Regarding Journals in French

Hello Listeners,

I have received a question from a few people, so I thought I would share the response more widely in case anyone else was sitting in uncertainty with this.

You'll notice that some (many!) of the Campaign journals you're reading are written in French, thanks to the active engagement of our large and growing community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes they are written in Swahili even! This poses a unique challenge and opportunity for those of us who don't speak those languages.

Thankfully there is a solution available, in fact, a couple!

1- You can use Google Translate at the top of every page on our website. Simply select the language you wish to read the journal in. Sometimes this might not work right away, and you would need to take the other following approaches. The translation will not be perfect, but it is certainly better than nothing, and usually good enough to get the general idea of the journal.

2- You can select and copy the text of the journal, and paste it into the box at translate.google.com Select the languages at the top and you'll have a translation right away. The challenge here is if you're not sure of the original language, but as I mentioned it's usually French or Swahili.

3- Alternatively, you could wait to have one of our volunteer translators complete their work on the journal. Our volunteers should be posting their work relatively soon after the journal is written, but might not come in by the time you're needing to have it.

When it comes to making your comments, you are welcome to leave them in the language you are most comfortable with and let the author use the translation tools, or you can try using Google Translate (translate.google.com) to convert your text to the author's language. Either way, know that you are embarking on the frontiers of digital media, crossing borders like never before! Mistakes are just chances to learn and grow, so dive in!

I hope this resolves confusion for some of you, and eases any discomfort you might have. If you run into anything unexpected or confusing, you can ask the group here, or email Emily and myself.

Thanks again everyone! Enjoy this new set of readings!
Scott