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medea10 · 5 years ago

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My Review of Little Witch Academia

Atsuko Kagari (nicknamed Akko) has always had a fascination with witches. Or should I say one particular witch! When she was a child, she saw a magic performance done by a famous witch named Shiny Chariot. After that, Akko decided then and there that she was going to become a witch just like Shiny Chariot. So when she became a teenager, she got the opportunity to enroll at Luna Nova Magical Academy. While this school has primarily been a place for witch’s only to hone on their skills, due to financial issues they opened the school up to non-magic users. And Akko has no magic in her whatsoever!

We follow the antics of Akko as she tries to survive in a witch academy. During her time she’s managed to snag a wand that was once owned by Shiny Chariot (which she plans to return to), meet friends like Lotte and Sucy, start a rival with the school star Diana Cavendish, get one-on-one training from Professor Ursula (who has her own kind of past), and learn everything there is to know about becoming a great witch. But Akko is going to have a tough time because like I said, she has no magic in her whatsoever! BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: As I mentioned at the beginning, this series is under the thumb of Netflix (in every country). I haven’t had the opportunity to check out the subtitled version. As for the dub…boy, Erica Mendez is getting the choice roles in Netflix exclusive animes. I can’t complain, the lady does fine work. Plus Netflix gives me a chance to hear other new voice actors and seiyuus. Some were big misses with me, but others (like Sucy’s voice) won me over. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from. JAPANESE CAST: *Akko is played by Megumi Han (known for Yamato on Ore Monogatari, Momiji on Fruits Basket 2019, Kagari on Steins;Gate 0, Rio on YGO Zexal, and Chie on Tokyo Ghoul) *Sucy is played by Michiyo Murase *Lotte is played by Fumiko Orikase (known for Dianthe on Pokemon XY, Kyubei on Gintama, Riza on FMA: Brotherhood, Seras Victoria on Hellsing, Shirley on Code Geass, Rukia on Bleach, and Aki on Inazuma Elven) ENGLISH CAST: *Akko is played by Erica Mendez (known for Ryuko on Kill la Kill, Haruka/Uranus on Sailor Moon redub, Emma on The Promised Neverland, Nico on Love Live, Yuuki on SAO II, Retsuko on Aggretsuko, and Tsubaki on Your Lie in April) *Sucy is played by Rachelle Heger *Lotte is played by Stephanie Sheh (known for Mikuru on Haruhi Suzumiya, Kuro on Blue Exorcist, Nui on Kill la Kill, Hinata on Naruto, Orihime on Bleach, Illiya on Fate/stay night, Yui on K-ON, and Usagi/Sailor Moon on Sailor Moon) FAVORITE CHARACTER: I know in stories like these I always root for the underdog and they end up my favorite character…buuuuuuut…

I like Sucy! Yeah, I like the little mischevious, mushroom-loving witch. And yes, I love the episode where Akko goes inside Sucy's subconscious and we see all the Sucy's inside Sucy.

DISLIKED CHARACTER: I knew I couldn’t really hate Diana! I think most of the hatred I shared at her direction for the majority of the season was because of those two cronies that hung around her. Those two were catty bitches and I just hate those kinds of characters. But nothing could compare to Diana’s bitch aunt.

God, fuck this woman! She literally tries to usurp Diana from taking over as head of the Cavendish family line. Just so she can give it to one of her bitch daughters! She’s seriously giving me Lady Tremaine vibes, it’s not even funny. You know it’s bad that I was rooting for them to die when they got into trouble. But Diana wasn’t going to let her bitch aunt and bitch cousins die so I should stop hoping for severe payback. SHIPPING: Hmm…the shipping category is going to be fun! I think it’s only because of that one episode that involves a bee sting and the person is smitten with the next person they see. And boy did Akko get her fill when not only Andrew falls for her, but Diana as well!

Actually, I have thoughts of Andrew really taking a shine to Akko. I honestly thought there would only be two interactions at the most between him and Akko during the show. But surprisingly, there were more. I’m not really a fan of this ship, but I still find it cute. Hell, even Lotte found a boy that was interested in her at one point. She turns him down, but he still holds out hope. Also a cute moment! Hmm…at the moment I’m an open multishipper for this series. If Akko ends up with Diana, cool man! If she ends up with Andrew, whatever, I can dig it! If Akko ends up with Amanda, more power to you (and I can totally see that because Amanda is giving me total lesbo-vibes). What do you expect, this is like an all-girls school!

You know what, I’m now leaning towards Akko x Amanda more than all the others. Don’t fight me on this, I just know I like it! ENDING: Up until the halfway point, a lot of the episodes are about Akko trying to make it as a witch. Did she surpass everyone’s doubts? While Akko was able to improve her magic a bit (I give it 5%), it’s not at the level as many of her classmates. I mean by episode 20, Akko still cannot fly a broom! That should tell you something. But what’s the one thing that seems to be missing from this series?

An antagonist? Yeah, in comes Professor Croix! And to many of the students, she feels like she’s able to bring witchcraft into today’s era with her technology driven methods. And Akko certainly has taken a shine to her. However, Professor Ursula can smell this woman’s bullshit a mile away. Ursula was once the classmate of Croix. But back then Ursula was known as… Oh come on, it was so bloody obvious the moment Ursula met Akko.

Ursula is really Shiny Chariot! Meanwhile, Akko ends up trying to speak these seven secret words that’ll unlock the wand she obtained in the first episode. You know, the wand that belonged to Shiny Chariot?! And Akko has managed to obtain six out of the seven secret words. She could be the one to get the seventh word, which was something Chariot was unable to do as a student. But this positivity ends with a looming war (over a soccer match) on the rise. In actuality, there’s a force around the town as well as certain moments at the school that have caused chaos. Yes, it’s Professor Croix exploiting people’s anger for her own research. Not only that, but she used Akko for her own selfish ambitions and as a result ended up injuring Shiny Chariot to a point of altering her magic (possibly permanently). That’s one thing. Then we get quite a big bombshell!

AKKO’S MAGIC: Ever wonder why Akko has like zero magic ability?! When she saw Shiny Chariot’s performance as a child, her dreams and potential magic were taken by Chariot in order to make her performances more magical (due to audience members becoming disinterested in Chariot’s magic). Akko’s magic was taken away from her before she could even realize a thing. Damn! And you can just imagine Akko’s heartache finding out that her professor was really Chariot and that Chariot did that to not just Akko, but other children! After Chariot found out what her magic shows were doing, she immediately fell off the map.

BACK TO THE CONCLUSION: One of Croix’s inventions went rogue and is officially threatening the world. And it’s up to Akko, Sucy, Lotte, Diana, Amanda, Constance, and Jasminka to catch up to this rogue missile invention. Now that Akko was able to obtain the seventh word, there’s a good chance they can take out Croix’s out of control missile. Croix thankfully realized the errors of her way and understood the pain she’s caused to her students and her former classmate. Croix and Chariot decide to give their all to help the girls as well. While five of the seven girls were able to give a big boost, it was Akko and Diana who took out the looming threat. That’s right, witches saved the world! Yeah, during the series a lot of people were kinda mean to or looked down upon Luna Nova and the witch race in general. Especially, those dickheads at Andrew’s prep school! With this act, I’m sure Luna Nova and the witches will finally get the respect they deserve. In the aftermath, yes Luna Nova is now receiving more respect from those that have been quite cruel to them throughout the series run. Croix is going away to do some research. One of her biggest plans was to restore Ursula/Chariot’s magic that was lost due to her own recklessness with Akko. The students go back to their lessons and…

Akko (after 25 episodes) was able to float a few inches off the ground using her broom. She flew…sort of. I’ll let it count as a victory! THE TWO SPECIALS: A few years prior to the television series run, Little Witch Academia had two movies air. Now this is a different telling of the story. In the first special (which is 25 minutes), it has Akko come upon Chariot’s rod during a class assignment (instead of coming upon it in a forest like the first episode).

And here’s a real kicker, while Akko is still the class screw-up and has the least amount of magic, here she actually has SOME magic. In the second special (which is 55 minutes), Akko ends up in trouble (like normal) and ends up having to do a punishment assignment. She has to help orchestrate a ritual which ends up turning into a parade. So Akko, Sucy, Lotte, Amanda, Constance, and Jasminka all end up working together to do this. But Akko wants to turn this into something for people to remember and always cherish. Like her experiences with the Shiny Chariot performances she saw as a child! But there’s always blow-back because at Luna Nova, Shiny Chariot is seen as a disgrace to traditional witches. And of course there was bound to be some disagreements when working with a big group. And despite a few hiccups, everyone was able to come together to put on a convincing parade for the crowd. Little Witch Academia was quite the enjoyable little story. Yes, it’s a root for the underdog kind of story and even though the television series seems to give Akko the short-end of the stick on the magic matter, it’s full-filling to see her accomplish quite a bit. Even if it took her until the final seconds to learn how to fly! I know it’s been about 2-3 years since the ending of the TV series and am wondering if this is it for the franchise. I know there are novels and games out for this, so maybe one day.

But I do give a recommendation for those into witches, magic, and all that good stuff! It's full of fun characters, there's no harm in that. Currently, Netflix is the only outlet for this series (in just about every country). But Netflix does carry both the sub and dub (and several other languages). Now then, what’s my next Amazon/Netflix exclusive anime? Nope. You’re watching this.

Rising of the Shield Hero? But isn’t that Crunchyroll or FUNimation? Don’t care. You’re watching this now. But I have a big list of other animes to wat… Tough shit. You’re watching this. You have no choice but to watch a modern Isekai!

#anime review #little witch academia #akko kagari #sucy manbavaran #diana cavendish #amanda o'neill #shiny chariot #ursula callistis #lotte yanson #chariot du nord #andrew hanbridge #croix meridies

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btssavedmylifeblr · 7 years ago

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Do you have any advice on traveling to Korea alone? Like how hard it was to get around, I can read hangul but don’t understand a lot just yet, and I am still learning to speak it decently. Did you have trouble finding places to go and traveling? I can’t believe you went alone that is so brave and I’m honestly inspired. I think it’s very cool. Any advice and also explaining your experience would be wonderful~

Oh my gosh, I am so excited about this ask!!! Thank you! I probably got a little carried away in my answer.

I had such a wonderful time in Korea. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The people are super nice, the country is very safe, and they have a great transportation system.

Best Kpop things I did while there: went to a DAY6 concert, went to a taping of M!Countdown, and met MIN YOONGI’S OLDER BROTHER!

This post got crazy long, so I am placing a cut here.

On Traveling Alone

If one is going to travel alone, I think Korea is probably one of the very best places to do so. Everyone is very friendly and the country is incredibly safe. There is almost no crime. It actually took some adjustment on the part of my paranoid American self to calm down about things. For instance, people have way less personal space in general, so they would stand really close to you on the subway or follow you really closely when walking, even at night. In a major US city, this would be a sign that someone was trying to rob or assault you, but it is just normal behavior in Korea. People also would routinely take my phone when checking tickets or giving me directions and then just hand it back. I even had a man happily carry my suitcase up two flights of stairs in the subway and then not run away with it. And this wasn’t just me being a naive tourist. I routinely saw people leave laptops unattended in cafes for hours and leave purses on bookshelves at the front of cafes while they sat and had coffee. Nothing ever got stolen.

The only places that seemed dodgy were some of the clubs in Hongdae where men would try to get women to come into the clubs, often by physically grabbing them or blocking their path. I wouldn’t recommend doing the bar/club scene in Seoul by yourself, but that is probably good advice for being a woman anywhere in the world. Everywhere else was very safe.

The only other thing that was hard about traveling alone was finding places to eat by yourself. While it can also be awkward to eat by yourself in the US, at least food is served in single portions. But most formal sit-down restaurants in Korea only serve things family style, so you really can’t go by yourself. I mostly stuck to cafes, street food, convenience store ramen, and lunch places that catered to students/single working people. I would usually wander around until I found a place where there were Koreans eating alone and then would go there. More advice about that down in Practical Tips.

Ease of travel-wise, Korea has the best subway system I have ever seen. It was clean, air-conditioned and incredibly easy to use. You could always get from anywhere in Seoul to anywhere else in Seoul in less than an hour. There was also a high speed train to and from both airports. More advice about that in Practical Tips.

On the Language Barrier

It was really easy to get around Seoul, despite speaking very little Korean. I actually remember being disappointed that everyone’s English was so much better than my Korean, because they would just speak in English to me and I didn’t get a chance to practice much Korean. People were always happy for my attempts to speak Korean though, so don’t go expecting to only ever speak English. Also, being able to read hangul is really important. The subway system translates everything into English, Japanese and Chinese, but maps and street signs are often only in hangul. It is also much easier to order off of menus if you can sound it out in Korean. Saying “I would like an orange juice.” does not work as well as saying “I would like an orenji juiseu.” I highly recommend this video series for learning hangul. It’s only an hour and a half. It does a really nice job explaining how the letters relate to mouth shape in a way that makes it much easier to remember which letter is which sound.

Also, when I ventured outside of Seoul, to Busan, Gwangju, Daegu and Jeju, there were fewer people who spoke English. But I had been in Korea for three weeks at that point, so I could get by on the little Korean I knew and gesturing.

Don’t be a jerk - On a related point, Korea is very ethnically homogenous. Even Seoul, which is by far the most cosmopolitan of the cities in Korea, is still 97% Korean. Almost everywhere I went, especially outside of Seoul, I was the only Westerner there. On more than one occasion, I had school children run up and ask to take pictures with me. In a weird way, you are kind of representing your whole country. Being angry that people don’t speak English or being picky about your food or assuming that Korean people should adhere to the cultural norms of where you come from, are all incredibly rude and give all foreigners a bad name. Be friendly, be accepting of differences, be adventurous, and try to speak as much Korean as you can.

Best Kpop things I did

DAY6 Concert - I went to the DAY6 concert in Seoul at the end of July. I had purchased my tickets in advance before coming to Korea. The tickets cost around $90 USD. It was a really nice venue, large enough to have space for a great show, but still intimate enough to hear everything well and see the boys clearly. It was a phenomenal show. Confetti and fireworks. Lights and video. The live music was great and they all played and sang really well. Each member had at least one solo part and they frequently paused to chat with fans. Obviously, this was all in Korean and there are no subtitles on live events, so I was only able to follow some of it. And of course, the show ended with a video montage and heartfelt speeches about how much they love their fans. The Korean Kpop fans are awesome. They know all the fan chants perfectly and are very friendly.

M!Countdown - Through this tour, I was able to go to the August 9th live taping of M!Countdown. I was able to see EXO, the JJ Project, Girls Generation, and the debut performance of Wanna One, along with several others. I am somewhere in the screaming audience of all those videos. I got to be incredibly close to the stage and got to see a huge variety of groups, so it was a ton of fun. The only thing that is tricky with this tour is that you have to sign up a couple months in advance, but they don’t know which groups will be performing until a couple of weeks before the show, so it is a gamble about who you will get to see. If you really want to only see one specific group, you are probably better off trying to get tickets through that particular fandom, but then you will only see that group’s performance.

Yoongi’s Family Cafe in Daegu - For the last two weeks of my trip, I met up with a fellow BTS fan that I met here on Tumblr and we went on a BTS-pilgrimage to Gwangju, Busan and Daegu. One of the highlights of this pilgrimage was our trip to the cafe owned by Suga’s family in Daegu. Sadly, this cafe is no longer owned by Yoongi’s family. They have relocated to Seoul.

We went to the cafe on a Wednesday around lunch time. As my friend and I were taking pictures of the outside, a young man was watching us from inside the restaurant and came out to open the door for us. He was really cute and gave us a big smile when he saw us. As soon as I walked over to him, he asked in English where we were from and if we were BTS fans. I nodded enthusiastically. He smiled and nodded, like “I figured.“ I told him we went to their concert in Newark and how fabulous it was and that’s when he volunteered “I’m Suga’s brother”. At first, I was worried that we would seem like crazy stalker people for having found this cafe, but the cafe was definitely not hiding its BTS connection. The walls were covered in BTS merchandise and a giant picture of BTS with Suga’s mom. They also only played BTS music the whole time we were there, which made it really hard to contain the fangirling, especially when Cypher Pt. 3 came on.

We both got the soup, which was boiling when it arrived. I was too excited and accidentally stuck a whole piece of boiling blood sausage in my mouth and then didn’t dare spit it back out out of fear of offending Min Yoongi’s whole family. Instead, I coughed and chugged a bunch of water. Later, when we were paying, Yoongi’s brother teased me about how I had started to eat the sausage while it was still burning. “You ate so passionately,” he said. “It was hot and you had to drink the water!” And then he laughed a lot. He was very amused that two western girls would like blood sausage so much.

I also did a bunch of cool, non-kpop things like visiting museums and language cafes, going for a bike ride on the Han river, and taking some Korean cooking classes, but this post is too long already.

Practical Tips

Airbnb - I booked my accommodations for my whole trip through Airbnb. It was half the cost of staying in Western-style hotels and put me in touch with locals who made sure I arrived in one piece to wherever I was supposed to be staying. This turned out to be really important when I accidentally took the wrong train in my attempt to get from Seoul to Gwangju. I also purposefully booked a room with a host for the first week, so I would have someone to help me as I figured out the basics of getting around. I also highly recommend the Airbnb experiences. They are designed to assemble groups of people traveling by themselves to do different activities as a group, like get Korean BBQ or learn how to make bibimbap. I met so many awesome people and had such a great time. Both the hosts and the other travelers were a ton of fun.

Subway App - This is the greatest subway app that exists on the face of the planet. Even if you never plan on going to Korea, you should download it to admire the amazing feat of technological prowess and efficiency that it is. It has maps for every major city in Korea and is available in English. It knows exactly when every train is coming, exactly how long it takes to walk between connecting trains, and even which car of the train to stand in to maximize the efficiency of your transfers. It made the subway system infinitely easier to deal with. Older people on the subway would often ask me where I was going, out of fear that I would get myself lost, and I could just hold out my phone and show them.

Google Maps vs. KakaoMap - People in Korea claim that Google maps doesn’t work at all and one person even told me that it was a vast conspiracy by the American government to hide the location of military bases from North Korea. Based on my experience, I think it is much more likely that Google just hasn’t bothered to invest the time to make Google Maps work very well in Korea because Korea already has the excellent KakaoMap which works really well. That being said, KakaoMap is not available in English. My strategy ending up being that I would search for a place (like a cafe or SM town or Bonguensa Temple) in Google Maps and find the address, then copy and paste the Korean address into KakaoMap and follow its directions.

Go in Spring or Autumn - Koreans are not messing around when they say that Korea has four seasons. I went in July and August and it was incredibly humid and incredibly hot (and I am from the American South, so I have experience with hot and humid). Everywhere I went, I instantly became a sweaty disgusting mess and ended up showering like twice a day. Winter also gets incredibly cold. I don’t have a lot of flexibility over when I can travel due to my work, but if you can go at anytime, I suspect fall and spring are the nicest times to go.

Hope that was helpful! Thanks for asking!

#Anonymous #bee's korea travels #korea #korea travel tips

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meyerlansky · 7 years ago

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In BWE, how many languages does Meyer speak? We see him speaking English, Italian, and Hebrew/Yiddish (IDK which) on screen, so he's at least trilingual. One could also assume he learned whatever language was native to Odessa when he lived there as a child (Polish? Russian?), and by the way he interacted with the blonde woman in Havana in S5, I got the feeling he speaks at least passable Spanish. I might be thinking too much into this, but I'd like your thoughts, if you've got the time. Thanks!

OKAY I WANT YOU TO KNOW I’M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THE LENGTH OF THIS POST BUT IT’S A REALLY GOOD QUESTION SO TL;DR ANSWER: depending on how we define “speaking a language,” and depending on certain historical circumstances that i don’t know enough about to speak on with definite certainty but am DAMN SURE GOING TO SPECULATE ON, the possible set of “languages meyer might be able to speak” ranges from four to eleven languages. english, yiddish, hebrew, italian/sicilian [which can count as one or two languages, depending on Many Things], and spanish make up the core possibilities, with the latter three[/four] being phrase-based as opposed to comprehensive fluency.

like you said, on screen we see him speak three languages; in terms of fluency, he’s obviously fluent in english as well as yiddish, though he doesn’t actually use a significant amount of yiddish in boardwalk; the stuff he says during the beatdown in all in is hebrew, not yiddish, and they use the same script but are different languages. based on what i’ve read meyer’s much more likely to understand german thanks to knowing yiddish than hebrew. as for the yiddish he actually does use, “mishegoss” and “emis” are pretty much it, iirc? ...you can maybe include “hocking” in 5x01 because i don’t think that one had entered the yinglish lexicon juuust yet? but anyway, he uses it on a phrase/word basis, mostly because americanization respectability not-wanting-AR-to-be-a-dick-about-it etc etc, but it would have been his first language and he continued to speak it at home to his parents historically, so presumably he did in bwe as well. so, so far, fluent in english and yiddish, at least passably fluent in hebrew to construct sentences on the fly while murdering a dude, and depending on how impressive we want to make Meyer The Polyglot out to be, yiddish’s mutual intelligibilty with german could count for a fourth.

as far as italian goes, apparently the phrase he says in ourselves alone is... extremely formal and stilted, as well as being italian, not sicilian. there’s a whole ongoing debate in linguistics circles wrt whether sicilian is a dialect or a language, but suffice it to say mutual intelligibility between the two is not very high, for non-native speakers at least; i’ve looked up the italian subtitles for charlie and masseria’s scenes and more often than not, what’s written in italian does not match up with what’s being said in sicilian in the slightest. it’s sort of baffling, considering the writers apparently did so well with the sicilian in the rest of the show, and charlie and masseria have a whole conversation in what i’ve read is fairly accurate sicilian a few episodes later, but at this point i just headcanon it away that meyer taught himself mainland italian from library books while charlie was away in hampton farms and tried to surprise charlie with his ~italian skillz~ when he got out and charlie was just like “WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE A SIXTEENTH CENTURY SCHOOLMARM sit down i have to fix this” and taught him enough sicilian to get by when surrounded by mafia guys, but the stupidly formal italian is an inside joke past 1920. again, depending on whether we’re counting italian and sicilian as different languages, and whether charlie actually taught him any sicilian phrases offscreen [which i cannot believe he wouldn’t have, not if charlie’s going around picking up yiddish himself], we can add either one or two languages to the total, but he’s probably not as fluent in either sicilian or italian as he is in yiddish, english, or even hebrew.

you’re probably right about spanish too, but my guess is if he does know it his knowledge is probably pretty phrase-based more than a comprehensive fluency. he can probably get by in cuba if he has to, though, which is more than i can say, so that’s another, though spanish is probably closer to his fluency level with italian/sicilian than yiddish or english.

then the question of “russian or polish” is... a complicated one. he was from grodno, not odessa; odessa is in present-day ukraine, whereas grodno is in present-day belarus, but lies extremely close to both poland and lithuania [”close” as in walking distance, less than 20 miles from either border] and was part of the russian empire when meyer was born, but was considered to be part of poland within the empire, kind of? russian imperial history is a whole nightmare of “officially, according to the russians, countries other than russia that were subsumed by the empire did not exist and retroactively never existed after they were subsumed, except for how non-russian peoples resisted russification where they could,” which means that there are potentially FOUR options for the vernacular language of the city: belarusian, polish, and lithuanian, with russian being the “official” language of the imperial government—and therefore what forms would have been written in and the language spoken by government officials and in schools, but not necessarily spoken by anyone in grodno.

while my guess for the spoken language meyer might’ve picked up is belarusian or maybe polish, i genuinely do not know enough about eastern european history to say what would have been spoken in the gentile parts of grodno when meyer was growing up there. but that in and of itself kind of presents another problem; i also don’t know how independently the jewish population of grodno operated from the gentile population in the early 1900s. the impression i get is “significantly independently,” because afaik the russian empire [ON THE WHOLE some of the czars were better than others but GENERALLY NONE OF THEM WERE GREAT ON THIS FRONT] didn’t admit jewish kids to the russian school system, so meyer may not have even learned russian because shuls wouldn’t necessarily teach it. by the same token, the population of grodno was more than half jewish in 1907, and considering he was A LITERAL FIVE YEAR OLD he may not have interacted with any gentiles in a significant enough context to learn anything other than yiddish as a kid ANYWAY. so the answer for “what non-yiddish language[s] might meyer have picked up while living in grodno” can be anywhere between 0-4, with either “none of them” or “written russian and spoken belarusian/polish” being the most likely answers imo, depending on how much interaction there was between the jewish and gentile communities in grodno before 1909.

for me, my headcanon regarding any knowledge meyer may have had of any of the slavic languages mentioned is, he may have known polish/belarusian/russian as a kid, but in contrast to yiddish—which he presumably continued to speak offscreen with his parents and anna if we’re transposing historical facts onto bwe canon—and both spanish and italian/sicilian—which he would have had to put in at least SOME concentrated effort to learn after emigrating from grodno—meyer would have had no interest retaining polish/belarusian/russian, because it is in no way useful to him as a teen/adult, and the only thing the people who spoke those languages did was force his family to emigrate out of fear.

so like i said in the tl;dr, it sort of depends if you consider certain things languages or dialects, if you factor in mutual intelligibility, the historical context of both non-russian languages during the russian empire’s death throes, AND the historical context of jewish-goy interaction IN the late russian empire, but the potential options for languages he can speak in bwe are:

english [confirmed, obviously]

yiddish [confirmed historically and on a word basis in bwe]

hebrew [confirmed in bwe but not to what degree]

italian [confirmed in bwe but outdated/overly formal]

sicilian [not confirmed on screen but i refuse to believe charlie picked phrases in meyer’s mother tongue up easier than meyer picked up phrases in charlie’s]

spanish [not confirmed on screen but pretty likely on a phrase basis]

russian [not confirmed on screen and dependent on historical context, also likely primarily written russian]

belarusian[not confirmed on screen and dependent on historical context, and probably an either/or situation with polish/lithuanian]

polish[not confirmed on screen and dependent on historical context, and probably an either/or situation with belarusian/lithuanian]

lithuanian[not confirmed on screen and dependent on historical context, and probably an either/or situation with belarusian/polish, also the least likely of the slavic languages]

german [not confirmed and mostly due to mutual fluency with yiddish, not any concerted effort or interest in the language]

#LONG POST #I'M SO SORRY #boardwalk empire #meyer lansky #everybody's got larceny in 'em #because i can't not address the history. god this is #a nightmare of a post #i'm so sorry #Anonymous #asks

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studioarabiyainegypt · 5 years ago

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10 REASONS TO LEARN ARABIC

Scholars agree that Arabic emerged between the first and fourth centuries CE, making it at least 1500 years old. It quickly spread throughout the Middle East and is today the fifth most spoken language in the world.

It is estimated that 422 million people speak Arabic. Of that 422 million, about 112 million non-native speakers. So what could possibly inspire 112 million people to learn a language? More importantly, why should you follow suit? Read on to find out!

Here are ten reasons to learn Arabic.

1. To Fully Experience The Quran

Muslims consider the Quran to be the unchanging word of God. They believe it was delivered to the Prophet Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel, who recited it in Arabic.

The Arabic Quran cannot be accurately translated into another language. To fully experience the book, one must read it in its original Arabic as it was dictated by God. For this reason, most English-language Qurans are branded as mere “interpretations” or “summaries”.

2. To Recite The Shahada

The Shahada is a declaration of belief in one God and an acceptance of Muhammad as his final and most important messenger. The most crucial of the Five Pillars of Islam, it must be recited by any new Muslim who wishes to fully embrace the faith.

In English, the Shahada essentially reads “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” Much like the Quran, however, the significance of the Shahada is lost if it is not said in Arabic.

3. For Increased Employment Opportunities

Not everybody who learns Arabic does so for religious reasons. Many Westerners learn Arabic to broaden their employment opportunities. Certain Middle Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, make a conscious effort to bring in foreign workers. They offer applicants high salaries and convenient hours, a rarely seen combination in the West. However, preference is usually given to candidates who are proficient in Arabic.

There is also increasing demand for Arabic speakers in the Western world. As more and more European and American companies expand into the Middle East, the ability to communicate with Arab clients in their native tongue is an undeniable advantage.

4. To Master Additional Languages

We will concede that Arabic has little to nothing in common with the languages that are commonly pursued by English speakers, such as French and German. However, it is quite similar to other languages that are spoken in the Middle East. Turkish and Farsi have clear Arabic influence, making them rather simple to master for any Arabic speaker.

5. To Simplify Travel

Countries in the Middle East can be difficult to navigate for non-Arabic speakers. Most are lacking in English-language signs and establishments, making it easy for tourists to get lost or confused. Situations such as these can be avoided with even a basic level of Arabic. Become conversational and you will have no issue finding your way around the airports and cities of Arabic-speaking countries.

6. To Experience Arab Hospitality

Native Arabic speakers are extremely impressed by any outsider who can speak the language. Even a beginner’s vocabulary will win you the heart of an Arab family or community. Show a genuine interest in the Arabic language and the culture it breeds and you will be showered with high praise, warm embraces, and, best of all, delicious Middle Eastern cuisine. Trust us, Arabi hospitality is second to none.

7. To Discover Arab Cinema

Though often overlooked by the general public, Arab cinema has been responsible for some of the finest films of the past 50 years. In 2013, the Palestinian film Omar took home 11 awards at international festivals. It was even nominated for an Oscar! Other Arabic films, such as Losing Ahmad, 12 Angry Lebanese, and Last Men in Aleppo have also received significant critical acclaim.

Arab films are often released in the Western world with English dubbing or subtitles. However, devotees of Arab cinema insist that the cream of the crop must be seen in their original form to be truly appreciated.

8. To Connect With History

Some of history’s most important figures were native Arabic speakers. Obviously, there is the prophet Muhammad, who founded a religion that today ranks 24% of the world’s population among its adherents. But there are also influential Arabic speakers such as Ahmed Zewail, who was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The groundwork for modern surgery was laid by Al-Zahrawi, a native Arabic speaker who is considered the finest surgeon of the Middle Ages. The theory of induction was pioneered by Ali ibn Ridwan, an 11th-century physician and astrologer from present-day Egypt.

These are just some of the Arabic-speaking individuals who made crucial contributions to humanity’s development. Studying Arabic will give you a commonality with them, as well as with hundreds of other Arab men and women who shaped the world as we know it.

9. Cultural Understanding

For a long time, Arabic speakers have been looked at with a degree of weariness by Westerners. We have been conditioned by certain media outlets to view Middle Easterners as inherently suspicious. Encouraging the study of Arabic throughout the West will increase cultural understanding while stamping out the Islamophobia we have been bombarded with over the past couple of years.

10. US Incentives

If you live in the United States of America, there is the National Security Language Initiative to motivate you to learn Arabic. Under the NSLI, Arabic is considered a language of strategic importance. Students are encouraged to study it through a series of scholarships and additional valuable learning opportunities.

Conclusion

Some people choose to learn Arabic for religious reasons. Others do so to enhance their career opportunities. And some people do it for the sheer fun of speaking a language steeped in hundreds upon hundreds of years of history.

Whatever your reason for pursuing Arabic as a second language, you can be certain that it will prove an enjoyable and rewarding experience. While it certainly isn’t the easiest language to master, its beauty is worth every minute of study.

#LEARN ARABIC

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by-ethan-fox · 7 years ago

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If you're still helping I could use some. I have a character who's in a group of survivors (post apocalyptic) but the character can't speak or read their language and is dead slow to learn. Basically I have them just observing the group and not interacting a whole lot but I'm not overly happy with that. Any idea how I can have people interacting with the character and vice versa. PS It's not the character won't learn the language but rather can't, long story short.

Hmm, good question anon!

I’m going to get something out of the way very quickly; being “nonverbal” is a real life challenge that some people face every day, either for a physical reason, or due to mental issues like extreme anxiety. I would strongly encourage you to read into these. However, don’t let that stop you from going ahead with the idea. Any situation with characters in a story will echo real-life issues (how many times have you heard “Beauty & the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome”?) but just a quick look online will help you avoid any pitfalls, even if it’s in the specific words you choose to use.

For instance, I used “nonverbal” up there because apparently “mute” isn’t seen as a favourable term anymore. Using the right words here is important, as it’d be a real shame for you to write a killer story, then end up having fewer readers because you used one problematic term.

This topic interests me because in the past, I’ve had the experience of living for long periods of time in a foreign country where I only had a limited grasp of the language, and stories of this nature remind me of that. I wasn’t in a post-apocalyptic scenario, though, which skews things a bit! I’d recommend, for this reason, checking out two things which matched my experience:

Terminal - a movie about a man from Eastern Europe who ends up trapped in an airport, as legally he can’t leave. Tom Hanks plays the main character who can’t speak English and has to cope with that setback.

Shogun - this is from the 70s but it really holds up. It’s a short series (based on a book) about a British privateer who is washed up on the shores of Japan. Much of the dialogue is Japanese, but the main character can’t understand Japanese, so there are no subtitles, and he just has to get by.

The body language and perspectives of these characters might be useful for you, even if their situations aren’t quite the same as yours.

I think for a character in this situation, it’d be important to capture their attitudes in both the short-term and long-term.

The short-term stuff is more obvious. In most situations, you’d be surprised how you can get by without speaking, but this is peppered with intensely frustrating moments where you struggle to speak. If you’re someone who has been able to speak since you were young, remembering you can’t speak at a critical moment is not just irritating - it’s embarrassing, both for you and for the person trying to listen (because you both want to help each other, but just can’t, and you feel sympathy).

This is a great opportunity for a character to show emotion purely through descriptive language, and no direct speech. Just in the way a verbal character might have particular phrases, or words they like to use, a non-verbal character should probably have specific expressions and movements that are their “go-to” in various situations. I would try and identify what these things are.

For the long-term, the main thing I would say from my own experience is this: there is nothing more lonely than feeling alone in a crowded room, and I think it’s important to remember this. The feeling of being separate from those around you really does gnaw away at you as the days, weeks and eventually months go by.

There are few people for whom the lack of intellectual contact is genuinely satisfying in the long term.

Here’s a story that might illustrate this a bit better.

Back when I was in Tokyo, it had been several weeks since the last time I spoke to another English speaker (it was over Christmas, when a lot of expats would return to families overseas). So I went to my local arcade, to play some games and “speak” to a guy I knew called Yuji.

I spoke very little Japanese, and Yuji spoke almost no English - but both of us had one common ground; Mobile Suit Gundam. I’ve seen nearly all of Gundam, or at least, at that time, all that was available, and so had he. Several Gundam games were very popular in the arcades; we would play them and watch others play them, and comment on their performance with a combination of hand gestures and each speaking our own languages. Then we would play in a two-man team (for those interested, the main game was MS Gundam Seed Destiny Renpou Vs ZAFT II) and coordinate as best we could.

Yuji and I never understood a word from each other, beyond a few pleasantries and stock phrases, but we “talked” about how GM Custom is my favourite mass-produced design in the Gundam franchise, about how he really loved the Blue Destiny side-story games for the Sega Saturn years before, and how we both disliked the Seed Destiny anime. Probably other stuff too.

Seeing Yuji and getting some beers with him each week really helped me through some very lonely, and I’ll be honest, very bleak times, but to him, I was probably just some random dude at the arcade he liked to play games with.

Anyway, the thing to take away from this is that characters can have common ground even if they can’t speak to each other, and that might be pretty cool if you do it right.

Hope some of that helps!

Anyone else need writing advice? Any question; fanfic, narrative structure, prose, scripts… I’m here to help. My askbox is always open.

#writing tips #writers life #nonverbal

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wander---woman · 7 years ago

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Hey, everyone + Future Me reading this! I wanted to jot down some of my initial thoughts upon arriving in Hyderabad before I forgot.

Two days ago I took a fifteen-hour flight to Dubai (yikes, but at least I finally got to see Hidden Figures on the plane). I also saw a man use a plastic bag as a prayer mat right next to the bathroom, 40,000 feet in the sky. That’s dedication.

When I got to Dubai, I most definitely looked out of place in my hiking boots and fuchsia hoodie, since all the other women were wearing niqabs. I was worried about being culturally inappropriate, but then I spotted a couple women in saris and one woman wearing jeans. Also, people were generally chill and didn’t give two shits about my style choices.

I settled in at a restaurant and ordered a veggie bowl. The café was blasting Enrique Iglesias. Mid-song it cut to the call to prayer. The adhan was really beautiful, but also quite a stark contrast from “Súbeme La Radio.”

When I went to board the plane to go to India, the flight attendant told me I had been upgraded to first class. It was my first time ever flying first class and let me tell you: I was not ready. I was not emotionally prepared for fresh flowers in the bathroom and hot towels and three course meals on an airplane. I sat there with my hiking boots and the clothes I hadn’t changed in over 24 hours while I kept pushing buttons on the reclining chair until the flight attendant came and helped me. I longed for the cramped, economy seats with no legroom, where I could be a gross backpacker in peace. Even so, I got to watch the first 20 minutes of a Bollywood movie with Arabic subtitles before we landed. Cultural experience: ✓

Cut to Hyderabad – Jitendra from HR came to meet me at the airport and showed me my apartment. My first night was a little rough because there was no hot water and the mosquitos ate me alive. I finally got to sleep around 3:00 am. At 8:00 am, there was a knock at the door. Then four more knocks, because I was too comatose to get up. This kid then proceeded to set a tray of food on my table, bow, and exit wordlessly. I had no idea who this kid was, but I tried to thank him my limited Hindi. Next, three women in saris filed in and started mopping. I had no idea who these women are either, but I performed the part of Clueless Foreigner Smiles Cluelessly quite well.

Throughout the day, I realized that 1) I get free, bomb-ass vegetarian food here on campus, which I will most definitely be taking advantage of, and 2) My (very basic) Hindi skills are useless here because everyone speaks Telugu, the local language.

In the evening, I quite literally stumbled upon a Talent Show put on by group of exchange students from Syria, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kenya, and twelve other countries. It was amazing. The Indian students performed Bollywood songs in traditional garb, while the Syrian students did the same with Syrian music. A girl from Bangladesh read a poem in Bengali. In a Syrian-American duo, one kid played a qanun (traditional stringed Syrian instrument). Then this kid named Baqir from Tajikistan got on stage and he said first in Arabic and then in English, “I hope that one day we will have no more wars.” And he started playing “One Day,” which, incidentally, was written by an Orthodox Jew, Matisyahu. I appreciated the subtle nod to religious pluralism.

I was the only white person and non-Muslim in the room, which was really cool. I love getting outside my comfort zone and trying new stuff. That’s the only way you learn, right?

Also, all the kids were super sweet and wanted to practice their English with me: “My name is Mustafa and I am from Afghanistan! I like to play sports for a hobby! What is your name? From which country are you?”

I only hope my own students here will be that enthusiastic.

I also got to meet Afeera, who is living right below me with two TTPs. They’re interns and then at the end of their two year internship, they’ll get hired here at the Academy. Afeera’s a Social Sciences teacher from Delhi; she reads a ton, especially poetry. I really liked her. She mentioned that she likes contemporary spoken word poets like Sarah Kay in particular. I’m stoked to talk poetry with her and to share some of my favorites from Button Poetry.

But right now I’m going to unpack all the culturally inappropriate clothes I brought with me. Next thing on the agenda is buying some kurtas to wear so I don’t look a fool.

Night!

Fiercely, J

First Impressions of India

Hey, everyone + Future Me reading this! I wanted to jot down some of my initial thoughts upon arriving in Hyderabad before I forgot.

First Impressions of India Hey, everyone + Future Me reading this! I wanted to jot down some of my initial thoughts upon arriving in Hyderabad before I forgot.

#culture #Dubai #Hyderabad #India #personal #religion #teaching #travel #travel photography #writing

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Is an Anglo-American Farce

APThe great Hollywood director Billy Wilder, who was born in Eastern Europe when his home town was ruled from Vienna, once noted that the genius of Austria lay in convincing the world that Beethoven was a native son, but Hitler was not.Today we see a similar cultural sleight-of-hand, but this time in the Scepter’d Isle of Britain, where some would remind us that one of their own is actually one of ours. The satirical British magazine Private Eye’s souvenir issue commemorating the ascent of Boris Johnson as prime minister is a hallmark of the genre. The caption on the cover the week of the moonshot anniversary, showing Johnson goofily mugging for the cameras as he enters Number 10 Downing Street, reads “Loon Landing.” But it’s the subhead that deserves closer attention: “The Ego Has Landed—America Plants Flag on U.K.”Kamikaze Boris Johnson Risks Becoming Britain’s Shortest-Serving PMThis isn’t just another hackneyed reference to Johnson’s surface similarities to Donald Trump, which include urine-colored tumbleweed coifs, the elevation of pathological mendacity to a political art form, and, excepting Johnson’s higher erudition (he regularly spouts gobbets of ancient Greek), the impressive willingness to speak without coherence or elementary knowledge about the things that supposedly matter most to either man. * * *SEMINAL INSPIRATION* * *The United States might have installed a president for whom the pinnacle of notoriety was an unending smorgasbord of genital groping, but the United Kingdom now has a prime minister whose outspoken distaste for marital fidelity owes to his being “literally bursting with spunk.” Which is why, for all the inevitable copy that’s been filed about this “eccentric” English toff, Johnson is better seen as a thoroughly Anglo-American farce. He plays a Brit the way Americans are accustomed to thinking of one while often behaving more American than British.Still known to his family as “Al”—short for Alexander, his first name—the man everyone annoyingly calls Boris was born in Manhattan, raised partly in Washington, D.C.. Even as mayor of London he acted more like the mayor of an American megalopolis such as New York or Chicago, which is to say a “global ambassador” turned wild-eyed developer who left the city, like a crooked Tammany ward heeler, mired in unfinished infrastructure projects and needless debt. Johnson is also the apotheosis of that very American phenomenon, failing upward, having launched a brilliant career in journalism—more performance art than first draft of history—on being caught inventing quotations and sacked for it. His relationship with the truth only declined from there, but his income skyrocketed. Nor is the man who famously got stuck halfway down a zip-line during the Olympics, waving Union Jacks like some tourist-trap street merchant at Piccadilly, beyond swapping roast-beef cliches for apple-pie ones when it suits his needs. See, for instance, his last Daily Telegraph column before winning the party leadership and thus the premiership. The first two-thirds is dedicated to a gosh-wow commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the moonshot, with its near-fatal miscalculations and bare-bones technological marvels. The last third devolves into comparing that improbable scientific achievement with navigating the bureaucratic and ideological morass of Brexit, the very policy disaster Johnson, more than any other politician, unleashed upon his country, even though he was famously unsure about its prospects. “If they could use hand-knitted computer code to make a frictionless re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere in 1969,” he concludes, “we can solve the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border.” By the time you arrive at this absurd sentence—one made even more so by the shoe-horned repetition of “frictionless”—you’ve almost forgotten that NASA is an American not British government agency, rendering the Brexit analogy utterly meaningless. Johnson might as well invoke the “Spirit of ’76” to argue for opting for a no-deal outcome with Brussels. But no matter. These are mere details, and getting details wrong has always been his forte.* * *A FEAST OF BUNGLING* * *Even his avowed devotion to Churchill comes across less as a reverential tribute to the great man than as an upstart’s ironic appreciation of a fellow huckster’s progress. What Johnson loves most about his Tory predecessor are the shortcomings: the outsize appetites, the shameless ambition, and the shambles of a career—what he terms Churchill’s “feast of bungling!”—redeemed by sheer will to power and world-historical circumstance. Forget licking Hitler. Living down Gallipoli, the return to the gold standard and the abdication crisis were the Last Lion’s finest hours.Johnson’s most self-conscious pen portrait, however, is his only work of fiction, a 2004 satire titled Seventy-Two Virgins. The novel features a Conservative backbencher named Roger Barlow who, quite by accident, saves the visiting American president from a jihadist kidnapping plot. Barlow is tow-headed, bicycling adulterer destined for oblivion until events intervene to make him an international hero. So far, so obvious.But here, I think, lies a coded message in the choice of surname for Johnson’s alter ego, particularly as the book makes savage mockery of the so-called “special relationship.” John Oliver Exposes ‘Truly Disgusting’ U.K. Prime Minister Boris JohnsonDennis Barlow is Evelyn Waugh’s has-been English poet and transplant to the United States—well, Los Angeles, anyway—in The Loved One. He fails to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood and becomes a minor embarrassment to a close-knit and tightly self-regulated coterie of fellow exiles, all of them witting self-parodies of stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen. “We limeys have a peculiar position to keep up, you know, Barlow,” says Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, who routinely traipses through Bel Air in a cape and deer-stalker cap because it’s what the yanks expect of him. “They may laugh at us a bit—the way we talk and the way we dress; our monocles—they may think us cliquey and stand-offish, but, by God, they respect us.” * * *THE UN-LOVED ONE* * *It doesn’t help that Barlow is a lower-order chancer, sans knighthood, with little to no self-respect and that he is a borderline sociopath to boot. Having been cast out of the movie business, he now earns a modest income working at a pet mortuary called the Happier Hunting Ground. By novel’s end, and after a darkly hilarious entanglement with a dimwitted American mortician, he has decided that a far more lucrative racket on these shores lies in the non-sectarian clergy, catering to weddings and, given his prior speciality, funerals. Barlow is to be ordained. Well, this simply won’t do and it threats to make Barlow a major embarrassment to Sir Ambrose and his Cricket Club, which serves as a kind of diplomatic mission dedicated to maintaining transatlantic cultural illusions. The club raises the money to send Barlow home where he at least can live out his life in discreet disgrace and not ruin things for the rest of the monocled castaways on the coast. This result, one senses, was what Barlow was searching for all through his steady descent into personal and national ruin: a free ride. That certainly sounds familiar, as does Waugh’s subtitle for The Loved One: “an Anglo-American tragedy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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rollingtsuchinoko · 7 years ago

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Sports day is always a big occasion in Japanese schools. Class schedules are shuffled weeks in advance to allow time to practice for the big event. Instead of studying, students practice cheering and the unusual events that encompass sports day. 体育の日 (taiiku no hi) isn’t just for school kids though. It is a national holiday. Many businesses and cities hold sports day festivals as well. October 9 is when the actual holiday falls, but many schools hold their sports day earlier so as not to interfere with mid-term tests which are quickly approaching. The holiday commemorates the 1964 Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo that year. Most of the sports at my high school’s sports day will not be seen at the actual Olympics, but hey, give it time. If skateboarding can be an Olympic sport, why not laundry pole relay races. The main goal of most events is to promote teamwork.

Towards the end of class today a couple of my senior girls were whispering back and forth to each other and occasionally glancing at me. They would whisper, look at me, go back to whispering and I thought to myself, here it comes. I’m going to get asked some off the wall question. It’s happened so many times before, I recognize the pattern. This never happens with a random, normal question. This behavior always prefaces an outlandish, usually personal question. One of them finally got up the courage to ask. “Teacher, do you hate children?” Even with the knowledge that the forthcoming question was going to be outside of the norm, this one surprised me. I just laughed and told them, “I like children just fine. They are great for 40 to 50-minute intervals, then it is time to go away. I don’t want them in my home.” This seemed to assuage their curiosity. Kids really do say the craziest things.

An Autumn-moon festival haiku.

Sumo wrestlers are huge. Not exactly breaking news, I understand. But it’s really hard to gauge their true size when you only see them on TV. I happened to be standing right next to this sumo while working out at my gym. I felt like a little kid next to this guy. But the interesting part, to me at least, of this mundane tale, is when another sumo wrestler showed up. I don’t know why, but I was hoping that there was some kind of secret sumo code that compelled sumo wrestling on the spot. I don’t know why I thought this. It’s not like I expect basketball players upon meeting in the street to play a game of one on one. In any case, I was disappointed that no sumoing took place.

A class had to write a short paper on the topic of free time. Most students complain that they have no free time. It is true that their time is very limited. They have homework, club activities, tests, cram schools, etc. However, I think there is a secret agenda behind keeping high school kids incredibly busy. The teen birth rate in Japan is the lowest in the developed world. 4 births per 1000 girls aged 15 to 19. Obviously, there are other factors behind this, actual parenting, cultural mores, (etc), but as they say, idle hands are the devil’s playthings.

It’s always fun to see how Western holidays are celebrated in Asian countries. Halloween in Japan is becoming quite popular. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a holiday that involves dressing up in costumes would be popular in Japan. Teens and young adults have been involved in cosplay for years. If you go to Shibuya or Harajuku, you will see kids dressed up in fancy costumes based on popular anime. I don’t see it as much anymore, maybe cosplay is not so popular anymore. However, if you go to Shibuya on Halloween, you will see thousands of people dressed up and partying. I think one reason the holiday is so popular here is that there is no religion associated with the holiday. It’s just a time to dress up and party. Halloween is still two weeks away, but there are already Halloween decorations up around shopping malls and even some play areas for kids set up. The shopping mall that houses my local Starbucks even had a giant Jack-o-lantern bouncy castle for the kids. I’m not sure if kids to trick or treating. I suppose I will find out soon enough. Better go buy some candy just in case.

A Halloween tree?

The neighborhood is awash in laundry hanging to dry. The last week has seen nothing but steady rain. Every damn day, rain rain rain. Not to be too graphic, but I was getting down to the emergency backup underwear. Clothes dryers are a rarity in Japan so when there is a break in the weather, it’s all hands on deck. The morning sun woke me up this morning, so I immediately jumped out of bed, well got up off the floor actually, and put the socks and undies in the washing machine. Now I just hope the rain holds off for a few hours to allow my clothes to dry. Hmm, wonder if I can get my gym stuff washed today too? I’m sure my workout buddies would appreciate it.

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I do not laugh when my students make a mistake in their English when I’m with them in the classroom, but when I’m marking work in private, that is a different case. Some of the mistakes in spelling or word usage are just too good not to laugh. Like I said, I would never laugh at my kids in class. I know how hard it is to learn a language and I do not want to shatter their confidence. But read this and tell me you didn’t chuckle a bit. If you say you didn’t, you are a liar.

Ok, now that you are done laughing, I’ll give you the background. The students were making a video about umami. This portion of the video talked about how a famous chef said he wanted to include umami in more food and introduce the flavor to the world. For some reason, chef turned into cook, which in turn changed to cock. How does this happen? Who knows? Too many chefs, or cocks, spoils the broth I suppose.

Super Typhoon Lan is currently knocking on my storm doors. The rain has been falling for the last couple of days, but it is really pounding down now or as the Japan Meteorological Agency scientifically puts it, tons of rain is falling. I wonder if school will get rained out again tomorrow. The town next to mine has started evacuating elderly residents who live in low-lying areas. Should make for an interesting night. The biggest complaint with my apartment is the metal storm doors. When the wind starts whipping, the doors rattle like the tail of a giant metal diamondback. If it is raining and windy then I get to listen to raindrops pinging off the metal all night. I’ve had a few sleepless nights in this place when the wind whistles through the Boso Peninsula.

Super Typhoon Lan

Tons of rain indeed.

Well, Super Typhoon Lan did arrive. A bit late and with a bit less rain than expected, at least in my area. That doesn’t mean we didn’t feel the effects of the Typhoon. The strong wind and heavy rain finally did hit around 5 am. The driving rain made it impossible to sleep as it pounded against my metal storm doors. Nothing like effective foreshadowing, eh? At 5:30 I had made the executive decision to not go to work that day. Making the 10-minute walk to the bus stop in that weather was a non-starter. I checked my email expecting a message from work that classes were canceled. Hmm, no such message. Well, give them another 30 minutes, I’m sure by then the powers that be will do the right thing. Nope. My plans of watching the Sunday Night Football game live were evaporating. Mostly because the clouds were doing the same thing. The rain was letting up and the wind had slowed to a slight breeze. Damn it.

So, I resign myself to the fact that I will have to work today, eat, shower, get dressed and get out the door at 9. At the bus stop, I see a few of my students. Hmm, they should have been at school at least half an hour ago. “What’s up?” I ask. “The trains are very late.” comes the reply. That would be the theme of the morning. Students were stranded all over the prefecture. Why the hell didn’t we cancel classes? We did it for a rainstorm earlier this month. A typhoon that everybody knew was coming doesn’t get the same consideration? Students arrived in dribs and drabs all morning. Classes didn’t begin until 11:00. We had four 30 minute classes and then Long Home Room for 50 minutes and that was it. Some students had club activities after school and most went home. What a stupid day. More than a few teachers grumbled about the situation. When you can get a Japanese person to complain, you know a huge mistake was made. I really need typhoon season to end, like right now.

I had a small Halloween party with my favorite class. I know teachers aren’t supposed to have favorites, but we are human after all. Although you may have a hard time convincing some students that is true. Most of my classes are huge. Thirty-six students is a small class. Most are forty-four to forty-eight. It’s hard to get to know the students. I see them once a week for 50 minutes so I don’t even know most of their names. But my favorite class to teach is small. It has seven students and I see them four times a week. I can actually get to know them a bit and yes, I even know all of their names. They are a fun bunch. They volunteered for the class, so there is some motivation to try to learn English, unlike my other classes where it is just part of the curriculum. A good majority of the students in my larger classes just aren’t that interested in English. But my magnificent seven really do try their hardest to come to class and speak English.

Our Halloween party wasn’t much of an affair. No costumes or decorations. But we did watch It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I don’t know how much they understood, even with the dodgy subtitles, which were pretty far off. I mean c’mon, YouTube, how the hell am I supposed to explain this to a bunch of high school students in a second language?

It’s the pornographic pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

I just kind of played it off. Man, my job is hard enough. I don’t need this crap. After the show, we did some trick-or-treating in the classroom. I had them come to my desk and say the magic words. Now, remember, these are seniors in high school, but they were like little kids. I haven’t seen them smile this much all year. Teaching is a hard job and the pay sucks, but those are the times that make it worth it.

Wow, another month shot to hell. I’m sure when I go out tomorrow there will be signs that Christmas is on its way. Even in Japan, Christmas can’t come soon enough.

October 2017 Sports day is always a big occasion in Japanese schools. Class schedules are shuffled weeks in advance to allow time to practice for the big event.

#education #Halloween

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gustavowilh · 7 years ago

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Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget

Is your app available in English-only? If so, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table. The App Store consists more of non-English speaking nations than English speaking ones. In fact, 60% of the 130 countries with app store presence are non-English speaking nations. This translates into 100s of non-English speaking markets and billions of non-English speaking potential users that can accelerate your app downloads, and in turn, your revenue. If you want to tap into these large user bases, the best way forward is through localization.

Executing localization strategies at the global level may seem daunting. I know what you may be thinking: Doesn’t global localization mean huge investment? Not exactly. You don’t have to feel scared about the investment, or for that matter, the strategy. Say hello to Minimum Viable Localization and things will fall in place.

You may have heard of Minimum Viable Product model. Minimum Viable Localization works on the same model, but the focus is on identifying and localizing the core features of your app for different markets. Take a look at some of the major markets you may think about expanding into based on number of App Store downloads.

Image source

These major markets offer million dollar opportunity for app development companies and the majority of them are non-English-speaking countries. All you have to do is leverage the minimum viable localization model and take the plunge.

Minimum Viable Localization in a nutshell

Minimum Viable Products are launched with minimal features and functionalities. By the same token, Minimum Viable Localization focuses on a healthy minimum that stands somewhere in the middle of a polished and a final product, but still has the power to draw and delight the users. Your product may not be the best of the lot, but it should give value to users.

When it comes to localization, ‘minimum viability’ refers to localizing least number of features to acquire more users in your target market.

Who should adopt a Minimum Viable Localization model?

There are two major factors in adopting a Minimum Viable Localization model for your app:

If your app is already up and running, and you mainly depend on organic searches for attracting users, then localization could be the key to globalizing your app.

More importantly, if your app is firing all cylinders in English speaking countries, then it could be time for you to think about your localization plans.

If you fall into either of the above categories, the next step is to think about the steps you need to take in order to leverage the Minimum Viable Localization model for your app. Here are eight tips to help get you started.

8 steps to Minimum Viable Localization

Tip 1: Plan your app structure with localization in mind

If you have plans to localize your app in the future, make sure the structure is simple enough. Why? Because a simple app structure makes localization a lot simpler.

A flexible, simplified app structure speeds up the localization process, especially during the initial stages. Sometimes there’s a sudden customer demand for a localized app, leaving no time for major changes. In this case, a simplified, flexible app architecture comes as a saving grace.

Some of the basic elements that need to be accounted for while planning your app structure for localization include:

Externalization of all strings.

Inclusion of comments in strings. This will help the translator in figuring out the exact context.

If possible, avoid text in images, or localizing the text in your images.

Design UI with text contraction/expansion in mind. For example, Chinese text is shorter than English text.

Make sure the app’s structure is installed with multi-lingual resource files, even for the English language.

Case Study: No one champions localization strategies quite like Uber. In addition to having different logos for different countries, the company has placed customized logos for different cities of the same country. According to a story in Wired:

“Amin and his team decided to create colors, patterns, and images that were specific to each market, allowing Uber employees more autonomy in crafting messages for their own cities. The designers mocked up mood boards for individual cities, regions, and countries, piecing together images representing architecture, textiles, fashion, and art, among other things.“

Uber’s Mood Board for India

Tip 2: Launch a localized app at the global App Store first

Here’s where many developers could go wrong. Sure, launching your app in the app store, in English, is the order of the day. But at the same time, you need to launch your app in other popular languages using the Minimum Viable Localization model, if you want to expand your reach.

When we say Minimum Viable Localization, it simply means to localize some of the must-have features of your app, like the app description, title, and keywords in a language specific to the country of your choice. This will help you test the interest for your app in that particular market. To assist, you can make use of mobile marketing platforms such as Sensor Tower or TUNE to know the actual positioning of the keyword in the targeted market.

Now, why is it important to test an app’s viability at the app store instead of the targeted market, directly? As shown in the graph above, the revenue flow from selling apps in the App Store is huge, and a large number of users search using their native language over English. By launching your app in different, popular languages at the App Store itself, you will be able to gather crucial stats as to which countries are best for your app’s localization debut.

Some of the favored foreign language markets with largely paid user base include Spanish, European, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Latin American, and more. Try harnessing Minimum Viable Localization strategy for these markets first before looking elsewhere.

Case Study: Evernote’s success in China acquired four million users after a year’s completion can be partly attributed to its Chinese title, Yinxiang Biji. The name is in keeping with the Chinese characteristics of a well-localized product name:

It’s easy to pronounce and remember in Chinese

The term ‘Biji’ stands for note-taking.

Evernote’s jaw-dropping success rate in China can partially be attributed to its Chinese title.

In another example, Flipboard keeps its app title same in all the markets, but offers to localize the descriptive part of its title—Your News Magazine—in the native language.

Tip 3: Make a plan with help from locals

It pays to be prepared. Enticing users of another country without a checklist in hand could be damaging for your app downloads.

Points to keep in mind while localizing the basics of your app:

Speak to potential customers and domain experts of the targeted country, or people who are already operating tech companies in that country.

Connect with who are running their businesses in that country. For instance, if you have an Australian client who has operations in South Korea, they would be a great person to talk to in order to share pain points before you begin.

List out all that is required to make your app launch stronger in newer markets. This could include special features and local behaviors, and also things like payment processing, mass mailing, hosting, etc.

Tip 4: Narrow down your target market for advanced features

Speaking to natives and gathering information from other sources may help you gather exhaustive data about your new audience.

But then, you don’t have to develop everything that’s there on your check list. Remember, you are working out a thinnest MVL model possible. So, aim to localize 10 out of the 20 to 30 items on the list, then sit down and figure out the cost and time required to create all these features. Plug: The GoodFirms research team has already figured out this for you.

Some of the features you need to consider while localizing your app include:

Metadata

Text strings

Help files

Privacy, terms, and conditions

Push notifications

Live tile updates

Videos with subtitles or voice-overs

Date and time formats

App icon

Colors and style

It’s up to you to decide whether you’d like to localize all the above features or just a couple of them. But, if you happen to localize all these features, your app will be better placed and chances of success will automatically shoot up.

Case Study: AutoCAD has 10 million users worldwide, of which only 1.5 million are native English speakers. Their success could entirely be attributed to full app localization. Backed by strategic and acquisition-focused localization, the company’s download rates increased from 1,500 to 5,000 a day in less than six months.

AutoCAD has over 1.5 million users, thanks to its full app localization strategies

Tip 5: Consider multi-lingual speakers

If your targeted audience is multi-lingual, or are non-native English speakers, you don’t have to strictly comply with the localization strategies and translate every word of your app.

How do you decide as to how much your app needs to go under the translation hammer? You can start by leveraging the EF Education First English Proficiency Index to zero down the nations with high, average, and low fluency rates in English. According to a OneSky Report, young people across the European Union speak more English compared to older citizens. Malta, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, among many other European nations, have 50% of their younger generations speaking English. Case in point, you don’t have to go word for word while translating your app for these countries.

Tip 6: Conduct users tests before launch

User tests ensure your app is free of functionality bugs, and that symbols and texts are not missing in the process. Be sure to conduct your tests on an actual device and not on a simulator. Your testers should be native speakers and shouldn’t have any knowledge of the localization process your app has undergone.

Some of the crucial tests your users need to conduct include:

Linguistic testing: Make sure all text and symbols are translated correctly.

UI testing: Make sure text expansion doesn’t affect the user interface.

Functionality testing: Make sure that app still functions the same.

Usability testing: Make sure users within the target market will understand how to use the application.

Tip 7: Launch your app and engage your new audience

Once the localization process is over, go ahead and launch your app!

Plan some engagement activities with your new audience via your localized web presence and multilingual support services. This will assure your end users won’t be left on their own in case issues arise.

Tip 8: Leverage external localization resources

Make use of some credible resources to help you with the localization process of your app.

Some widely used resources include:

AppAnnie: Popular business intelligence tool that helps track competitor’s localization efforts through detailed analytics. Over 7,00,000 apps and 94% of the top 100 publishers are already using AppAnnie. You can also employ Sensor Tower tools for the same.

One-Hour Translation: A top player in offering professional translation services, especially apps. The company has a team of 15,000 translators in over 100 countries. The services are available at competitive prices.

Bonus tip: Crowd-funding as a localization strategy

Leveraging Minimum Viable Localization and launching a localized model in the App Store is the best approach toward localization. But you can also choose the crowd-funding way toward localization.

For instance, Everlane, an online brand selling designer wear, wanted to spread its footprints in Canada in 2013. So, to test the market potential of their product first-hand, they launched campaign #CrowdFundCanada and offered rewards for different contribution amounts.

Eventually, the company received over $1, 00,000 in 17 days with over 1,400 contributors. Everlane not only managed to gather the initial funding but also managed to build a strong user base.

Conclusion

Minimum Viable Localization is the best way to test uncharted foreign terrains before you go the whole way in localizing your app. But when it comes to the right approach, you need to scope it out for yourself. Whether Flipboard’s calculated approach is the safest bet for your app or Uber’s all-in approach is best, only you will be able to tell.

The post Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget appeared first on Apptentive.

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darincjohnson · 7 years ago

Text

Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget

Image source

Minimum Viable Localization in a nutshell

When it comes to localization, ‘minimum viability’ refers to localizing least number of features to acquire more users in your target market.

Who should adopt a Minimum Viable Localization model?

There are two major factors in adopting a Minimum Viable Localization model for your app:

If your app is already up and running, and you mainly depend on organic searches for attracting users, then localization could be the key to globalizing your app.

More importantly, if your app is firing all cylinders in English speaking countries, then it could be time for you to think about your localization plans.

8 steps to Minimum Viable Localization

Tip 1: Plan your app structure with localization in mind

If you have plans to localize your app in the future, make sure the structure is simple enough. Why? Because a simple app structure makes localization a lot simpler.

Some of the basic elements that need to be accounted for while planning your app structure for localization include:

Externalization of all strings.

Inclusion of comments in strings. This will help the translator in figuring out the exact context.

If possible, avoid text in images, or localizing the text in your images.

Design UI with text contraction/expansion in mind. For example, Chinese text is shorter than English text.

Make sure the app’s structure is installed with multi-lingual resource files, even for the English language.

Uber’s Mood Board for India

Tip 2: Launch a localized app at the global App Store first

It’s easy to pronounce and remember in Chinese

The term ‘Biji’ stands for note-taking.

Evernote’s jaw-dropping success rate in China can partially be attributed to its Chinese title.

In another example, Flipboard keeps its app title same in all the markets, but offers to localize the descriptive part of its title—Your News Magazine—in the native language.

Tip 3: Make a plan with help from locals

It pays to be prepared. Enticing users of another country without a checklist in hand could be damaging for your app downloads.

Points to keep in mind while localizing the basics of your app:

Speak to potential customers and domain experts of the targeted country, or people who are already operating tech companies in that country.

Tip 4: Narrow down your target market for advanced features

Speaking to natives and gathering information from other sources may help you gather exhaustive data about your new audience.

Some of the features you need to consider while localizing your app include:

Metadata

Text strings

Help files

Privacy, terms, and conditions

Push notifications

Live tile updates

Videos with subtitles or voice-overs

Date and time formats

App icon

Colors and style

AutoCAD has over 1.5 million users, thanks to its full app localization strategies

Tip 5: Consider multi-lingual speakers

If your targeted audience is multi-lingual, or are non-native English speakers, you don’t have to strictly comply with the localization strategies and translate every word of your app.

Tip 6: Conduct users tests before launch

Some of the crucial tests your users need to conduct include:

Linguistic testing: Make sure all text and symbols are translated correctly.

UI testing: Make sure text expansion doesn’t affect the user interface.

Functionality testing: Make sure that app still functions the same.

Usability testing: Make sure users within the target market will understand how to use the application.

Tip 7: Launch your app and engage your new audience

Once the localization process is over, go ahead and launch your app!

Tip 8: Leverage external localization resources

Make use of some credible resources to help you with the localization process of your app.

Some widely used resources include:

Bonus tip: Crowd-funding as a localization strategy

Leveraging Minimum Viable Localization and launching a localized model in the App Store is the best approach toward localization. But you can also choose the crowd-funding way toward localization.

Eventually, the company received over $1, 00,000 in 17 days with over 1,400 contributors. Everlane not only managed to gather the initial funding but also managed to build a strong user base.

Conclusion

The post Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget appeared first on Apptentive.

from WordPress https://darincjohnson.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/minimum-viable-localization-a-powerful-strategy-to-globalize-your-app-on-low-budget/ via IFTTT

#Mobille App Development #Android App #Cellphone App #Cellphone Application Development

0 notes

michaelmikkelson · 7 years ago

Text

Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget

Image source

Minimum Viable Localization in a nutshell

When it comes to localization, ‘minimum viability’ refers to localizing least number of features to acquire more users in your target market.

Who should adopt a Minimum Viable Localization model?

There are two major factors in adopting a Minimum Viable Localization model for your app:

If your app is already up and running, and you mainly depend on organic searches for attracting users, then localization could be the key to globalizing your app.

More importantly, if your app is firing all cylinders in English speaking countries, then it could be time for you to think about your localization plans.

8 steps to Minimum Viable Localization

Tip 1: Plan your app structure with localization in mind

If you have plans to localize your app in the future, make sure the structure is simple enough. Why? Because a simple app structure makes localization a lot simpler.

Some of the basic elements that need to be accounted for while planning your app structure for localization include:

Externalization of all strings.

Inclusion of comments in strings. This will help the translator in figuring out the exact context.

If possible, avoid text in images, or localizing the text in your images.

Design UI with text contraction/expansion in mind. For example, Chinese text is shorter than English text.

Make sure the app’s structure is installed with multi-lingual resource files, even for the English language.

Uber’s Mood Board for India

Tip 2: Launch a localized app at the global App Store first

It’s easy to pronounce and remember in Chinese

The term ‘Biji’ stands for note-taking.

Evernote’s jaw-dropping success rate in China can partially be attributed to its Chinese title.

In another example, Flipboard keeps its app title same in all the markets, but offers to localize the descriptive part of its title—Your News Magazine—in the native language.

Tip 3: Make a plan with help from locals

It pays to be prepared. Enticing users of another country without a checklist in hand could be damaging for your app downloads.

Points to keep in mind while localizing the basics of your app:

Speak to potential customers and domain experts of the targeted country, or people who are already operating tech companies in that country.

Tip 4: Narrow down your target market for advanced features

Speaking to natives and gathering information from other sources may help you gather exhaustive data about your new audience.

Some of the features you need to consider while localizing your app include:

Metadata

Text strings

Help files

Privacy, terms, and conditions

Push notifications

Live tile updates

Videos with subtitles or voice-overs

Date and time formats

App icon

Colors and style

AutoCAD has over 1.5 million users, thanks to its full app localization strategies

Tip 5: Consider multi-lingual speakers

If your targeted audience is multi-lingual, or are non-native English speakers, you don’t have to strictly comply with the localization strategies and translate every word of your app.

Tip 6: Conduct users tests before launch

Some of the crucial tests your users need to conduct include:

Linguistic testing: Make sure all text and symbols are translated correctly.

UI testing: Make sure text expansion doesn’t affect the user interface.

Functionality testing: Make sure that app still functions the same.

Usability testing: Make sure users within the target market will understand how to use the application.

Tip 7: Launch your app and engage your new audience

Once the localization process is over, go ahead and launch your app!

Tip 8: Leverage external localization resources

Make use of some credible resources to help you with the localization process of your app.

Some widely used resources include:

Bonus tip: Crowd-funding as a localization strategy

Leveraging Minimum Viable Localization and launching a localized model in the App Store is the best approach toward localization. But you can also choose the crowd-funding way toward localization.

Eventually, the company received over $1, 00,000 in 17 days with over 1,400 contributors. Everlane not only managed to gather the initial funding but also managed to build a strong user base.

Conclusion

The post Minimum Viable Localization: A Powerful Strategy to Globalize Your App on Low Budget appeared first on Apptentive.

0 notes

trendingnewsb · 8 years ago

Text

Beyond Bollywood: where India’s biggest movie hits really come from

The global success of fantasy epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion underscores the power of the countrys billion-dollar regional film industry

The global success of SS Rajamoulis fantasy epic sequel Baahubali 2: The Conclusion has once again brought Indian cinema to the attention of the world. Its forerunner, the $31m-budgeted Baahubali: The Beginning (2015), grossed $100m worldwide but caused little more than a ripple outside India. Within the country, it made waves because the film, made in the south Indian Telugu and Tamil languages, saw the Hindi-dubbed version alone gross more than $20m.

It is a common misconception that the Hindi-language, Mumbai-based film industry known as Bollywood is Indias national cinema. The numbers tell a different story. India produces an astonishing 1,900 films a year on average, of which Hindi-language Bollywood accounts for about 340. The bulk of the rest comes from the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati languages. Domestic box office has remained stagnant at about $1.5bn and, while Bollywood might produce more films (Tamil had 291, Telugu 275, and Kannada 204 films in 2016), it contributes just a third of the box office gross. In short, Bollywood has the visibility, but not the profits, with the under-performers far outweighing the hits.

In this context, the numbers racked up by the regional Baahubali 2 budgeted at $39m, made in Telugu and Tamil, with Hindi and Malayalam dubbed versions are astonishing by Indian standards. The film opened on 28 April and grossed $194m in 13 days, making it the highest Indian grosser of all time and putting it on track to become the first Indian film to gross $200m. It easily outperformed the $123m collected by PK (2014), starring Bollywood icon Aamir Khan.

Baahubali 2 consolidated this performance by delivering an extraordinary result in the US, opening in third position at the box office, above The Circle starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. With $17m and counting, it is the highest grossing Indian film of all time in North America.

Baahubali 2 has the perfect blend of action, emotion and all the right ingredients that a moviegoer wants, says Soma Kancherla, of the films US distributors Great India Films. Baahubali 1s success and the curiosity factor had created a huge hype. The conclusion had lived up to the expectations.

Female empowerment saga Parched, directed by Leena Yadav. Photograph: Brisbane Asia and Pacific Film Festival

Has the film broken out beyond Indian diaspora audiences to a broader audience? Yes, says Kancherla. We factored some of that into our promotion and targeted non-Indians, and to some extent it worked. We have seen many Americans in the theatres who watched and appreciated the film.

The film also collected $2.3m across 66 Imax screens around the world in its opening weekend. This included $1.8m from 45 Imax locations in North America, making it the highest ever opening in the format for a foreign language film.

In the UK, rather than the consolidated figure of the various versions charting as in North America, fragmented versions were listed, with the Hindi version bowing in sixth position, the Tamil one in ninth and the Malayalam and Telugu versions lower in the Top 20.

Creating and maintaining anticipation for the larger-than-life saga of warring cousins and fiery queens was a carefully calibrated task for producer Shobu Yarlagaddaof Arka Mediaworks, the company behind the films. As we started preproduction on the film, we knew that for the kind of efforts we were planning to put into the project, financial and otherwise, it would be sad if we didnt at least attempt to go beyond our regional strongholds, says Yarlagadda.

Global hit Dangal has taken $143m worldwide. Photograph: Disney

Getting a wide release in the south Indian language markets of Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam was simple enough as director Rajamouli is a brand name there, with hits such as Eega and Magadheera behind him. For north India and the international markets, Arka promoted the project on social media platforms, as well as attending comic-cons and university festivals.

The so-called traditional market for Indian films is a block of 50 territories with the biggest being the US, the UAE, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indias south Asian neighbours, Australia and New Zealand, and North Africa, with some pockets in France, Germany and Switzerland. Elsewhere, Indian films were popular in Russia and China in the 1950s, particularly actor/film-maker Raj Kapoors blockbuster Awara, while dancing action star Mithun Chakraborty enjoyed fame there with his 1982 film Disco Dancer. However, of late, Indian studio majors have been striking out into non-traditional territories with dubbed or subtitled versions of films: Ki & Ka was released in territories as diverse as Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Gibraltar; Bajrangi Bhaijaan in Morocco, Tunisia and Poland; and Mary Kom in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Indian producers have utilised every trick in the book to reach overseas audiences. Arka hired Franois Da Silva, former artistic director of Cannes directors fortnight, to sell and market the film internationally. Non-Indian behind-the-camera talent is increasingly common. Leena Yadavs female empowerment saga Parched, in Hindi, boasts Titanic cinematographer Russell Carpenter and The Descendants editor Kevin Tent.

Accessible English-language titles are also on the rise. Pan Nalins Angry Indian Goddesses, billed as Indias first female buddy movie, sold to 61 territories internationally. Nalin says: Based on my past movies and gaining some experience with international distribution one thing I realised is that its not enough to just have a great movie. We also need a great title which is universally appealing. Titling it in English has paid off. Across the world, the moment we utter or read Angry Indian Goddesses it puts a smile on faces.

All the major Hollywood films are released in English and in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil dubs, demonstrating that India loves global tentpoles, provided they speak in their own tongues. (Appropriately, the highest grossing Hollywood film in India is the India-set The Jungle Book, which roared to $28m in 2016.) Nevertheless, the dominance being enjoyed by Baahubali 2 could be under threat. Wrestling drama Dangal has taken $143m at the global box office, while fans of Baahubalis spectacle will be waiting for the big-budget adaptations of epic story cycles The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, which are in the works. Its fair to say that, with Hollywood accounting for just 10% of the local box office, the Indian film industry continues to enjoy rude good health.

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clubofinfo · 8 years ago

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Expert: Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back. Dr. Abu-Sitta is also a thinker. A Palestinian born in Kuwait, he studied and lived in the UK, and worked in various war zones of the Middle East, as well as in Asia, before accepting his present position at the AUB Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon. We were brought together by peculiar circumstances. Several months ago I burned my foot on red-hot sand, in Southeast Asia. It was healing slowly, but it was healing. Until I went to Afghanistan where at one of the checkpoints in Herat I had to take my shoes off, and the wound got badly infected. Passing through London, I visited a hospital there, and was treated by one of Abu-Sitta’s former professors. When I said that among other places I work in Lebanon, he recommended that I visit one of his “best students who now works in Beirut”. I did. During that time, a pan-Arab television channel, Al-Mayadeen, was broadcasting in English, with Arabic subtitles, a long two-part interview with me, about my latest political/revolutionary novel “Aurora” and about the state of the global south, and the upsurge of the Western imperialism. To my surprise, Dr. Abu-Sitta and his colleagues were following my work and political discourses. To these hardened surgeons, my foot ‘issue’ was just a tiny insignificant scratch. What mattered was the US attack against Syria, the Palestine, and the provocations against North Korea. My ‘injury’ healed well, and Dr. Abu-Sitta and I became good friends. Unfortunately I have to leave Beirut for Southeast Asia, before a huge conference, which he and his colleagues are launching on the May 15, 2017, a conference on the “Ecology of War”. I believe that the topic is thoroughly fascinating and essential for our humanity, even for its survival. It combines philosophy, medicine and science. What happens to people in war zones? And what is a war zone, really? We arrived at some common conclusions, as both of us were working with the same topic but looking at it from two different angles: “The misery is war. The destruction of the strong state leads to conflict. A great number of people on our Planet actually live in some conflict or war, without even realizing it: in slums, in refugee camps, in thoroughly collapsed states, or in refugee camps.” We talked a lot: about fear, which is engulfing countries like the UK, about the new wave of individualism and selfishness, which has its roots in frustration. At one point he said: “In most parts of the world “freedom” is synonymous with the independence struggle for our countries. In such places as the UK, it mainly means more individualism, selfishness and personal liberties.” We talked about imperialism, medicine and the suffering of the Middle East. Then we decided to publish this dialogue, shedding some light on the “Ecology of War” – this essential new discipline in both philosophy and medicine. Ecology of War (The discussion took place in Beirut, Lebanon, in Cafe Younes, on April 25, 2017) Broken Social Contract In The Arab World, Even In Europe GA-S: In the South, medicine and the provision of health were critical parts of the post-colonial state. And the post-colonial state built medical systems such as we had in Iraq, Egypt and in Syria as part of the social contract. They became an intrinsic part of the creation of those states. And it was a realization that the state has to exercise its power both coercively, (which we know the state is capable of exercising, by putting you in prison, and even exercising violence), but above all non-coercively: it needs to house you, educate you, and give you health, all of those things. And that non-coercive power that the states exercise is a critical part of the legitimizing process of the state. We saw it evolve in 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. So as a digression, if you want to look at how the state was dismantled: the aim of the sanctions against Iraq was not to weaken the Makhabarat or the army; the aim of the sanctions was to rob the Iraqi state of its non-coercive power; its ability to give life, to give education, and that’s why after 12 years, the state has totally collapsed internally – not because its coercive powers have weakened, but because it was robbed of all its non-coercive powers, of all its abilities to guarantee life to its citizens. AV: So in a way the contract between the state and the people was broken. GA-S: Absolutely! And you had that contract existing in the majority of post-colonialist states. With the introduction of the IMF and World Bank-led policies that viewed health and the provision of health as a business opportunity for the ruling elites and for corporations, and viewed free healthcare as a burden on the state, you began to have an erosion in certain countries like Egypt, like Jordan, of the non-coercive powers of the state, leading to the gradual weakening of its legitimacy. Once again, the aim of the IMF and World Bank was to turn health into a commodity, which could be sold back to people as a service; sold back to those who could afford it. AV: So, the US model, but in much more brutal form, as the wages in most of those countries were incomparably lower. GA-S: Absolutely! And the way you do that in these countries: you create a two-tier system where the government tier is so under-funded, that people choose to go to the private sector. And then in the private sector you basically have the flourishing of all aspects of private healthcare: from health insurance to provision of health care, to pharmaceuticals. AV: Paradoxically this scenario is also taking place in the UK right now. GA-S: We see it in the UK and we’ll see it in many other European countries. But it has already happened in this region, in the Arab world. Here, the provision of health was so critical to creation of the states. It was critical to the legitimacy of the state. AV: The scenario has been extremely cynical: while the private health system was imposed on the Arab region and on many other parts of the world, in the West itself, except in the United States, medical care remains public and basically free. We are talking about state medical care in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. GA-S: Yes. In Europe as part of the welfare state that came out of the Second World War, the provision of healthcare was part of the social contract. As the welfare state with the advent of Thatcherism and Reagan-ism was being dismantled, it became important to undergo a similar process as elsewhere. The difference is that in the UK, and also in countries like Germany, it was politically very dangerous. It could lead to election losses. So the second plan was to erode the health system, by a thousand blows, kill it gradually. What you ended up in the UK is the piece-by-piece privatization of the health sector. And the people don’t know, they don’t notice that the system is becoming private. Or in Germany where actually the government does not pay for healthcare – the government subsidizes the insurance companies that profit from the private provision of healthcare. AV: Before we began recording this discussion, we were speaking about the philosophical dilemmas that are now besieging or at least should be besieging the medical profession. Even the social medical care in Europe: isn’t it to some extent a cynical arrangement? European countries are now all part of the imperialist block, together with the United States, and they are all plundering the rest of the world – the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia – and they are actually subsidizing their social system from that plunder. That’s one thing. But also, the doctors and nurses working for instance in the UK or Germany are often ‘imported’ from much poorer countries, where they have often received free education. Instead of helping their own, needy people, they are actually now serving the ageing and by all international comparisons, unreasonably spoiled and demanding population in Europe, which often uses medical facilities as if they were some ‘social club’. GA-S: I think what has happened, particularly in Europe, is that there is a gradual erosion of all aspects of the welfare state. Politically it was not yet possible to get rid of free healthcare. The problem that you can certainly see in the United Kingdom is that health is the final consequence of social and economic factors that people live in. So if you have chronic unemployment, second and third generation unemployment problem, these have health consequences. If you have the destruction of both pensions and the cushion of a social umbrella for the unemployed, that has consequences… Poor housing has health consequences. Mass unemployment has health consequences. Politically it was easy to get rid of all other aspects of the welfare state, but they were stuck with a healthcare problem. And so the losing battle that the health systems in the West are fighting is that they are being expected to cater to the poor consequences of the brutal capitalist system as a non-profit endeavor. But we know that once these lifestyle changes are affecting people’s health, it’s too late in terms of cure or prevention. And so what the European health systems do, they try to patch people and to get them out of the system and back on the street. So if you have children with chronic asthma, you treat the asthma but not the dump housing in which these children are living in. If you have violent assaults and trauma related to violence, you treat the trauma, the physical manifestation, and not the breakdown of youth unemployment, or racism that creates this. So in order to sustain this anomaly, as you said, you need an inflated health system, because you make people sick and then you try to fix them, rather than stopping them from being sick. Hence that brain drains that have basically happened, where you have more Ghanaian doctors in New York than you have in Ghana. AV: And you have an entire army of Philippine nurses in the UK, while there is suddenly a shortage of qualified nurses in Manila. GA-S: Absolutely! This is the result of the fact that actually people’s health ‘happens’ outside the health system. Because you cannot get rid of the health system, you end up having a bloated health system, and try to fix the ailments that are coming through the door. Collapse Of The Health Care In The Middle East AV: You worked in this entire region. You worked in Iraq, and in Gaza… both you and I worked in Shifa Hospital in Gaza… You worked in Southern Lebanon during the war. How brutal is the healthcare situation in the Middle East? How badly has been, for instance, the Iraqi peoples’ suffering, compared to Western patients? How cruel is the situation in Gaza? GA-S: If you look at places like Iraq: Iraq in the 80’s probably had one of the most advanced health systems in the region. Then you went through the first war against Iraq, followed by 12 years of sanctions in which that health system was totally dismantled; not just in terms of hospitals and medication and the forced exile of doctors and health professionals, but also in terms of other aspects of health, which are the sewage and water and electricity plants, all of those parts of the infrastructure that directly impact on people’s lives. AV: Then came depleted uranium… GA-S: And then you add to the mix that 2003 War and then the complete destruction and dismantling of the state, and the migration of some 50% of Iraq’s doctors. AV: Where did they migrate? GA-S: Everywhere: to the Gulf and to the West; to North America, Europe… So what you have in Iraq is a system that is not only broken, but that has lost the components that are required to rebuild it. You can’t train a new generation of doctors in Iraq, because your trainers have all left the country. You can’t create a health system in Iraq, because you have created a government infrastructure that is intrinsically unstable and based on a multi-polarity of the centers of power which all are fighting for control of the pie of the state… and so Iraqis sub-contract their health at hospital level to India and to Turkey and Lebanon, or Jordan, because they are in this vicious loop. AV: But this is only for those who can afford it? GA-S: Yes, for those who can, but even in those times when the government had cash it could not build the system anymore. So it would sub-contract health provisions outside, because the system was so broken that money couldn’t fix it. AV: Is it the same in other countries of the region? GA-S: The same is happening in Libya and the same is happening in Syria, with regards of the migration of their doctors. Syria will undergo something similar to Iraq at the end of the war, if the Syrian state is destroyed. AV: But it is still standing. GA-S: It still stands and it is still providing healthcare to the overwhelming majority of the population even to those who live in the rebel-controlled areas. They are travelling to Damascus and other cities for their cardiac services or for their oncological services. AV: So no questions asked; you are sick, you get treated? GA-S: Even from the ISIS-controlled areas people can travel and get treated, because this is part of the job of the state. AV: The same thing is happening with the education there; Syria still provides all basic services in that area. GA-S: Absolutely! But in Libya, because the state has totally disappeared or has disintegrated, all this is gone. AV: Libya is not even one country, anymore… Intifada Gaza GA-S: There is not a unified country and there is definitely no health system. In Gaza and the Palestine, the occupation and the siege, ensure that there is no normal development of the health system and in case of Gaza as the Israelis say “every few years you come and you mown the lawn”; you kill as many people in these brutal and intense wars, so you can ensure that the people for the next few years will be trying to survive the damage that you have caused. AV: Is there any help from Israeli physicians? GA-S: Oh yes! Very few individuals, but there is… But the Israeli medical establishment is actually an intrinsic part of the Israeli establishment, and the Israeli academic medical establishment is also part of the Israeli establishment. And the Israeli Medical Association refused to condemn the fact that Israeli doctors examine Palestinian political prisoners for what they call “fitness for interrogation”. Which is basically… you get seen by a doctor who decides how much torture you can take before you die. Gaza Shifa Hospital – wounded by Israeli soldiers AV: This actually reminds me of what I was told in 2015 in Pretoria, South Africa, where I was invited to participate as a speaker at the International Conference of the Psychologists for Peace. Several US psychologists reported that during the interrogation and torture of alleged terrorists, there were professional psychologists and even clinical psychiatrists standing by, often assisting the interrogators. GA-S: Yes, there are actually 2-3 well-known American psychologists who designed the CIA interrogation system – its process. AV: What you have described that is happening in Palestine is apparently part of a very pervasive system. I was told in the Indian-controlled Kashmir that Israeli intelligence officers are sharing their methods of interrogation and torture with their Indian counterparts. And. of course, the US is involved there as well. Conflict Medicine GA-S: War surgery grew out of the Napoleonic Wars. During these wars, two armies met; they usually met at the frontline. They attacked each other, shot at each other or stabbed each other. Most of injured were combatants, and they got treated in military hospitals. You had an evolution of war surgery. What we have in this region, we believe, is that the intensity and the prolonged nature of these wars or these conflicts are not temporal-like battles, they don’t start and finish. And they are sufficiently prolonged that they change the biological ecology, the ecology in which people live. They create the ecology of war. That ecology maintains itself well beyond of what we know is the shooting, because they alter the living environment of people. The wounds are physical, psychological and social wounds; the environment is altered as to become hostile; both to the able-bodied and more hostile to the wounded. And as in the cases of these multi-drug-resistant organisms, which are now a big issue in the world like the multi-drug-resistant bacteria, 85% of Iraqi war wounded have multi-drug-resistant bacteria, 70% of Syrian war wounded have it… So we say: this ecology, this bio-sphere that the conflicts create is even altered at the basic DNA of the bacteria. We have several theories about it; partly it’s the role of the heavy metals in modern ordnance, which can trigger mutation in these bacteria that makes them resistant to antibiotics. So your bio-sphere, your bubble, your ecological bubble in which you live in, is permanently changed. And it doesn’t disappear the day the bombs disappear. It has to be dismantled, and in order to dismantle it you have to understand the dynamics of the ecology of war. That’s why our program was set up at the university, which had basically been the major tertiary teaching center during the civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. And then as the war in Iraq and Syria developed, we started to get patients from these countries and treat them here. We found out that we have to understand the dynamics of conflict medicine and to understand the ecology of war; how the physical, biological, psychological and social manifestations of war wounding happen, and how this ecology of war is created; everything from bacteria to the way water and the water cycle changes, to the toxic reminisce of war, to how people’s body reacts… Many of my Iraqi patients that I see have multiple members of their families injured. AV: Is the AUB Medical Center now the pioneer in this research: the ecology of war? GA-S: Yes, because of the legacy of the civil war… of regional wars. AV: Nothing less than a regional perpetual conflict… GA-S: Perpetual conflict, yes; first homegrown, and then regional. We are the referral center for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, referral center for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, so we act as a regional center, and the aim of our program is to dedicate more time and space and energy to the understanding of how this ecology of war comes about. AV: In my writing and in my films, I often draw the parallel between the war and extreme poverty. I have been working in some of the worst slums on Earth, those in Africa, Central America and Caribbean, South Asia, the Philippines and elsewhere. I concluded that many societies that are in theory living in peace are in reality living in prolonged or even perpetual wars. Extreme misery is a form of war, although there is no ‘declaration of war’, and there is no defined frontline. I covered both countless wars and countless places of extreme misery, and the parallel, especially the physical, psychological and social impact on human beings, appears to be striking. Would you agree, based on your research? Do you see extreme misery as a type of war? GA-S: Absolutely. Yes. At the core of it is the ‘dehumanization’ of people. Extreme poverty is a form of violence. The more extreme this poverty becomes, the closer it comes to the physical nature of violence. War is the accelerated degradation of people’s life to reaching that extreme poverty. But that extreme poverty can be reached by a more gradual process. War only gets them there faster. AV: A perpetual state of extreme poverty is in a way similar to a perpetual state of conflict, of a war. GA-S: Definitely. And it is a war mainly against those who are forced to live in these circumstances. It’s the war against the poor and the South. It’s the war against the poor in the inner-cities of the West. AV: When you are defining the ecology of war, are you also taking what we are now discussing into consideration? Are you researching the impact of extreme poverty on human bodies and human lives? In this region, extreme poverty can often be found in the enormous refugee camps, while in other parts of the world it dwells in countless slums. GA-S: This extreme poverty is part of the ecology that we are discussing. One of the constituents of the ecology is when you take a wounded body and you place it in a harsh physical environment and you see how this body is re-wounded and re-wounded again, and this harsh environment becomes a continuation of that battleground, because what you see is a process of re-wounding. Not because you are still in the frontline somewhere in Syria, but because your kids are now living in a tent with 8 other people and they are in danger of becoming the victims of the epidemic of child burns that we now have in the refugee camps, because of poor and unsafe housing. Let’s look at it from a different angle: what constitutes a war wound, or a conflict-related injury? Your most basic conflict-related injury is a gunshot wound and a blast injury from shrapnel. But what happens when you take that wounded body and throw it into a tent? What are the complications for this wounded body living in a harsh environment; does this constitute a war-related injury? When you impoverish the population to the point that you have children suffering from the kind of injuries that we know are the results of poor and unsafe housing, is that a conflict-related injury? Or you have children now who have work-related injuries, because they have to go and become the main breadwinners for the home, working as car mechanics or porters or whatever. Or do you also consider a fact that if you come from a country where a given disease used to be treatable there, but due to the destruction of a health system, that ailment is not treatable anymore, because the hospitals are gone or because doctors had to leave, does that constitute a conflict-related injury? So, we have to look at the entire ecology: beyond a bullet and shrapnel – things that get headlines in the first 20 seconds. AV: Your research seems to be relevant to most parts of the world. GA-S: Absolutely. Because we know that these humanitarian crises only exist in the imagination of the media and the UN agencies. There are no crises. AV: It is perpetual state, again. GA-S: Exactly, it is perpetual. It does not stop. It is there all the time. Therefore there is no concept of ‘temporality of crises’, one thing we are arguing against. There is no referee who blows the whistle at the end of the crises. When the cameras go off, the media and then the world, decides that the crises are over. But you know that people in Laos, for instance, still have one of the highest amputation rates in the world. AV: I know. I worked there in the Plain of Jars, which is an enormous minefield even to this day. GA-S: Or Vietnam, with the greatest child facial deformities in the world as a result of Agent Orange. AV: You worked in these countries. GA-S: Yes. AV: Me too; and I used to live in Vietnam. That entire region is still suffering from what used to be known as the “Secret War”. In Laos, the poverty is so rampant that people are forced to sell unexploded US bombs for scrap. They periodically explode. In Cambodia, even between Seam Reap and the Thai border, there are villages where people are still dying or losing limbs. GA-S: Now many things depend on how we define them. It is often a game of words. AV: India is a war zone, from Kashmir to the Northeast, Bihar and slums of Mumbai. GA-S: If you take the crudest way of measuring conflict, which is the number of people killed by weapons, Guatemala and Salvador have now more people slaughtered than they had during the war. But because the nature in which violence is exhibited changed, because it doesn’t carry a political tag now, it is not discussed. But actually, it is by the same people against the same people. AV: I wrote about and filmed in Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, on several occasions. The extreme violence there is a direct result of the conflict implanted, triggered by the West, particularly by the United States. The same could be said about such places like Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti. It has led to almost absolute social collapse. GA-S: Yes, in Jamaica, the CIA played a great role in the 70’s. AV: In that part of the world we are not talking just about poverty… GA-S: No, no. We are talking AK-47’s! AV: Exactly. Once I filmed in San Salvador, in a gangland… A friend, a local liberation theology priest kindly drove me around. We made two loops. The first loop was fine. On the second one they opened fire at our Land Cruiser, with some heavy stuff. The side of our car was full of bullet holes, and they blew two tires. We got away just on our rims. In the villages, maras simply come and plunder and rape. They take what they want. It is a war. GA-S: ICRC, they train surgeons in these countries. So the ICRC introduced war surgery into the medical curriculum of the medical schools in Colombia and Honduras. Because effectively, these countries are in a war, so you have to train surgeons, so they know what to do when they receive 4-5 patients every day, with gunshot wounds. Med Experiments in Haiti AV: Let me tell you what I witnessed in Haiti, just to illustrate your point. Years ago I was working in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. They say it is the most dangerous ‘neighborhood’ or slum on Earth. The local wisdom goes: “you can enter, but you will never leave alive”. I went there with a truck, with two armed guards, but they were so scared that they just abandoned me there, with my big cameras and everything, standing in the middle of the road. I continued working; I had no choice. At one point I saw a long line in front of some walled compound. I went in. What I was suddenly facing was thoroughly shocking: several local people on some wooden tables, blood everywhere, and numerous US military medics and doctors performing surgeries under the open sky. It was hot, flies and dirt everywhere… A man told me his wife had a huge tumor. Without even checking what it was, the medics put her on a table, gave her “local” and began removing the stuff. After the surgery was over, a husband and wife walked slowly to a bus stop and went home. A couple of kilometers from there I found a well-equipped and clean US medical facility, but only for US troops and staff. I asked the doctors what they were really doing in Haiti and they were quiet open about it; they replied: “we are training for combat scenario… This is as close to a war that we can get.” They were experimenting on human beings, of course; learning how to operate during the combat… GA-S: So, the distinction is only in definitions. AV: As a surgeon who has worked all over the Middle East but also in many other parts of the world, how would you compare the conflict here to the conflicts in Asia, the Great Lakes of Africa and elsewhere? GA-S: In the Middle East, you still have people remembering when they had hospitals. Iraqis who come to my clinic remember the 80’s. They know that life was different and could have been different. And they are health-literate. The other issue is that in 2014 alone, some 30,000 Iraqis were injured. The numbers are astounding. We don’t have a grasp of the numbers in Libya, the amount of ethnic cleansing and killing that is happening in Libya. In terms of numbers, they are profound, but in terms of the effect, we are at the beginning of the phase of de-medicalization. So it wasn’t that these medical systems did not develop. They are being de-developed. They are going backwards. AV: Are you blaming Western imperialism for the situation? GA-S: If you look at the sanctions and what they did to their health system, of course! If you look at Libya, of course! The idea that these states disintegrated is a falsehood. We know what the dynamics of the sanctions were in Iraq, and what happened in Iraq after 2003. We know what happened in Libya. AV: Or in Afghanistan… GA-S: The first thing that the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan or the Nicaraguan Contras were told to do was to attack the clinics. The Americans have always understood that you destroy the state by preventing it from providing these non-coercive powers that I spoke about. Afghan kid – is he at peace?. AV: Do you see this part of the world as the most effected, most damaged? GA-S: At this moment and time certainly. And the statistics show it. I think around 60% of those dying from wars are killed in this region… AV: And how do you define this region geographically? GA-S: From Afghanistan to Mauritania. And that includes the Algerian-Mali border. The Libyan border… The catastrophe of the division of Sudan, what’s happening in South Sudan, what’s happening in Somalia, Libya, Egypt, the Sinai Desert, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, even Pakistan including people who are killed there by drones… AV: But then we also have around 10 million people who have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo, since the 1995 Rwandan invasion… GA-S: Now that is a little bit different. That is the ‘more advanced phase’: when you’ve completely taken away the state… In the Arab world Libya is the closest to that scenario. There the oil companies have taken over the country. The mining companies are occupying DRC. And they run the wars directly, rather than through the Western armies. You erode the state, completely, until it disappears and then the corporations, directly, as they did in the colonialist phase during the East Indian Company, and the Dutch companies, become the main players again. AV: What is the goal of your research, the enormous project called the “Ecology of War”? GA-S: One of the things that we insist on is this holistic approach. The compartmentalization is part of the censorship process. “You are a microbiologist then only look what is happening with the bacteria… You are an orthopedic surgeon, so you only have to look at the blast injuries, bombs, landmine injuries…” So that compartmentalization prevents bringing together people who are able to see the whole picture. Therefore we are insisting that this program also has social scientists, political scientists, anthropologists, microbiologists, surgeons… Otherwise we’d just see the small science. We are trying to put the sciences together to see the bigger picture. We try to put the pieces of puzzle together, and to see the bigger picture. AV: And now you have a big conference. On the 15th of May… GA-S: Now we have a big conference; basically the first congress that will look at all these aspects of conflict and health; from the surgical, to the reconstruction of damaged bodies, to the issues of medical resistance of bacteria, infectious diseases, to some absolutely basic issues. Like, before the war there were 30,000 kidney-failure patients in Yemen. Most dialysis patients are 2 weeks away from dying if they don’t get dialysis. So, there is a session looking at how you provide dialysis in the middle of these conflicts? What do you do, because dialysis services are so centralized? The movement of patients is not easy, and the sanctions… One topic will be ‘cancer and war’… So this conference will be as holistic as possible, of the relationship between the conflict and health. We expect over 300 delegates, and we will have speakers from India, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, from the UK, we have people coming from the humanitarian sector, from ICRC, people who worked in Africa and the Middle East, we have people who worked in previous wars and are now working in current wars, so we have a mix of people from different fields. AV: What is the ultimate goal of the program? GA-S: We have to imagine the health of the region beyond the state. On the conceptual level, we need to try to figure out what is happening. We can already see certain patterns. One of them is the regionalization of healthcare. The fact that Libyans get treated in Tunisia, Iraqis and Syrians get treated in Beirut, Yemenis get treated in Jordan. So you already have the disintegration of these states and the migration of people to the regional centers. The state is no longer a major player, because the state was basically destroyed. We feel that this is a disease of the near future, medium future and long-term future. Therefore we have to understand it, in order to better treat it, we have to put mechanisms in place that this knowledge transfers into the medical education system, which will produce medical professionals who are better equipped to deal with this health system. We have to make sure that people are aware of many nuances of the conflict, beyond the shrapnel and beyond the bullet. The more research we put into this area of the conflict and health, the more transferable technologies we develop – the better healthcare we’d be allowed to deliver in these situations, the better training our students and graduates would receive, and better work they will perform in this region for the next 10 or 15 years. AV: And hopefully more lives would be saved… • All photos by Andre Vltchek http://clubof.info/

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