TED.com - Kourtney Woo

Have you guys ever heard of TED.com? I first knew this website when I was doing my independent learning last semester of the course LCE1010. Let me introduce some of the background information of TED.com in case you haven't visited this website.

TED.com is non-profit website which provides various talks. Over hundred of topics are included and they cover different areas, from sciences to entertainment. Most of the talks are presented in English. However, you can choose the subtitles in your own language and there are more than 50 languages for you to choose. This is clearly more than just a bilingual website. In my own experience, I think the translation is not bad, at least better than the YouTube subtitle function. The website adopts "Open Translation Project", which means everyone can volunteer in translating the subtitle once they apply for it. This is better than machine translation as it is done by people who are interested and approval is required. Therefore, the quality of translation is far better than machine translation.

But why is TED.com doing this? I think it is due to the purpose of influencing others. It has stated in the website telling that its mission is to spread ideas. It wants to affect millions of people in the world by holding various talks and putting them online. This way is not only spreading the knowledge but also introducing other culture to different places. Here is an example:

http://www.ted.com/talks/shaolan_learn_to_read_chinese_with_ease
In the video, although the woman was speaking English, she was introducing Chinese characters to the foreigners. Since subtitles are provided in different languages, not only those who speak English can receive this information, people from different cultures can know more about Chinese as well.

In my opinion, I think this website provides a platform for different people to receive same kind of information. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but this provides a very good example of the function of the Internet nowadays. The Internet basically speeds up globalization. I think the gap of cultural differences may be narrowed by the Internet someday.

I think TED.com is a website worth visiting. By ending up this post, I would like to recommend a talk that I watched on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/cesar_kuriyama_one_second_every_day
It was called One Second Every Day. The speaker gave me a brilliant idea of taking one photo each day. I think it is quite inspirational. I hope you enjoy it too.