Polyglot
Talking bubbles
This part of the Savoir-sans-Frontières website is intended to advance the idea of multilingual comics with the talking bubbles option.
Demo 1 Demo 2 Demo 3 Demo 4 Demo 5 Demo 6
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2020 Demo
Published by Pascal on 01/23/2020 2020, web formats have progressed considerably, HTML5 makes it possible to play "audio" files. For this demo, XML serves as a support to store the comic text in all languages, vector marking identifies the bubbles in the vectorized comic pages. Computer scripts associate the texts with the images and integrate the "audios". The whole thing ends up in SVG format, natively handled by WEB browsers. All of this in non-proprietary formats for the widest possible distribution to everyone. Thanks to Jean-Pierre Petit for the initial idea and the trust granted.
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The first sound demo
Published by JPP on December 13, 2007 A reader, Thibaut Sibille, suggests this solution. The first time this page is on the screen, a yellow banner appears at the top. If you click on it, a drop-down appears, whose text I did not note but which suggests "activating something" while specifying "it could harm your computer". I activated this option and now the bubbles talk. To finalize the work it would be enough to modify the mp3 files accordingly. But as I am not knowledgeable enough (and I ask Thibaut Sibille or other readers the question): - By choosing this option, what have I done? Have I for example disabled a protection in my browser? Can I continue to run my machine like this without risk? I had thought that this configuration would return to its initial state when I turned off the machine. It did not. That said, my fears may be in vain. Simple question and verification. Be that as it may, thank you for this contribution. That said: One must imagine the power of this technique for literacy and language learning. I will try to interest UNESCO in this project. If anyone has an "access point" to this fortress ...
First sound demo
A Multilingual Experiment
Published by JPP on November 27, 2007 The comic strip technique allows many things. I have used it to disseminate a certain scientific and technical knowledge. This tool will take on growing importance when all the possibilities offered by the Internet are used: the various and varied links, interactivity, multimedia, animation. When I have a little time I will for example transform sequences of drawings present in a comic strip such as La Passion Verticale into animated gifs, into animation showing for example the different aspects of how a helicopter rotor head works. There exists another facet, linked to the Internet, which makes it easier to learn foreign languages. We took an album from the middle of the batch, the one dealing with the conquest of space, entitled "Around the World in 80 Minutes" and we took its first eight pages, conjugated in five languages: - French - English - Spanish - Russian - Chinese If we had had the Arabic version of this album, these six languages would cover a good part of the planet. Alas the Arabs have shown themselves to be very inactive in this translation effort. We have had many promises, but few have been kept. While Arabic comics break all download records, just after French, we currently have only two of them. The Portuguese, for their part, are totally absent from the great adventure of Savoir sans Frontière and that is a shame, because their language is also spoken by a very large number of individuals. Little responsiveness also among the Indians. Be that as it may, this trial, over eight pages, conjugated in five languages, shows what can be expected from such a technique. The usefulness in teaching foreign languages is obvious. It is possible, by creating active zones on the different pages, to make it so that by clicking on the "bubbles" one can hear the sentence spoken, in the corresponding language. One then arrives at a literacy technique, in an unlimited number of languages, using the albums as support, with the bonus of acquiring scientific and technical knowledge and a little dream and humor along the way. I know how to create active zones on an image and put a link that calls an mp3 file. On the other hand, I do not know how to bypass the window that will open, depending on the browser used. My friend Boland, to whom I owe the bits of knowledge I use in website management, tells me that the best technique would be to resort to FLASH software, at the cost of adequate programming. It would then be enough for users to download the appropriate flash plug-in for clicking on the bubble to generate the utterance of the sentence, without an intermediary. These few lines of program would moreover be replicated on all pages by simple copy-paste. The whole thing is knowing how to write them. If there are computer scientists who can give us a hand, they will be welcome. But all this cannot be the work of two individuals, Gilles and me. Gilles works full time and plays his role as accountant on a voluntary basis. We are currently running at a rate of ten translations per month, on average. It takes time to integrate them into the site, which is my job, and more time to pay the translators and keep the association's accounts, which is what Gilles does. I will therefore make attempts with institutions such as UNESCO, the UN, various ministries, including the French Ministry of National Education. I believe we have now demonstrated the power of this teaching technique. We now need to be helped, and for this undertaking to be taken over by an institution or a private foundation. If I were freed from these management tasks I could devote myself more usefully to creating new works. The transformation of existing works into "books that talk" represents the processing of 12,000 pages. It is an undertaking that can only be taken on by an institution of international scope. It would moreover have the advantage of providing work to a number of cooperants, scattered throughout the world, just as currently Savoir sans Frontières, despite the modest sums paid for each translation, finds itself providing supplementary income to many translators residing in countries where wages are low. Let us now move on to the experiment of a multilingual presentation. The boxes beyond number 3 will remain inactive. The management of these first eight pages of Around the World in 80 Minutes, in five languages, represented my day's work. By clicking on the link below you will land on page 1 (the cover page) of the French version of the comic. By clicking in fifteen other boxes of the table you will change either page, or language, or both at once, at will. The right-hand column, empty, awaits an Arabic translation. I suggest that an emir offer a larger sum for its translation. That might perhaps get a result. We have provided a full-screen presentation. It will be noted that while preserving a minimum of legibility it would theoretically be possible, by using the horizontal and vertical scrollbars to their maximum capabilities, to present each page of an album in thirty languages at once, with the corresponding voice utterances, which would represent a nice group effort, a way of uniting the men of the Earth in a peaceful and useful work. Who will sponsor this undertaking?
The first eight pages of an album, in five languages