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No Language Barriers
There are no language barriers. Languages are not barriers that we would want to remove. To the contrary: languages are part of our identities, they are part of who we are, how we feel, the way we interpret our world. We cherish our language. We are at home when people speak like us.
However, there are barriers that prevent us from communicating across languages. Translators and interpreters cost money. To date, money has been the biggest barrier for communication across languages. Because money is usually only invested if there is an immediate financial return on this investment. This is how the translation and localisation service industries work, industries that are worth an estimated US$30 billion in 2012 – with healthy forecasts.
Where the streets have no names…
High on a desert plain
Where the Streets have no name”
U2
We had not expected perfect mobile phone access and broadband internet in Lalibela, about an hour’s flight up north from Ethiopia’s eight million capital, Addis Ababa – even less so in Yemirhane Kristos, an ancient monastic settlement 2,800m high up in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, a good two-hour drive from Lalibela on dusty and at times terrifyingly dangerous roads. But – we found what we were looking for…
We learnt that Africa is not what most of us ‘Westeners’ expect it to be. Did you know that, over the past decade, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African; that in eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan; and that with 600 million mobile phone users, Africa has overtaken America and Europe? (All data according to a recent report by the Economist.)
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