28 May 2010

GV Summit 2010 - Things I learnt

Phew! The exam is finally finished. Let's continue with my GV memories!

Talking to people from around the world permitted me to know something new, which can be very different from what happen here, in Madagascar.

For example, Ruben Hilare, from Bolivia told me that in his country, we should NEVER say "thank you" to someone who gives us water. Interesting since in Madagascar, we are used to thank for almost everything we receive. There is even that recitation that says: "Raha misy manome zavatra ho anao, kingao ny hiteny hoe 'misaotra tompoko o!'" (When someone gives you something, never forget to say "thank you!")
It's also during the Summit that I knew about the existence of the people called "Aymara".

I heard from Catalina that in Colombia the only language used there is Spanish, in the street, at home, with friends, at school... But in Madagascar, we speak many languages, depending on where we are: at school, apart from language courses, the teaching language is French, so most of the time, we always speak French with teachers, at least during the class. With friends, there are many options. Me, for example, generally I speak Malagasy, but I also speak French with my friends. I speak Japanese during the Japanese course (though I'm not very skilled yet). I also speak Japanese with some other friends. At home, I speak Malagasy with everyone, sometimes I speak French with my sisters and sometimes English with my parents. In the streets... We can hear many languages: Malagasy, French, English, African, Chinese, Korean...

But apart from that, I learnt to communicate, to share... and I also improved my English. Yay! :)

14 May 2010

GV Summit 2010 - People I met there

GV Summit 2010? It's a precious moment in my life.

Arf, I don't know where to start.

When I first heard about GV, I was very interested because for me, it will be the first foreign website to be translated in Malagasy. When I thought about it, I was very excited about becoming a translator. There was no hesitation, I accepted. I've never thought about meeting anyone belonging to GV, going abroad to attend a summit, or something like that. Well, let's skip that, it's a long story.

And then comes the summit. And I was invited. I was like: " (Ô_Ô) OMG!!! What a great surprise!! I will see those people!!! I can't believe it."

Since my dad who is also a translator for Lingua Malagasy is member of the googlegroup: GV-Authors, I often read discussions. There are names that got stuck in my head due to their frequency in my daddy's mailbox: Claire Ulrich, Solana Larsen, Jeremy Clarke, David Sasaki, Georgia Popplewell, Maryalice Quinn, Tomomi Sasaki, etc...,
or Leonard Chien, whose mail: "Today on GV Lingua" is very indispensable for me when I look for new-translated posts or for posts to translate,
or also those who are the authors of some posts I translated: Hamid Tehrani, Sylwia Presley, Suzanne Lehn, Jillian C. York, Tarek Amr, Alexey Sidorenko, etc...

There are also people who I've never known before the Summit: Catalina Restrepo, Sopheap Chak, Elisa Thiago, Debora Baldelli, Namita Singh, Filip Stojanovski, Karlo Mongaya, Ethan Zuckerman, Le Marietta, Paula Goes, Ruben Hilare, Sonam Ongmo, etc etc etc

And sooo many more !!!

Meeting all of you in person was a great moment in my life! GV People are all so nice :)

One of the funny part of this is that I was wrong about the gender of some people (like Jillian C. York, who, for me was a man until I see HER in person) hahahaha

Haha, so many memories :) I have many things to tell. Maybe I will write the rest later...maybe not, it depends on my freetime. But one thing is sure: I will never forget that Summit. 6-9 May, Santiago de Chile.


Photo by David Sasaki aka Oso