A damned democracy and a violent peace: Groundviews

Read over 2,600 times and generating nearly 150 comments to date (well over 30,000 words), The ‘Sinhala-Nationalist’s Burden’ by Kalana Senaratne critiques Gomin Dayasiri’s idea of and primacy given to Sinhala nationalism. Kalana avers that, “Approaching the Tamil people with a self-made list of grievances is the wrong place and the wrong way to start [...]

Machine translation for peacebuilding and conflict transformation?

Just a few days ago I noted in Real time machine translation: The present and future that, 25 years hence, will it really matter if we are really monolingual? By then, would multilingual social and political interactions, and even person to person conversations, be mediated by some form of mobile, real time, contextual translation? In [...]

The demise of G.ho.st: Two years too late

TechCrunch reports that G.ho.st will shut down in two weeks. I extensively reviewed G.ho.st in 2008 after fantastic claims made in the media and by its makers that the online OS was somehow so novel as to contribute even to peacebuilding in the Middle East. Two years ago I called G.ho.st a sham, destined for [...]

Real time machine translation: The present and future

An inappropriately titled new story and live demonstration nevertheless showcases how far technology has evolved when it comes to machine translation guided by context and nuance as much as words themselves. The first time I saw a technology demonstration in this regard was at Strong Angel III in San Diego, in 2006. The real time [...]