Category Archives: Work

Phraselator

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I have been out walking in the woods lately – really long walks.  I load up my mobile with some podcasts for my treks and recently had some familiar voices pass through my headphones.  Freelance journalist Philippe Morin in Inuvik, Northwest Territories put together a story for CBC Spark back in March 2011 about the use of weatherproof, handheld military translation devices called Phraselators and how they are being used to assist Inuvialuktun language education in the Canadian High Arctic.

As I have mentioned before, I spent 4 wonderful years as a community school administrator and teacher in Aklavik, NWT.  I often reflect and remember the people I had the good fortune of living and working beside.  I landed in Aklavik just before Nunavut became a new Canadian territory and just as the federal government became involved in funding initiatives to bring internet connectivity to the Arctic.

As an educator with a background in programming, I became the network/systems administrator for the school and was tapped for work with the NWT Ministry of Education, Culture, and Employment to explore and develop curricula for this newly arrived medium.  It was an exciting time to live and work in the Arctic.

Many of the voices in this interview are of people I worked with – it was so good to hear their voices again.

[audio:http://networkeffects.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/cbc_report_machinetranslation.mp3]

Arctic Translation [MP3]

The Immediate Aspect of Radio

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Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

(Understanding Media, McLuhan)

“ … misunderstanding of the nature of the medium rendered the restraining policies [the press criticising radio and tv] quite futile. Such has always been the case, most notoriously in government censorship of the press and of the movies. Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the “content,” which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming.”

(Understanding Media, McLuhan)

If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, […]. All those gestural qualities […] come back in the dark, and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the senses, not just the sight of the action. So much do-it-yourself, or completion and “closure” of action, develops a kind of independent isolation in the young that makes them remote and inaccessible.

(Understanding Media, McLuhan)