iChat as a live translation tool.

We (faculty and students of our college of Hawaiian language and our laboratory school Ke Kula ‘O Nawahiokalani’opu’u) did an interesting panel at a Kamehameha Schools research conference in Kea’au today. Four people were in a panel discussion regarding their experiences in the Hawaiian medium education programs, which was done completely in Hawaiian. Four faculty members from the college translated their words into English, live, and we used iChat to display what they were saying for the ‘olelo-impared (my term for those who cannot speak or understand Hawaiian). There were a few glitches (font size a bit small and the colored text bubbles made it a bit difficult to read the text on the screen), but it was pretty good for a first try at this. A full screen shot is attached to the first line of this post.

Another problem we had was getting this all into one screen when using iChat with Rendezvous. Not sure if this is a bug or just the way it is, but we ended up having to have three IM windows open on the machine that was projecting. I’m sure we’ll do a better job of it next time.

We also videotaped the panel, and I’ll try to get it online as a QuickTime movie as soon as possible.

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