Slides presented at Facebook talk for IMUG meeting June 18th, 2015 by Ed Bice from Meedan. 21,000 miles of social media translation is a story about language, the internet, understanding others, and Paul Salopek's walk around the world.

1. June 18, 2015
IMUG Silicon Valley
Building 14, Facebook Campus
Bridge for Out of Eden Walk
21,000 Miles of Social Media in Translation

3. A MEEDAN PROJECT
Meedan Our Work3
Current Projects
2012
Al-Masry Al-Youm

4. A MEEDAN PROJECT
Meedan Design and development4
Meedan and Translation
Bridge is a project that builds on almost a decade of working
on web, and, specifically, social media, translation work
2007-11
News.Meedan with
IBM Watson
2011
Speak2Tweet, Translating
the Arab Revolutions, and
Wikipedia Translation
2011-2013
Nurani and Nurani Library
at Cambridge University ,
C2C,
Economist, and Guardian
2013-15
Visiting Scholar AUC
Graduate Course on Social
Media Translation
2021
Tierra Del Fuego, Language
Graph, Bridge for Social
Translation

5. A MEEDAN PROJECT
Meedan Design and development5
Meedan and Translation

6. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW Project Background6
Out of Eden Walk

7. A MEEDAN PROJECT
IMUG Talk Where this is going7
Mapping Tonights Talk
Thank you, Hello
Thank you, Goodbye
Meedan Out of Eden Walk
Map of the Talk
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Linguistic Diversity
✱ ✱
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Engandered Languages
Internet Language Distribution
Social Media AD 324
Slow Ethnography
Bridge for Social Translation
Product Roadmap

8. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW The Route8
Out of Eden Walk Route

9. Photo © John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

10. Photo © John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

11. Photo © John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

12. Photo © John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

13. Photo © John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

14. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Translation14
Linguistic Diversity
Cristina Calderón is the
last full-blooded
speaker of a language
called Yaghán. Paul
visited her at his finish
point in Tierra Del
Fuego before starting
his journey.
Photo © Paul Salopek /National Geographic

15. “A lot of what I’m writing about is the reclamation of
memory, so I wanted to meet her. More than 5,000
languages are in peril.
I want to carry this woman’s words with me
metaphorically across the world as a small light.
I recorded her words and I hope she’s still there
when I make it to that part of the world. You have to
start a circle somewhere to close it. She was the start.”

16. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Translation16
Linguistic Diversity
There are 7,102 known
languages alive in the
world today
copyright SCMP Graphic @aLucasLopez sources: Ethnologue, CIA-US, Unesco, United Nations, University of Dusseldorf, Washington Post

17. A MEEDAN PROJECT
Bridge Current Language Distribution17
Currently, English- and
Chinese-speaking users
comprise more than half of
total internet users
Only 16% of Internet users
belong to language
community outside of the
top ten languages
Rest
16%
Malay
3%
French
3%
German
3%
Russian
3%
Japanese
4%
Portuguese
4%
Arabic
5%
Spanish
8%
Chinese
23%
English
29%
84% of the Internet
is accessed
through just ten
language
communities
Current Internet Language Distribution
% of Total Internet Users
! http://internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

18. A MEEDAN PROJECT
Bridge Projected Growth18
Chinese overtakes English as
dominant language, but the two
languages together will comprise
less than half of all internet users
Nearly a third of internet users will
not be speaking a Top 10 language
% of Total Internet Users
! http://internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
100% GROWTH IN NON TOP TEN
by 2020 language diversity on the
internet will have non- top ten
languages almost equal to EN and
CN internet. Social translation will
be increasingly necessary
Rest
35%
Malay
1%
French
2%
German
5%
Russian
5% Japanese
1%
Portuguese
4%
Arabic
2%
Spanish
6%
Chine
20%
English
19%
Projected Language Growth 2020

19. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW Philosophy19
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Social Media from AD 342
“If you [write to
me]you will have
done me a favor: for
we shall have the
impression,
through our letters,
of seeing one
another face to face.
“Send Soteris the
puppy,” wrote
someone named
Akulas to a friend,
“since she now spends
her time by herself in
the country.”

20. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW Philosophy20
Slow Journalism
“To be slow is an insult. An epithet. A flaw. If you are slow, you
get scooped. You are left behind. You become irrelevant. You fail.
This adoration of speed has only intensified as the Web takes the
lead in disseminating news. Thousands of micro-headlines
bloom every day, every hour, across the globe. Watching
breaking-news headlines churn online is like watching plankton
surfacing and sinking ceaselessly, endlessly and in the end
incomprehensibly, on a vast yet shallow digital sea.
This is why I’m walking across the world.”

21. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Product21
Translating Social Media
Slow journalism does not
mean analogue
journalism. Meedan’s
translated snapshots of
the social media
landscape provide an
unexpected digital
ethnography of the
remote areas Paul is
walking through.

23. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Partners23
Partners and roles
Geolocation: Dolly Project
The University of Kentucky and the Oxford Internet Institute provide
geotagged social Media to the Meedan team drawn from a
geographic and temporal radius from Paul’s arrival to a milestone
It takes a village to pull together each one of these milestones and the
result is a novel and important digital ethnography of the social media
ephemera that Paul is walking through on his journey
Translation: Translators
Without Borders (TWB)
Our team in Cairo and SF work to take an initial data dump from the
Dolly project and curate Social Media - currently just Tweets and
Instagram posts - down to a target set of 50-100 artifacts we will push
across to the translators
Curation: Volunteers
We then work with the team at TWB to generate both translations
and annotations (Translation notes) which are published onto the
National Geographic site for the Out of Eden Walk

24. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Partners24
Dolly Project aka ‘Floating Sheep’

25. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Partners25
Partners and roles
Geolocation: Dolly Project
The University of Kentucky and the Oxford Internet Institute provide
geotagged social Media to the Meedan team drawn from a
geographic and temporal radius from Paul’s arrival to a milestone
It takes a village to pull together each one of these milestones and the
result is a novel and important digital ethnography of the social media
ephemera that Paul is walking through on his journey
Translation: Translators
Without Borders (TWB)
Our team in Cairo and SF work to take an initial data dump from the
Dolly project and curate Social Media - currently just Tweets and
Instagram posts - down to a target set of 50-100 artifacts we will push
across to the translators
Curation: Volunteers
We then work with the team at TWB to generate both translations
and annotations (Translation notes) which are published onto the
National Geographic site for the Out of Eden Walk

26. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Partners26
Translators Without Borders

27. A MEEDAN PROJECT
2014
Bridge
Version 0.5
Our first prototype ran on Google
Spreadsheets and a ‘hack’ of our Checkdesk
Platform
27 Bridge Design and development

28. A MEEDAN PROJECT
2014
Bridge
On the National
Geographic OOEW site
The embed is generated through Bridge’s
API - served onto the Nat Geo page
28 Bridge Design and development

29. A MEEDAN PROJECT
2015
Bridge
Version 0.7
We are now able to generate muli-column
views of the translation object and create
embeds that are sharable across the web
29 Bridge Design and development

30. A MEEDAN PROJECT
2015
Bridge
Version 2
Each translation object can be shared via
social network or embedded across the web.
30 Bridge Design and development

31. A MEEDAN PROJECT
2015
Bridge
Version 1.0
Fall 2015
Translation Revision
Collaborative Translation
Expanded Annotations
Story/Channel Creation
Tagging
IOS and Android Mobile Applications
31 Bridge Design and development

32. A MEEDAN PROJECT
OOEW/Bridge Product32
Where is Bridge Heading
Language
Graph
Tailored for the specific needs of social media translation, the Bridge
Language Graph provides intelligent dictionary and glossary content
and translation memories that augment translators’ work.
With a core goal of increasing crosslingual engagement, Bridge will help to
make translation the Internet’s newest embedded social gesture, alongside
the familiar comment, favorite and share.
Reputation
System
Our reputation and review system ensures editorial oversight on content
generated within the app while encouraging participation from users with
a variety of skill sets. Our patented HDNLT technology intelligently
assembles single translations based on multiple contributions.
Analytics
Crosslingual
Engagement
Our critical metric of success is engagement across languages. All
Bridge content will need to be portable and shareable, with the aim
of increasing the efficacy of multilingual users who want to help
spread user generated content.

33. Thank You
@meedan www.meedan.com ed@meedan.com