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I have wanted to write something for a long time in regards to the increasing amount of censorship in the world. Censorship in places like China, Russia or the Middle East seem almost unavoidable, but when a country who claims to pride themselves on freedom, like the United States of America, begins to prosecute people because they are exercising their right to freedom of expression, we know that we are dealing with a bigger problem. And I, as an American, am offended and deeply afraid that the foundation on which my country was based is quickly collapsing.

First, I would like to remind President Obama, and other members of the government, of what exactly is stated in our First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

The first Amendment : Religion and Expression

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This means, and has always meant, that I can say and write and express whatever I want. It is my right as an American. If I want to call the president every four letter expletive in existence or perhaps say that I think he is a slimy, no good, corrupt, selfish son of a gun (there might be children reading this), I can. It is my right.

Therefore, it is also the right of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, to also say or write or express whatever he wants. And of all countries that might be prosecuting him, the United States should not be one of them.

Has my government forgotten the foundation of our country? Or are they scared that just maybe the American people will discover the corruption that is going on behind our backs? Is prosecution for “espionage” admittance that the information is true?

Whatever the answers are to these questions, it should still holds true that Wikileaks and any other media should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they like. If the information is not correct, the government should not be worried and certainly should not be wasting tax dollars in the justice system to prosecute.

If the U.S. chooses to attack the first amendment, I vote that we also attack the second amendment, which is the right to have a militia and to bear arms. Maybe if we didn’t have so many people running around with guns uselessly killing people, Assange would not have so many things to write about, now would he?

Interestingly, there are many areas of the world that still speak Portuguese or are still influenced by Portuguese colonization, which took place hundreds of years ago.

One interesting story that I came across is that of Goa, which is located in South West India. Goa is the country’s smallest state in area yet the richest. The Portuguese influence is still strong there. Vasco da Gama is its largest city and Margao (Margão) still portrays the cultural influence of the Portuguese.

The Portuguese colonized Goa in the early 16^th century and remained its ruling power until it was annexed by India in 1961.

In that year, the official language was changed from Portuguese to English. But the major challenge that Goa faces today, 50 years after its liberation, is that all of its major laws are still written in Portuguese and have not been translated to English. The chairman of the Goa Law Commission, Ramakant Khalap, said that “the lack of infrastructure and expertise has kept on hold state’s plans to translate these century-old laws into English” according to an article in Daily News and Analysis.

Although Khalap has tried to translate these laws, it seems that he has had little luck finding an official translator that could translate laws whose authenticity would not be challenged in court. “The only option left to break this imbroglio is to adopt new framework of laws through our Legislative Assembly,” Khalap said. That seems a little risky if you ask me.

Dear Mr. Khalap – Need a great translation service provider? Let me introduce you to Ccaps…

There are several new efforts to revive the ancient, if not nearly extinct, language of Aramaic, which was spoken by Jesus Christ. Today, Aramaic is spoken by a small number of tribes spread out throughout the world and the number of speakers is decreasing rapidly.

Oxford University has recently added the 3,000 year old language to its list of available classes. There are 56 people learning the endangered language, more than the number of students studying Greek at the University. The lessons were designed by Dr. John Ma, University classicist teacher and leader of the group Project Arshama, whose goal is to encourage the study of the Persian Empire and the linguistic landscape of the ancient and modern near East. “The project is focused on one of the treasures of the vast Bodleian library, the 13 Arshama letters, written on leather in the Persian empire in the 5th century BC – priceless to scholars because so many documents on parchment or clay have not survived,” according to an article in The Guardian.

Jesus’s prayer in Aramaic

Professor Ma shares some interesting Aramaic phrases, which can be seen below:

• “Shelam biznah qodemay, ap tamah qodemayk shelam,” from a letter written 2,500 years ago, translates as “Peace here before me, and also peace over there before you,” but colloquially means “I am well, and hope you’re well too”.
• “Anah rahem leki” (from a man to a woman) and “Anah rahmah lak” (from a woman to a man), which means “I love you”.
• “Shelam we sherarat saggi hawseret leki” for “I have sent you peace and much strength”.

Interestingly, there is a congruent effort to make the Talmud, one of the central texts of Jewish law, more readily available as well. The Talmud is written in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic and “is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history” according to Wikipedia.

Davka Corporation is releasing an iPhone App for Talmud students “that includes more than 500 of the most common Hebrew-Aramaic words, expressions, and abbreviations used in the Talmud, complete with English translation, in an easy-to-use, scrollable dictionary format,” according to an article at iPadmodo.

Translation and Localization have a direct effect on a company’s probability of increasing its revenue according to Renato Beninatto in his analysis of the article “The effects of linguistic skills on the export performance of French, German and Swedish SMEs” by Professor Ingela Bel Habib, a Swedish PhD and Independent researcher.

Renato explains that in relation to the connection between International trade and translation, language becomes an enabler and a multiplier. What he means by enabler is that language, or translating of a product into a multitude of languages, enables a company to make a product available to a much wider range of consumers. Language is a multiplier because it literally multiplies the company’s ability to continually multiply its international sales.  Once a company starts selling in various languages it is very rare that it would return to selling the product in just one language and thus naturally it continues multiplying.

The study goes on to prove this theory by demonstrating the correlation between multilingualism and economic competitiveness. Swedish, French and German small to medium enterprises all use multilingualism as an export strategy but use it to varying degrees.  For example, only 27% of Swedish SMEs have a multilingual export strategy and 20% of Swedish companies feel they have lost exportation contracts due to language barriers. While 63% of Danish SMEs have a multilingual export strategy in place and only 4% of Danish companies believe they lost contracts due to language barriers. France and Germany showed many similar correlations.

For more information, you can check out Renato’s blog at http://www.l10n411.com

Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, says Americans need to rewire our world.

Rewire our media, our Internet, our education, the ways in which we communicate, our global understanding and our policies that affect how we relate to immigrants and freedom of expression.

Wow, that is a lot! So why do we need to change all of these things and where do we start? It is shown that Americans live in a very egocentric segregated world. We are not only segregated from the rest of the world, but we are also segregated among our cultural groups within our own country. Studies show that only 12% of Americans pay attention to International news in comparison to 35% in the 1970’s. So as the world becomes more global and world communication becomes easier, US news coverage becomes less and less globalized. Why is that?

Well, according to a speech by Alisa Miller, CEO of Public Radio International, American networks and Internet sites find it cheaper and easier to cover the death of Anna Nicole Smith (about 2,640,000 results on Google) than important international stories like Korea agreeing to dismantle nuclear facilities (about 581,000 results on Google). These major networks only cover about 12% of international news and have reduced the number of foreign news bureaus by half. With the exceptions of three one-person ABC news bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and Mumbai, there are no local news bureaus in all of Africa, Asia and South America. And most of this 12% of international news covers the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ethan Zuckerman says there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is an organization called Yeeyan, which is a news site dedicated to translating English news into Chinese. They have over 150,000 volunteer translators that look for relevant news everyday in English and translate it into Chinese so that the news can be shared with billions of Chinese readers.

Yeeyan uses translation as a bridge between cultures, letting Chinese and English speakers see the world from each other’s perspective. Zuckerman argues, if Yeeyan can do this, why can’t we? One organization trying is called Global Voices, which provides links to news from all over the world. “Global Voices is a community of more than 300 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.”

The bottom line is that Americans, and perhaps people all over the world, need to put more pressure on media networks to cover stories that are relevant from a world perspective. News networks need to feel a sense of responsibility that what they are covering will educate people, make them more conscious and give them a sense that they belong to a larger global community.