Like many others, I'm impressed by the Collateral Murder video leaked to the web. I have suggested to the leakers that they should distribute the transcripts in .srt format. The
transcripts here... they're
not really that optimal for the international diffusion of Collateral
Murder.
With srt files, mixing the
movie file with subtitles in more languages would be easier.
Moreover, it would be necessary to include in the .srt the explanatory captions of the video,
which are all in English. Those explanations are part of the film, they should
be translated and put in circulation around the web. I volunteer for Basque and Spanish versions.
I've seen several of the movies nominated for this year's Oscars. I'm not particularly impressed with the new extended 10-movie lot for Best Movie. The 4 movies nominated in the Foreign Language category are quite more interesting.
One particular thing that I've noticed in those films. Minority languages. There's dialogue in Yiddish in A serious man, Corsican in Un prophete, and Quechua in The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada). That's quite remarkable.
As for Quechua in La teta asustada, it was touching when the actress Magaly Solier received a main prize in the Berlinale last year and she began talking and singing in her language (click the video here to watch it). The Quechua dialogue in that movie has been translated already into Basque for the Basque subtitle archive. That's a site that I created: I mentioned here time ago, and now it has its own domain: azpitituluak.com
There's another of the Oscar nominees already with Basque subtitles: Up, by Pixar. It's so bad Disney España decides to offer nothing at all in Basque. Other distributors produce movies or DVDs with dubbed Basque or subtitles in our language, but as for Disney, nothing at all comes from them. Looks like official negationist policy. So, it's OK that people take their place regardless of copyright. The only things Disney produces in Basque are licensed printed storybooks. Just crap merchandising: Disney may produce decent movies (Pixar's are excellent, certainly) but those storybooks, they are worth nothing.
Other subtitles around: these for Ten Canoes, in some aboriginal Australian language. And coming soon, for Atanarjuat (a film in Inuktitut), and for The Road, the movie based in the novel by Cormac McCarthy, in which the director of photography is Javier Agirresarobe, a fellow from Eibar, my hometown.
Maybe this new domain for the subtitle site marks also the revival of this blog, The English Cemetery. We'll see.
Some months ago, I found a very interesting piece at BoingBoing, about this type of Sardinian cheese full of worms. It was particularly notable to me that it was described as illegal food.
Is there illegal food? Yes, there is. Rhinoceros parts for witchcraft
recipes should be illegal, in my opinion, but other things have been
outlawed in the name of public health, regulations of agro products
and markets, and that's just a pity, if not an
injustice and a loss for human culture.
Among food that can be labeled illegal
nowadays is the dessert of my childhood. A marvelous natural meal that
we used to have every spring, gatzatua. It's some sort of yoghourt common
to several peoples in the Iberian peninsula. We Basques call it gatzatua
or mamia. In Spanish it's cuajada and the term seems to have no English
counterpart although, from what I see in the Wikipedia, it could enter
into the Curd category.
The thing is that nowadays you cannot
prepare natural gatzatua at home. And that's because this thing
held in the boy’s hand is illegal. That's ligarra, rennet in English
according to Wikipedia. And you cannot buy that anymore. When I was
a child, butchers and farmers freely sold it, and we used to have a
ligarra in the kitchen throughout the spring. Not anymore. Finally,
after several years without seeing one, I got one on
the black market. And we could make natural gatzatua. Here's the description
of the illegal offence.
Ligarra is the desiccated stomach of
a little lamb, sacrificed in its 2nd or 3rd week of life, when it only
has been fed mother's milk. More precisely, ligarra/rennet is the content
of that stomach, a mixture of fermenting enzymes and bacterial fauna.
Ligarra has been made
illegal because the treatment of certain viscera is now exclusive to
official slaughterhouses, and from there, these parts
are not given back to farmers or to butcher shops, but are processed
by the food industry. Some companies, then, sell something they call
Cuajada as if it were Yoghourt, but the product has nothing to do with
the real thing.
So, this time, since
we got a real and illegal ligarra, we prepared gatzatua. This way:
Put
some hot water in a cup. Cut open the rennet without fear, and take
some bits to dissolve them in the cup. It doesn't naturally dissolve,
you just press it a little bit.
Now you take
another cup, and you pour the product through a strainer, so hard bits
and hair (remember this is the real contents of a sacrificed lamb's
stomach) don’t go through.
The second ingredient is sheep milk.
This, also, cannot be bought nowadays directly from farmers or shepherds,
but somehow it's easier to get it indirectly in the Basque Country.
Besides, there is processed dairy sheep milk. Last week, we made gatzatua
with milk of both types, illegal and legal. The one for the children's
trial and these photos is bottled (of the Ultzama brand), thus legal.
So, heat the milk, putting a piece of
cinnamon on it. If it's natural/illegal, boil it, then wait until it
cools body temperature. For bottled sheep milk, just heat until that
level, don't boil it.
When we have warm milk at the ideal
temperature, put it in the dessert cups. For each cup, add
a little spoon of liquid ligarra/rennet. Stir it
just a little, then leave it alone.
Don't move the cups for two hours. Then
it's done. The milk solidifies, you turn
the cup vertically and it holds. That's gatzatua ready to be eaten.
It can be consumed immediately, but
putting it in the fridge for a little bit is good, as cold it's ideal.
The product will last for 3 days in the fridge nicely, as well. The
way to eat it is by pouring sugar or honey over it, and just eat
it with the spoon, but, remember, never stir
it: this is not yoghourt. If the initial sweetness gets eaten up, put
more sugar on and keep on eating.
There it is. Nice and sweet gatzatua.
Maybe the sight of a sacrificed lamb's
stomach full of bacteria is shocking to you, but the final product is
far from being anything close to those Sardinian cheese worms or illegal foods out there that tend to be shocking by nature, it seems.
Gatzatua is a very gentle dairy product, a soft dessert for everybody,
some kind of yoghourt that will remind you mildly of cheese, perhaps.
Preparation is also just 10 minutes
for a 10 year old boy, as you can see (plus the 2-hour wait). That's
natural fast food, not a complicated gastronomical oddity. It's just
the regulations that make it hard, having outlawed natural rennet and
sheep milk.
If Americans can shout Gora Obama (and I join those of them that have rejoiced with the outcome of the election), Basques can also speak in English. Here's a nice little video. It's based in the famous I'm a Pc / I'm a Mac Apple commercials. In this case, children at a Basque school defend their PCs... PCs running with free software in Basque: Ubuntu, Firefox, OpenOffice. Better than Macs, certainly :-)
This leaflet featured below (click to see larger) encourages the citizens of Nevada to support Barack Obama and vote for him. And it's in Basque!
It's not new, it was distributed in some rallies back in January for the Nevada primaries, when Obama rivalled with John Edwards and Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination.
And this little video is from the primaries, as well. Dave Bieter, the Basque-speaking mayor of Boise, Idaho, encourages the audience in some Idahoan sportshall to shout Gora Obama! (Basque for Viva Obama!). A chronicle of that caucus event here, and a longer video that explains how Bieter got the audience speak unanimously Basque.
I don't know is for the current main presidential race basque Obamistas in Nevada or Idaho have tried again with Basque propaganda. But, anyway, Gora Obama! Bozka Obama!
I had the pleasure to personally thank that to Mr. Lessig after the talk. It was an interesting and inspiring presentation, basically the one he has been delivered since he has been preparing his new book Remix. In this video, you get the basics, although not the Basque example, of course.
I particularly liked the analogy he made at the end. Copyright and laws about intellectual property are a broken system; yet, just like in the USSR of time, nobody in the Politburo dares to say so or proposes the substantial and risky changes that need to be taken. In that context, reform is the acceptable way out in opinion of Mr. Lessig, who sees himself as a Gorbachev, of course, not as Yeltsin eager to destroy it all. Reform is the way, Lessig told us, because the alternatives are worse:
Complete prohibitionism, control of Internet and technologies, official labelling as criminals for our children (a moral danger, particularly, in Lessig's opinion).
A revolution wipes out copyright.
Well, I guess I'm more a yeltsinist than a gorbachovian, but anyway, it was delightful to hear the well balanced and very intelligent proposals of Mr. Lessig. It was a pity that they couldn't bring the newly printed Remix books to the presentation.
When I read this announcement of Lawrence Lessig's forthcomming book Remix, the definition of the issues covered struck a chord on me, particularly point #1:
"(1) that this war on our kids has got to stop, "(2) that we need to celebrate (and support) the rebirth of a remix culture, and "(3) that a new form of business (what I call the "hybrid") will flourish as we better enable this remix creativity.
As a father, I think that it's an obligation for us parents to foster knowledge and creativity in our children, enrich their cultural experience, open them to the world, and teach them appretiate their background, their own unique culture (in the case of our Basque family, a tiny linguistic minority's culture).
How can do that without sharing, inter-crossing ideas, re-producing stories, mixing the worldbeat with the local heart? The Internet and new technologies have make much of those processes easier, and more exciting, so it's an opportunity that we cannot let our children loose.
The closed model of intellectual property works against all of that. And yes, the Remix definition for that phenomenon is very much correct: war on our kids. Let's stop that war. Let's free culture for our children.
This summer I have embarked in another little project: some movies with foreign soundtrack came into my hands. So I decided that I could produce Basque subtitles for them, and then show the movies to my children. I got subtitles in English and Spanish from the web, and translated them. Cousins and friends have gathered with our children more than once here and there in summertime, so the shows had quite an open audience. And, well, they loved it. Basque children of ages 9 or 10 can perfectly follow English or Japanese animation with subtitles in Basque. And I have enjoyed their experience so much... Besides, I think that this may help the children to improve their English (at least).
So, I've decided to share that, and I've set up a website for the exchange and promotion of Basque subtitles. Files for exchange and documentation in a wiki, so other parents and aficionados can share my joy. It's barely legal. But, as for Basque children, there's probably no other way to consume Basque versions of Pixar or Ghibli studios masterpieces.
Last friday, I took the chance to talk about this visit, and mention this idea from Remix, that "war on our kids", in the talk that I gave at this seminar. I gave my talk in Basque, and it was translated by interpreters into 3 more languages. But my presentation, at least, I prepared it in English. I know that a presentation out of context doesn't help much, but here it is, anyway.
Some web products that have been localised into Basque over the last weeks, in all three cases, by means of user collaboration:
Skype: of course, there was no problem to talk in Basque... but now we have the interface as well. The euskara.lang package can be found in this thread. The company that employs my wife Marije (Emun, language consulting services) helped with the translation.
Ning. The members of a Ning based network, Zirikteroak (devoted to the use of IT's in the school) localised their app, and by the way, any other Ning community can now be managed in Basque. The localisation files are zipped here, and installation instructions can be found here.
Euskaltube is the Basque youtube, a personal project of a dynamic guy, Haritz Rodriguez. Now that the site is one year old, he's dared to add audio (mp3) archiving and sharing capabilities now to its website. I don't know if copyright zealots will let him fly free, but I am very much glad that such a platform exists now in Basque.
I've tested it with some tunes, and it works nicely. You can share the files using its flash player, but also letting others download the mp3. As an example, here you have a couple of songs than I once mentioned in this Cemetery. A basque lullaby, Pello Joxepe, performed by Paco Ibáñez was plagiarized by Naomi Shemer in Israel, where it's a very well known patriotic tune, Yerushayalim shel Zahav, Jerusalem of Gold.
This is Paco Ibañez signing it (Imanol Lartzabal helps him):
And this is Yerushalayim shel Zahav in the voice of Shuly Nathan.
Download both from here and here, check for Audioa eskuratu, that's where the mp3 files are.
Next week there will be a Congress in Bilbao: Challenges of Minority Languages in the Globalization Age. Basque and foreign speakers will exchange our views, and I will by one of those on the Basque side, as the organizers, the Basque branch of Unesco (part of the World Languages Network), offered me a spot to talk about Basque presence in Internet. So, my talk will be on October 10th: The highs and the lows of Basque on the Internet. There will be simultaneous translation between Basque, Spanish and English, so I'll talk in Basque but probably I'll use a powerpoint presentation written in English.
Participation in the congress is open, until the 220 places available are filled. You can apply in this website. The venue is the Euskalduna Palace of Bilbao.
This is the program:
9th October
9.00 - 9.30 WELCOMING RECEPTION 9.30 - 10.00 PRESENTATION: Basque government, Provincial Administration, EUDEL (Association of Basque Municipalities) 10.00 - 11.00 Talk: “Euskaltzaindia, a minority language academy and its challenges in a globalized world”. Andres Urrutia, President of Euskaltzaindia, Royal Academy of the Basque Language 11.00 - 12.00. Talk: “Language Rights. Human Development and Linguistic Diversity in a Globalizing World”. Suzanne Romaine, Merton College at the University of Oxford 12.30 - 13.30 Talk: "More rather than Less: Minority Language Rights in the Age of Globalisation?”. Fernand de Varennes. Murdoch University (Australia) 16.00 - 17.00. Talk: “Using Electronic Technology for Language Revitalization”. Delyth Prys, Bangor University (Wales) 17.00 - 18.00 Talk: “internet.cat: The Catalan on the Internet and Internet in Catalan. Difficulties (and opportunities) of Minority Languages in Cyberspace”. Amadeu Abril, ESADE Law School, Universitat Ramon Llull de Barcelona
10th October
09.30 - 10.30. Talk: “UNESCO and Multilingualism in Cyberspace”. Misako Ito. UNESCO – Information Society Division – Universal Access and Preservation Section 10.30 - 11.30. Talk: “The highs and the lows of Basque on the Internet”, Luistxo Fernandez, CodeSyntax and Tagzania founder. 12.00 - 13.00. Talk: “Oral Tradition Teaching: What Kind of Education? The Case of Griots in Mali”. Simon Toulou, University of Geneva 13.00 - 14.00 Talk: "Towards a multilingual society: issues and practices, some examples". Marielle Rispail, IUFM Nice 14.00 - 14.15 CLOSING CEREMONY
