Our recent ‘Virtual Team Project’ has shown how collaboration and the new media technologies are inseparable. Indeed, a new initiative at the University of Limerick (UL) aims to take this process a step further. The ’Rosetta Project’ was founded at UL by Reinhard Schäler in 2009 to promote information sharing and involves non-profit organisations in providing localisation and translation services to Less Developed Countries (LDCs).
The project involves 140 contributors globally. In 2009 the’ Irish World Academy’ held a concert at UL to raise funds for the venture and the remaining seed capital came from benefactors and MNCs themselves.
Mr Schäler, established the 'Localisation Resources Centre' (LRC) at University College Dublin (UCD) in 1995 before transferring it successfully to UL in 1999 where it was reconstituted as the LRC.
There are a total of 300 translators working globally on a voluntary basis for the foundation which is a worldwide community providing technical support and machine translation. The foundation is working on specific projects globally using ‘Not-for-Profit’ translation and localisation tools to improve access to information.
The ’Rosetta Project’ works with localisation, translation and technology developers, ‘Not-for-Profit’ and ‘Non-Governmental Organisations’ (NGOs) and seeks volunteer translators, project managers, donors and corporate sponsors to assist the process.
Traditional means of addressing information deficits in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have failed and need to be replaced by more radical models. This can make the difference between prosperity and poverty, freedom and captivity, life and death for millions of people living in LDCs who speak minority languages. Currently they cannot afford to pay for the information they require-a situation which the project intends to change.
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