[COMPLETE] Declaration of Human Rights, (03)-arb

[laine@longnow]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Volume 03.

This project is now complete! All audio files can be found on our catalog page: http://librivox.org/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-volume-03-by-united-nations/

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights)

1. Readers may volunteer to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in any language that they choose, provided that the translation is in the public domain.
   Our goal is to collect as many recordings of the Declaration as possible, so multiple submissions in a given language are acceptable. However, each volunteer is requested to only make one submission per language for this volume.
2. New to recording?
   Please read our Newbie Guide to Recording!
3. Is there a deadline?
   No; this volume will be cataloged when 15 submissions have been received, and another volume will be opened.
4. Where do I find the text?
   About 375 translations of the Declaration are available at the website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Rosetta Project also has a large number of translations available in its collection at The Internet Archive. Any other translation in the public domain is suitable. If you would like to make your own translation and put it into the public domain, feel free! Just be sure to submit it to laine[at]longnow[dot]org, upload it to The 300 Languages Project or post a link to it here.
5. Please claim sections (the numbers in the first column below)!
   If this is your first recording, please let me know under which name or pseudonym you'd like to appear in the LibriVox catalogue. We can also link to a personal website/blog.
   Prospective Prooflisteners: Please read the Listeners Wanted FAQ before listening! Level of prooflistening requested: standard
   
   MAGIC WINDOW:
   
   (BC admin)
   ======================================================
   This paragraph is temporary and will be replaced by the MC with the list of sections and readers (Magic Window) once this project is in the admin system.
   BC - please provide *all of* the following:
   [list]
   [*]Number of sections (files) this project will have:15
   [*]Does the project have an introduction or preface [y/n]: n
   [*]Link to author on Wikipedia (if available): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations
   [*]Link to title on Wikipedia (if available): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
   [*]Short description (please state who wrote the description. This can be a paragraph copied from Wikipedia. If you write this yourself, please be aware that your summary will be in the PD): "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. The Declaration has been translated into at least 375 languages and dialects.[1] The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are entitled. It consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws. The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols. In 1966 the General Assembly adopted the two detailed Covenants, which complete the International Bill of Human Rights." (from Wikipedia)
   [*]Date of first publication: 10 Dec. 1948

=======================================================
[/size][*]BEFORE recording:
Please check the Recording Notes:
http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6427#6430

Set your recording software to:

Channels: 1 (Mono)
Bit Rate: 128 kbps
Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz

[*]DURING recording:
Please leave no more than 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning of your recording!

Make sure you add this to the beginning and end of your recording:
Start of recording (Intro)

• "Universal Declaration of Human Rights, [language] translation - This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit: librivox DOT org"
• If you wish, say:
  "Recording by [your name]"

End of recording

• At the end of the section, say:
  “End of declaration"

[*]If you wish, say:
"Recording by [your name], [city, your blog, podcast, web address]"
Please leave 5 seconds silence at the end of your recording, or 10 seconds for files longer than 30 minutes!
Also, please remember to check this thread frequently for updates!
[*]AFTER recording:
Need noise-cleaning?
Listen to your file through headphones. If you can hear some constant background noise (hiss/buzz), you may want to clean it up a bit. The new (free) version 1.3.3. of Audacity (Mac/Win) has much improved noise-cleaning. See this LibriVox wiki page for a complete guide.
Save files as
128 kbps MP3
File name: all in lowercase: human_rights_03_[language code]_[your initials in 4 letters or less].mp3
Please abbreviate your language using the ISO639-3 codes which can be found here: http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp

ID3 V2 tags
(To find out more about ID3 tags, go to our wiki: http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/What_is_ID3)
Add the following tags to your .mp3 file (how you do this depends on which software you use – if you are unsure about ID3 tags, send me a message). Please mind upper and lower case!
Title: [Language]
Artist: United Nations
Album: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Please ignore tags for Genre and Track Number - these will be filled in automatically at the cataloguing stage.
Transfer of files (completed recordings)
Please always post in this forum thread when you've sent a file.
Also, post the length of the recording (file duration: mm:ss) together with the link.

• Upload your file with the LibriVox Uploader (when your upload is complete, you will receive a link - please post it in this thread):
  http://upload.librivox.org
  
  (If you have trouble reading the image above, please message an admin)
  You'll need to select the MC, which for this project is: arb - annise
• If this doesn't work, or you have questions, please check our How To Send Your Recording wiki page.

[/list]
Any questions?
Please post below or PM me.

[RuthieG]

I'm a bit confused at what you want to do. We already have over 50 versions in various languages in the catalogue. Do you want to do more different languages?

Ruth

[Gesine]

In any case, it would be great if you could get some LibriVox experience first, Lainey. A Book Coordinator needs to have a thorough understanding of our systems and processes, and be comfortable around the forum. Please read our two BC guides: http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/How_To_Become_A_Book_Coordinator and http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Tips_for_Book_Coordinators and volunteer for other things first - record a few sections, proof-listen something, post in the forum. Once you feel comfortable answering newbie questions, then it's the time to take up BCing.

Welcome to LibriVox, and have fun here.

[JimBaker]

I am very much in favor of having an on-going project to get as many people as possible to record the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each person who records it makes a declaration to the world, in their own voice, that they believe in the principles in the declaration.

We can never have too many people making this personal declaration. As a grandparent-to-be, I would like to leave this legacy to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. Laine works for the Long Now Foundation, which will attempt to preserve these recordings for the 10,000 year "long now."

This could be an important long-term project. Laine needs to get experience with Librivox systems and will need the help of more experienced volunteers. I personally offer to help in any way that I can. In particular, if this project is launched, I will help recruit new volunteer readers specifically for this project.

[RuthieG]

Yes, it is certainly most desirable to have more and more languages here, Jim.

The concern is that acting as BC for a project, especially a group multi-lingual one, requires a daily and ongoing commitment to manage the project and to give advice to new readers. I for one am not convinced that Laine has understood this, as she has not returned to the forum since making this, her only post, a week ago. It looks as if she thinks that by posting it as a new project, it will just happen by magic.

I am proposing to put this project on hold for the time being for that reason.

Ruth

[Starlite]

I am proposing to put this project on hold for the time being for that reason.

Ruth

I agree... at least until the original poster shows up again.

[laine@longnow]

Hi everyone,

So sorry for my silence, it looks like I forgot to check the "Notify me..." box when I posted!

Jim's got it exactly right. I think we can never have too many languages represented here. LibriVox already has an impressive 50-language collection, which together (also impressively) represent just under half the world's speakers (not counting variations of, e.g., Chinese and Arabic). What I'd like to do with this project is fill in those variation gaps (get recordings in more varieties of Chinese, more varieties of Arabic, etc.) and gather recordings in the other ~250 languages which together with the 50 already here represent over 95% of the world's population. There are over 7000 languages in the world, so this won't even begin to approach full representation, but if we can give 95% of humanity access to a recording of the UDHR in their native tongue, that will be quite an accomplishment. Hopefully, the project will gather enough momentum to begin to cover the 6000+ minority languages which have yet to be represented on the internet in any significant way, though I admit this is highly ambitious.

Now with respect to the management of the project--I appreciate the concern over my lack of experience. I have already done a tiny bit of reading and PL-ing on my other account (lainestranahan), but I will certainly need a good amount of further experience to be fully comfortable with the workflow. I'm not opposed to keeping the project on hold until then. But as Jim said, since this is part of my work with the Long Now Foundation, I have plenty of time (I'm with them for at least a year and will likely stay involved with the project after I leave) and an existing daily commitment to the project, so that should not be an issue (provided I am a bit more rigorous about following threads! ).

And as for the relationship with the existing UDHR projects---I've been in contact with the BC for those projects (Varra Unreal) and she/he is very excited about extending the effort but unable to be directly involved, at least for the time being. For this reason I posted my project independently, but it's always possible to make this an extension---Volumes 2 through ??? perhaps.

Let me know your thoughts---especially if there's anything I should be doing besides volunteer reading and PL-ing---and I apologize once again for letting this thread slip off my radar. Won't happen again.



Laine

[annise]

Laine ,
I think one of our problems with this is that it has been completely unclear what you are actually trying to do. If you are trying to get an example of every tongue, you are not going to get many different languages from here , Varra worked really hard to get what she did. If you are going to try and round up other speakers you would find it easier I am sure for you to gather recordings , glue them together and upload it to archive - otherwise you are going to have to do a lot of explaining in many languages about public domain and releasing their works etc, and as a BC an enormous amount trying to get the samples in the only format we are able to use- archive is much more flexible.

So I would suggest you worked out what you are really trying to do , with some details instead of the very vague things you have posted so far - and then maybe we can work out if we can help in any way.

Anne

[JimBaker]

Anne,
Respectfully, I must say that I view the situation with respect to bringing in new readers exactly the other way around. The UDHR is in the public domain with more translations than any other public domain document, so explaining the public domain requirement is not necessary for this project.

On the other hand, assembling recordings outside of Librivox would mean that much of the Librivox infrastructure would need to be duplicated: teaching newbies how to adjust their audio, proof-listening, cataloging the recordings, publicizing the site, etc.

Furthermore, if Laine is successful in recruiting readers, don't you want those new readers to learn about Librivox? The volunteers for this project will be exactly the kind of people most likely to volunteer for other Librivox projects. I think it is a win all the way around for this project to done at Librivox rather than elsewhere.

Jim

[annise]

The public domain requirement is to do with the performance not the content - readings from here are in the public domain and can be used in any way so an informed consent is needed.
But on Archive they can be released with variation in licensing. If you are dealing with non English speakers in would not be fair not to explain this - they may not be happy at all to think it could be used as a comedy routinne or as background to a pro war film or ....anything . Yes this is not likely to happen but would be legal to do so.
But all this conversation is based on me not knowing what she sees it as . From her posts I feel she wants to have 1 of every language that she can get and I think explaining performance PD to a hill tribe'sman in Papua New Guinea might be hard.

Anne

[laine@longnow]

Apologies for not being totally clear about the goals for the project. I should have gone through these details sooner.

This project is ultimately part of a larger project sponsored by the Long Now Foundation (www.longnow.org, www.rosettaproject.org) in conjunction with Jim Baker's ALLOW initiative (www.icisl.org). Among other things, we are working toward the prevention of language extinction and toward the equal representation of all living languages through the collection of large and massively multilingual public domain text/audio linguistic corpora. Having a huge collection of recordings of the UDHR in the world's most widely-spoken languages not only enriches the collection of public-domain preservation-oriented materials already on the web and allows for the development of educational materials and speech-related technologies as a result, but it also promotes the set of values represented by the declaration (whose proliferation through the world's language communities is certainly desirable) and enriches LibriVox's collection of recordings and volunteers both.

What I hope to have when this "book" is complete: 300 audio files constituting the entire UDHR recorded by native speakers of the world's 300 most widely-spoken languages. (I can share my list of them with anyone who's interested.) Varra has already made a great deal of progress toward this goal. I may want to follow her in the choice to split the project up into different "volumes," each with a dozen or two languages. For our purposes, the technical characteristics of the recording are more or less irrelevant, as long as quality isn't too low, and while Public Domain status is preferable, we will also accept CC-licensed work (I realize LV's standards differ on both counts; see comments below). [Other languages than the 300 on the list should be accepted as well; I can think of no reason why LV or Long Now or anyone would want to turn down someone volunteering for a language not on the list.]

Since it's part of a larger project, we will be able to utilize some existing LV-external structure and resources to execute this one. For example, I'm working with the Long Now Foundation full-time for at least a year to oversee the completion of our larger project, and will therefore be consistently available to manage the subset of my work that is on LV. Long Now and ALLOW both also have social connections with remote language communities, linguists, and other sources of volunteers which will all help make the job easier.

But these are just a few things to consider. There are still some advantages and disadvantages to using LV for this project:

Advantage: on LibriVox, I may be able to get other volunteers to help BC segments of the project (i.e., if we split it up into volumes and tried to find a BC for each one; I would still need to be responsible for finding the volunteers and directing them to the project, but perhaps they could take it from there). Anne, does this sound likely?
Advantage: LV has an existing workflow with lots of documentation and support, allowing volunteers to be more or less autonomous.
Advantage: LV gets lots of new volunteers who speak lots of new languages.

Disadvantage: LV is useless if the volunteer doesn't speak English.
Disadvantage: PLing is useless if the PLer doesn't speak the non-English language in question.
Disadvantage: LV has stringent audio and copyright requirements that we don't need and may end up wasting time trying to meet.

So now it comes down to analyzing pros and cons. Jim, experienced LV-ers, what do you think?

[A side note about the number of languages to be covered: The 300 most widely-spoken "languages" are actually about 700 distinct languages---the dozens of varieties of "languages" like Chinese and Arabic and Malay are largely responsible for this. If we can get one or two varieties of each language, I will be satisfied that we have represented the 300 most widely-spoken "languages", but if we can get more (or all), I will be ecstatic. Thus I've written "100-700" in the "number of sections in this book" field to accommodate the range of outcomes.]

[RuthieG]

My two penn'orth:

Advantage: on LibriVox, I may be able to get other volunteers to help BC segments of the project (i.e., if we split it up into volumes and tried to find a BC for each one; I would still need to be responsible for finding the volunteers and directing them to the project, but perhaps they could take it from there). Anne, does this sound likely?

I would certainly start with one volume of 20 - 30 sections as the last one of 40+ sections took over a year to complete. You can certainly ask if anyone else would wish to BC, but in my experience people prefer to BC projects of their own choice, as it is quite a commitment.

Advantage: LV has an existing workflow with lots of documentation and support, allowing volunteers to be more or less autonomous.

It certainly does, but for the support to work the support-er and support-ee need to be able to understand each other. It is a rare new reader who gets everything right with the technical settings first time, especially if they don't understand English too well.

Advantage: LV gets lots of new volunteers who speak lots of new languages.

True!

Disadvantage: LV is useless if the volunteer doesn't speak English.

Well, it would be pretty difficult, unless we happen to have someone else who speaks that particular language, which is really unlikely - otherwise that language would already have been covered in the previous collections.

Disadvantage: PLing is useless if the PLer doesn't speak the non-English language in question.

Not necessarily - proof-listeners can sometimes follow the text while listening even if they don't understand what is being said. Bear in mind that the BC has to find proof-listeners...

Disadvantage: LV has stringent audio and copyright requirements that we don't need and may end up wasting time trying to meet.

We do need all readers to understand that their recordings will be released into the Public Domain, yes. We also have to comply with the Internet Archive's format requirements. The audio quality only needs to be sufficiently good for the recording to be understood, but you would want that.

Ruth

[annise]

I'll just say one other thing -and then let other people comment. It seems to me that if you are getting recording from "remote communities " (which would be great by the way) it would be easier for them to be able to send you the recordings in whatever format they make them and for you to do the processing, and upload the finished sound files in whatever format you choose, than to try and get them all to go through the whole process of setting up a program to convert the files to usable formats for us , when there is no advantage in this . After all as BC you are going to have to teach and or do all this to have the files usable - that is the BC or readers job.
And Archive will take most sound formats , just not from us, so you would be able to upload most of what you got as is.

Anne

[Starlite]

I have already done a tiny bit of reading and PL-ing on my other account (lainestranahan)

This is also very confusing. When you post a huge project as a first time poster, we automatically FREAK out lol.

I recommend using one or the other to avoid this confusion.

Esther

[JimBaker]

I will try to reduce some of the confusion and also address the issue of remoteness of readers and their potentially limited ability with English.

Some of the confusion is due to two very different goals in terms of language coverage: the Rosetta (Long Now) text collection and CMU/CISL's 50-year ALLOW project both are aimed at collecting thousands of languages. The Rosetta audio collection, however, is aimed primarily at the most populous 300 languages, each of which has at least one million speakers. This UDHR project is aimed at the subset of those 300 languages into which the UDHR has been translated.

The recruiting for readers and listeners is planned to be among university research groups that are interested in language: speech and language research groups, linguists, anthropologists, ethnologists and teachers of language, especially English as a second language. These potential recruits will mostly be fluent in English or will be recruited and mentored by a colleague who is fluent.

Even the ALLOW program will concentrate mainly on the first 300 languages for the first five years. The more endangered languages will take longer. There is an exception. Some endangered languages can be done sooner. In the United States almost all indigenous languages are endangered. For some of them, there is a two-year or four-year college with a degree program in the language. These languages are endangered precisely because a majority of the indigenous population speaks English rather than the language of their heritage. Because there are students who are learning their native language for the first time as college students, their interest in their language will make them ideal recruits for Librivox.

I suggest for the UHDR project that we recommend to all readers of a minority language that they first record the declaration in English or in the majority language of their region. They will then have experience with recording and with Librivox before doing a recording in their minority language.

Jim Baker