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Ivan,<br>
<br>
I just read your post about your visit to Arahuay. I suppose anybody
would be astounded at such a report. Thank you for such an interesting
read.<br>
<br>
I recently joined the mailing list because I want to help with the
dictionaries on the OLPC. Interestingly enough, this is the first
thing the teachers in Arahuay complained about. I quote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote>“The kids really want an activity to learn English, but
there isn’t one
on the laptops” responds Mr. Navarro. “The 1st and 2nd graders all use
an online dictionary, but the Internet connection gets slow with that
many users. <b>It’d be nice if a dictionary was on the XO directly.</b>”<br>
</blockquote>
It seems to me that such a dictionary could be rather quickly created.
Software exists for dictionaries (although it is in need of quite a bit
of improvement). As for the information itself, I will reproduce my
argument here:<br>
<br>
<blockquote>
<p>... no current copyright law could govern a work created before
1900,
and there is little or no doubt that nearly every language in existence
had dictionaries before then. The first Chinese dictionaries were
created around 100AD. European dictionaries started appearing some 3 to
5 hundred years ago. During the 1800's missionaries compiled
dictionaries of many, many languages. Copyright was not automagic back
then, either.
</p>
<p>The only reasonable conclusion is that there are Public Domain
dictionaries in nearly every conceivable language, and that these
dictionaries merely need to be digitized in order to be used. Many of
these dictionaries use the Latin alphabet which is well supported by
many Free and Non-Free OCR programs. Why are we, then, limited to a few
dictionaries in English and wordlists of similar terms in a handful of
languages?
</p>
</blockquote>
I would like to hear your and the library lists opinions on this
subject as it seems the first book any library should have is a
dictionary. Further, it should be relatively easy for the OLPC and
Free Software worlds to have a comprehensive (perhaps even exhaustive),
multilingual, offline dictionary.<br>
<br>
I can already imagine a ton of interesting things we could add to that,
but a nice bug free dictionary should be a priority.<br>
<br>
Thank you for your time. Please tell me what you think. I will look
forward to hearing from you. <br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<br>
<br>
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<td>
LuYu <img src="cid:part1.06030409.09090609@gmail.com">
</td>
<td>
<img src="cid:part2.00010407.01090009@gmail.com"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>"How a society produces its information environment goes to
the very core of freedom."
</p>
</td>
</tr>
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<td> <br>
</td>
<td>
-- Yochai Benkler
</td>
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<br>
<br>
Ivan Krstić wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midC18CF339-FE65-488C-9B3F-358BBAD3F166@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Mar 7, 2008, at 3:28 AM, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:info@olpc-peru.info">info@olpc-peru.info</a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Report about Peru Deployment of the XOs/OLPC project
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I also posted some of my notes from Peru, and particularly from a
visit to Arahuay:
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay"><http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay></a>
--
Ivan Krstić <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu"><krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu></a> | <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://radian.org">http://radian.org</a>
_______________________________________________
Library mailing list
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
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