habits once you know how to read. (Interestingly most people’s reading speed plateaus at the ages of 12 and 13.) Within the course, they do a series of drills to help you break 3 bad habits: fixation, regression, and auditory reassurance.

Fixation is the practice of pausing on each and every individual word. Instead, Iris recommends that you focus on groups of words. Regression is going back and rereading. They estimate that 30% of our reading time is spent rereading. There are 3 reasons for regression: 1.) material is not clearly written, 2.) sentences that don’t make sense until the end, 3.) bad concentration. They recommend pushing through  the material and placing a dot in the margin if you are unsure about something. That way if you are still confused after you’ve finished the material you can go back and review the dotted passages.

Auditory Reasurance is the most significant problem. This is the voice in your head narrating as you read. Many of us were taught to sound out words in grade school and still have the habit of reciting words in our head as we read. In fact, studies have shown that the vocal track is actually active while people are reading. The problem with auditory reassurance is that there are limits on how fast you can speak so if you’re reciting words in your mind while you’re reading, you limit your reading speed. During the class they had us test our reading speed by reading to ourselves and then test it again by reading aloud. I found that my speed reading aloud was within 50 wpm of reading to myself.

We went through a number of drills designed to break those habits. For example, in one of the drills, you push yourself to read faster and faster without worrying about comprehension. The idea is that you are going through the text at too high of a speed to fixate on individual words or to recite the words in your mind.

One of the techniques that they recommended was to use a pacer to control your reading speed and push yourself to read faster. A pacer is an object such as a pen, a bookmark, your hand, or your finger that you move alone the page while reading. You use the pacer to guide your eyes through the text. The use of a pacer allows you to have more direct control over your reading speed. They also claimed that by using the pacer you’re more engaged in the text and are less likely to suffer from the problems of fixation and regression. Your mind is also less likely to wounder.

The last section of the class was devoted to a technique that they called the Multiple Read Process (MRP) that they recommend for academic or scholarly material as an alternative to the normal linear reading process.  MRP has 5 steps:

1. Preview
2. Overview
3. Read
4. Final Review
5. Recite

Your initially read the title, 1st paragraph, and the last paragraph. Then you read the first sentence of every paragraph. Only then do you read the text. After reading you do a final review and finally you should try to explain the text to someone else. This process allows you to understand where the reading is going and thus read it more quickly with better comprehension. I‘d learned similar techniques in the Princeton Review back in high school but those seemed to be highly specific to standardized tests since their goals was to allow you to answer questions in a minimal amount of time for a reading that had no significance beyond those questions. By constant MRP is broadly useful. I’ve tried MRP since the class and found it to be a helpful through somewhat less enjoyable way of reading. In addition to MRP, Iris also taught mind mapping techniques that they recommend as an alternative to highlighting and underlining.

Computer Reading

According to our instructor the typical reading speed on a computer is slower than with paper reading and unlike paper reading, the use of a pacer is not practical. There are some computer speed reading applications most of which use a technique called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation(RSVP). See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentation) The Spreeder web application (http://spreeder.com/app.php) is one such RSVP tool.

Although, RSVP can be useful, I’ve found generally found the electronic reading experience to be lacking and as a computer scientist, I feel we can do better. However, that’s a complicated subject that would require its own blog post.

Conclusion

Speed reading is a useful skill but also something that requires work. Iris recommends that you spend 15 to 20 minutes a day practicing for the 3 weeks following the class. That said, I think that my reading speed improved just from taking the initial 5 hour class. Unless you’re already a very fast reader, I highly recommend learning speed reading. In fact, if I could go back in time, I would make myself take the class 20 years ago.

I recently attended Pi-Con– an annual science fiction convention in the Pioneer Valley. I’ve decided to blog about my experience with the following goals:

• Write down key ideas mentioned in panels so they won’t be lost.
• Provide an overview for people who couldn’t make it because of the hurricane.
• Provide an overview for people curious about the con.

Disclaimer: This post is based on my memory of the events as well as a few notes that I took at the convention. However, it’s possible that I’ve gotten things wrong and left out important details. Also while I’ve mentioned some of the key contributors, I know that I haven’t mentioned everybody who contributed. Please don’t feel slighted if I neglected to mention you or properly attribute your contribution. If you contact me, I’ll be happy to update the post.

Also this year I was on 8 panels. So if my account focuses on that aspect of the convention, it’s simply because that’s the way the majority of my time was spent.

This was my 5th time at Pi-Con and I served as a panelist as well as an attendee. I’m a bit a science fiction convention junkie. Although I’m interested in science fiction, I view these events primarily as a way to meet and interact with a diverse group of people in a social intellectual environment and enjoy the opportunity to learn about new ideas and perspectives. Fandom brings together an unusually diverse group of intellectually inclined people from different backgrounds. Good panels have a lot of audience interaction and often benefit greatly from audience contributions. For example, this year the “Can I go to Jail for That?” panel had lawyers as panelists but there also happened to be a municipal prosecutor in the audience who also made insightful contributions.

This year, Pi-Con took place the same weekend that  hurricane Irene hit. This reduced attendance by about a third. But there was also a great deal of camaraderie among everyone there and I was very impressed with the way the Con staff handled things. One of my treasured memories will be being one of a group of people singing along to “Come on Irene” the night before the storm hit. The hotel itself was largely unaffected by the storm — we didn’t lose power and there was no damage to the building itself. Still due to road closures and the danger of the storm itself, people chose to stay longer on Sunday. To accommodate this, the con staff added additional programming for Sunday night.

Panels

My first panel dealt with the future of libraries given the existence of eBooks and other digital technologies. This was a very well attended panel and both the panelists and the audience displayed an immense love for libraries. The traditional benefits of libraries were tauted such as:

• Trying out new authors
• Out of print books
• Inter-library loan

Another interesting discussion was libraries as a way of helping the disadvantaged. For example, Can’t afford to buy books? Go to your library. Unemployed and need a computer to job hunt? Go to your library. Don’t have heat or AC? Go to you’re library — they probably do.

We also discussed the role of privacy and libraries. Here there is an apparent contradiction between the civil libertarian ideal of pure privacy for a patron records and the benefits of knowing what materials are popular among which of your follow patrons. Anonymizing records turns out to be an extremely difficult technical problem. Many apparently innocuous projects at the Harvard libraries have needed to be curtained because of concerns that sophisticated analysis could reveal individual borrowing habits. The companies like Amazon without these same obligations to user privacy are able to provide recommendation that wouldn’t be possible for a library.

At one point, someone gave an impassioned defense of librarians as great civil libertarians standing up to NSA subpoena’s to fight for their members’ privacy. However, 10 minutes latter the same person also mentioned how helpful it was that users of their library wrote their names in the backs of books that they checked out so that you could find someone with similar tastes and determine what else they liked.

My next panel was on the subject of Immortality & Radical Life Extension. We initially spent sometime discussing the idea of the singularity and of downloading your consciousness to a computer — the most commonly cited means of achieving effective immortality though technical means. However, we soon moved away from computational suggestions and focused on biological alternatives.

Dr James Prago discussed characteristics that are common to societies that have usually long life expectancies such as Punjabi Indians. These include: high altitude, a low meat diet, some type of spirituality, respect for the elderly, and exercise. Led by Shaighn Bryant, we discussed some possible biological reasons behind these factors. For example, living at a higher altitude may lower your metabolism and societal respect for the elderly is likely to mean they get better medical care.

However, these types for minor life adjustments are unlikely to add more than 20 to 30 years of life. We discussed some more radical possibilities such as clone bodies and brain transplants. Brain transplants were actually done somewhat successfully on monkeys in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. However, because we currently don’t understand spinal tissue, recipients would be quadriplegics. (The spinal tissue problems may eventually be solved by stem cells or other means if groups like the Christopher Reeve Foundation are succesful.) Currently, you would also need anti-rejection drugs after the transplant. But if you could clone your body, anti-rejection drugs wouldn’t be necessary. Brain transplants like this are certainly a long way off and you would still need to deal with brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s but they could potentially be used to deal with diseases of the body.

Early Saturday morning, I was on a panel on Steampunk costuming. We focused on the basics of steampunk costuming and tried to show that steampunk is easy to get into.  We argued that steampunk can be done cheaply and suggested getting one good outfit that you can accessorize.

It was also pointed out that Steampunk isn’t like typical cosplay. If you’re dressing as a well known anime character everyone will know what the character is supposed to like look and there will be other people in the same outfit. By contrast, in steampunk you can be dressed as the only one of something so details matter less.

My next panel was “Essential DIY Tools”. This panel ended up focusing on 3d printers and similar devices such as CNC routers. 3d printers have the potential to fundamentally alter the way things are made if they become mainstream. Though still pricey, they’re becoming more affordable. MakerBot’s current model kit is available for around $1300 and older models can be obtained used for under a $1000. However, we were warned that you’re likely to spend around 40 hours assembling and calibrating a MakerBot 3d printer you try to assemble from kit.

One of my co-panelists, Drew Van Zandt, is affiliated with Artisan’s Asylum  (http://artisansasylum.com). I have no direct knowledge of Artisan’s Asylum but it seems like a great resource for makers in the Boston area. They have a space in Somerville with a large number of tools such as 3d printers and CNC routers as well traditional wood working tools that you can access for a monthly membership fee.

danger!awesome was another Boston area resource that was mentioned. Located in Central Square in Cambridge, they will rent you time on laser cutters.

There are also some online 3d printing shops such as Shapeways.

There were also some recommendations for tools that you can keep in your apartment including the following: sheet metal nibbler, blind rivet tool (pop rivet), hand/finger brake tool, band saw, and scroll saw.

My Other Panels

Roddenberry vs. the Artificial

This panel concerned the idea that Roddenberry’s Star Trek had a preference for the human/natural and a disdain for the artificial. For example, Data is a “Pinocchio” character who yearns to be human and unlike Star Wars there are no artificial limbs in Start Trek. The description asked the provocative question “Was Roddenberry an Able-ist”?

The actual panel turned out to be more reflective than argumentative. We started off spending some time discussing and defining the term Able-ist. Ableism is not a widely known or understood concept so the discussion was enlightening to most of the room. (Some in the audience understood and explained ableism far better than me or the other panelists.)

It was generally acknowledged that Star Trek under Roddenberry was far from perfect but the audience was generally willing forgive this given the limitations of the time and the medium. Simply including a geographically and racial diverse cast in the original Star Trek in the 1960’s was ground breaking. Arguably one show can only break so many barriers.

Similarly there were complaints that Star Trek doesn’t have any obese or unattractive people. But that was acknowledged to be a problem with television in general. (Rosanne is the exception that proves the rule.) Indeed, Dr. James Prego described the pressure that his actor friends felt to get in shape. Unless the actors — male of female — were in very good shape, the types of roles they could play were very restricted.

Lulzsec, Anonymous, and Internet Vigilantism

We started with an interesting discussion of the history of Lulzsec , Anonymous, and other actors such as the Jester. This quickly led to a debate on the ethics of hacking into systems to show they’re insecure. Some argued that no system is perfectly secure and so compromising and defacing a system proves nothing and is purely destructive. Some others countered that some systems are more secure than others and that it’s better for a site’s vulnerabilities to be publicly exploited by Lulzsec than silently exploited by the Russian mafia.

One of the things that I really like about conventions is that putting people from different backgrounds together often leads to unique perspectives. Such was the case with this panel. Justine Graykin suggested that it says something about our society that having Amazon taken down temporarily would be considered such a big deal. People responded with a variety of technical and economic arguments. Amazon’s EC2 hosts many sites such as Twitter and Netflix which would also be taken down if Amazon went offline. People earn their living on Amazon. Loss of money leads to a loss of jobs. Still she made an interesting point about the need for immediacy in our society.

“Love and the Robosexual”

Late Saturday, there was a panel on “Love and the Robosexual” discussing our fascination with robot characters. I was an audience member not a panelist but found it interesting nevertheless. One interesting point was when a panelist suggested that many women are interested in emotionally unavailable men. She theorized that the appeal of robots such as Data and robot-like characters such as Spock is their lack of emotional capacity which makes them the ultimate example of emotional unavailability.

Hurricon/ Extendacon

As mentioned above, the con got extended due to the hurricane. We had a series of bonus panels on Sunday evening which we termed Hurricon. I ended up on a network neutrality panel specifically focused on the wired vs. wireless distinction with Will Frank as copanelist. The attendance was relatively small since many people had already left ahead of the storm but the discussion was good. We came up with the term ‘network bias’ to mean the opposite of ‘network neutrality’. (The term may have been used elsewhere but this was the first time I’d heard it.) There was an interesting argument over whether given a limit data plan, wireless companies would be morally justified in limiting traffic or applications to protect customers from going over their data allowance. There are certainly cases in which this type of paternalistic behavior could benefit less technically sophisticated customers. For example, if someone has a 200 MB data plan, it probably wouldn’t make sense for them to steam movies through Netflix using their cellular data. On the other hand, it is questionable whether cell phone companies be trusted and it would seem naive to assume they wouldn’t abuse this power. For example, a company might wish to block voice calls over Skype but allow Netflix streaming.

Conclusion

Though hurricane Irene limited this year’s Pi-Con attendance, it was still an excellent convention for those who were able to attend. The combination of insightful discussion and plus the convention camaraderie in face of the storm made it a truly memorable and enjoyable experience.

For those who missed Pi-Con this year, next year’s Pi-Con (Pi-Con 7) will take place next summer August 17-19, 2012 in Enfield, CT. Pi-Con has always been enjoyable and I plan to continue attending as long as I live within driving distance of the pioneer valley.

 

UPDATE:  Justine Graykin has also blogged about Pi-Con. You can read her report here.