In response to the vitriolic rhetoric that currently dominates political conversations, a number of initiatives have emerged that seek to pull people out of their echo chambers to engage with others who hold opposing views. Some media outlets, such as NPR’s On Point, have conducted and . Yet while the presence of moderators helped people have more civil and productive discussions, the format still allowed for debate and put participants on the defensive. In South Carolina, two teachers have created a forum, My Neighbor’s Voice, for community members to listen attentively to each other without the possibility of confrontation. The goal of the initiative is to foster empathy and counter the media’s portrayal of American society as entirely divided.

My Neighbor’s Voice was founded by Victoria Chance and Mary Anne Inglis, both Southerners who say that the South is a perfect region for these types of community discussions. “The South has a culture of hospitality, but also enormous disparity and tension,” Chance explained. This program tries to capitalize on the former quality to address the latter. Both Chance and Inglis have a history of community and political involvement. Inglis is married to a former congressman and helped manage his campaigns. Chance is on the board of another organization that promotes community dialogue, Greenville Interfaith Forum. That group’s Dinner Dialogues inspired the format of My Neighbor’s Voice.

For each gathering of this new program, a volunteer host invites a diverse group of people who self-identify as Democrat, Republican, independent, independent-left or independent-right. The guests represent different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds and most will not have met previously. Once all guests are seated, the moderator presents a stack of index cards with questions covering topics such as gun legislation, abortion, minimum wage, climate change and charter schools. Some of the questions are particularly broad such as, Do you believe in the basic goodness of people, and what does “liberty and justice for all” mean to you?

Each person selects a card at random and has two minutes to respond, either by presenting general views on the topic or telling a personal story. Others listen quietly without interrupting and are not distracted by cellphones, which are not permitted. After participants respond to their topic, they simply pass the stack of cards to the next person, who receives a different question. At the end of four rounds of questions, the moderator opens the table for final reflections.

What Does It Mean to You?

At the gathering I attended, the group of strangers around the table seemed tense when the first round of questions began. Since the goal was not to debate policy, participants tended to draw on personal and professional experiences rather than present ideological arguments. For example, when asked about LGBTQ rights, a minister’s wife talked about growing up with a gay father. Reflecting on tuition costs, a CPA discussed her work with clients deep in student loan debt, some of whom worked $10-hour jobs.

As the evening went on, participants made more eye contact with each other and appeared more interested, relaxed and engaged. At the same time, the stories shared became increasingly personal. When asked about discrimination, a Pakistani woman fought back tears as she shared her fears that her children would be targets of violence since they attend an Islamic school. She recalled kids on a playground shunning her young children and told a story about making soup for a sick neighbor with whom she thought she had a friendly relationship. She was turned away at the door because of her headscarf. At the end of the moderated session, most guests stayed to chat with each other.

Chance and Inglis say that they have observed similar shifts at every gathering of My Neighbor’s Voice. Participants almost always begin the evening in defensive postures, but relax as they are forced to turn their full attention to others. “The changes in body language are incredible,” said Inglis. Gatherings of My Neighbor’s Voice confirm that personal narratives move people far more than ideological arguments. One of the participants, Steven Caldwell, said that “Listening to real people share their real thoughts and feelings is much more likely to open my mind and reframe my thinking than reading about others’ views or watching well-orchestrated propaganda. At least that was my experience as I listened to a Muslim mother share her fear and to liberals confess their ‘bubbles’ of protective thought.”

Debbie Spear, who hosted the meeting, emphasized the power of narration. Spear, who has experience leading storytelling activities in diverse settings, said: “I have found people’s reactions to really good stories to be one of the most satisfying privileges in my whole life.” Chance and Inglis want to ensure that community members continue to tell their stories without a filter. For that reason, they have not posted guidelines online. Rather, they hope that My Neighbor’s Voice will grow organically; guests can train to become moderators at future meetings. “We don’t want any screens between us,” said Chance.

The media presents liberal and conservative agendas as irreconcilable and social media further fuels these tensions by offering users constant validation of their existing beliefs. Listening to others may not lead people to change their fundamental views, but community members will find that seemingly opposing groups often share similar concerns. The gathering I attended included people from opposite ends of the political spectrum, yet almost no one expressed extreme views and everyone agreed that social and political issues are more nuanced than the media would have us believe. The sort of in-person community building that My Neighbor’s Voice promotes may prove key in tempering the fierce partisanship in this country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On May 20, bus drivers in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, went on strike, closing 11 major terminals and leaving many people stranded. The newspaper��A Folha��ran a headline that�� “Protest Hurts the People and Not the Big Shots.” After all, the people take the bus, while the political class and the rich do not. In Brazil, the divide between these classes is always visible.

Social Divisions

São Paulo, which will be hosting the opening game of the FIFA World Cup on June 12, is the wealthiest state in Brazil and has attracted migrants from other parts of the country, particularly from the poorer north, a region that has generally been ignored by politicians. Of the people who moved to São Paulo, some of them were happy to settle there, while others strived to save enough money to return home. Despite projects starting during the administration of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to invest in the northeast, Brazil’s wealth is still concentrated in the south.

In addition to significant cultural differences between Brazil’s states, the regions differ economically to such a degree that the country resists stereotyping. Even within São Paulo, the sharp divisions between social classes make it difficult to represent the state — or the city of the same name — in one-dimensional terms.

For a certain class of workers in the city of São Paulo, living here means long and sometimes dangerous commutes to and from work. At a restaurant in the affluent neighborhood of Pinheiros, a waiter told me that many of his coworkers take great risks just going home from work every night. They leave the restaurant late, he explained, and since buses run infrequently at that hour, they have to walk long distances, alone, through rough neighborhoods that are only minimally patrolled by an underpaid and ineffective police force.

Another group of��Paulistanos��— as the people from this city are called — live closer to work, in more central neighborhoods, often in apartment buildings with double-lock gates, security guards and amenities such as gyms and small reception halls. This upper-middle class, who generally never go into the poorer neighborhoods and certainly never into the favelas, can afford to spend an outrageous 30 reais ($13.50) for a sandwich and a coffee at one of the fancier cafés on their way back from work. This class shops at US-style malls, or they toNew York City��or Miami, avoiding high prices in Brazil. However, most of the middle-class — like schoolteachers who earn on average 890 reais ($390) per month — simply do not have access to that lifestyle.

Despite the divisions between them, one thing that all classes of Brazilians — except for the elite political class — seem to share is the feeling of being cheated.��

São Paulo, therefore, is a markedly different city for distinct economic classes. The vast majority of Brazilians do not go into the shopping malls frequented by the middle-class. This disparity has given rise to protests such as — excursions organized through social media that bring young people from poor neighborhoods en masse into the shopping centers. Some observers have interpreted this movement as a form of protest against the disparity that exists here, while a great number, including a significant percentage of the Brazilian middle-class, believe these excursions are not ideologically motivated and that young people from the periphery are simply looking to have fun in a rather destructive way. Whatever the impetus for the movement, the��rolezinhos��are a reflection of a divided country.

Poor Returns

Despite the divisions between them, one thing that all classes of Brazilians — except for the elite political class — seem to share is the feeling of being cheated. The prices for food, clothes and other basic needs are exorbitant, partly due to tax, which can add 80% to the total����of the product. For all they pay, Brazilians feel like they receive few benefits. In a study conducted by the Brazilian Institute for Tax Planning that compared the returns people saw for their taxes in 30 different countries, Brazil����lowest on the list.

A recent Pew Research����found that, in addition to their concerns about the high cost of living, the majority of Brazilians are unhappy with the school systems and find health care severely lacking. According to Brazil’s Indicator of Functional Illiteracy, 27% of����between the ages of 15 and 64 have only rudimentary reading and writing skills. They can read only basic texts like advertisements or short letters and handle only elementary mathematical operations such as simple monetary transactions.��Some students who have graduated from public schools enter universities (usually private) and are still functionally illiterate. Underpaid and overworked university professors then face the problem of trying to teach students who cannot write a well-formed paragraph despite having finished high school.

Public hospitals are also in poor shape. Brazil’s General Accounting Office recently audited 116 hospitals and����that 64% were operating over capacity. Other problems included poor infrastructure, a shortage of doctors and nurses, and equipment so poorly maintained that it is unusable. At a hospital in the state of Piauí in April, one patient died while being treated on the floor because there were not enough beds.

The Pew Research poll also noted that almost all Brazilians (83%) say that crime is a serious problem. Many Brazilians respond to the constant threat of crime by avoiding large public events, such as the recent��, an all-night festival in the center of São Paulo that featured theater, concerts, dancing and other shows. Despite the presence of over 5,000 guards and military police in the center of the city that night, at least two people were shot and another two stabbed during the event. The army will be policing the streets in Rio and São Paulo during the World Cup.

Security forces face perpetual danger and are poorly paid. The civil police force recently discussed organizing strikes in 13 states. Teachers also feel they are not fairly compensated and have been staging protests. Professors at Brazil’s most prestigious university, the Universidade de São Paulo, organized a strike after their salaries were not adjusted for inflation due to lack of funds.

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Watching their government invest heavily in new stadiums and aesthetic improvements to infrastructure in advance of the World Cup has aggravated the sense many people have that the state is robbing them of basic necessities: health care, security and education. Groups whose services can immediately affect Brazil’s capacity to host a large international event have timed their protests carefully. Metro employees in São Paulo, for example, have shut down the metro just a week before the opening game. A group of military police staged a protest outside Itaquerão stadium on June 4. These groups and others that offer essential services believe the government will more likely cede to their demands now, in order to avoid problems during the World Cup.

World Cup: Cooperate with FIFA

Since Brazil is now enjoying — or suffering from — greater visibility in global media due to the World Cup and because presidential elections are approaching, many groups are taking advantage of the heightened attention to announce their grievances to the world. “Não vai ter Copa”��(there will not be a World Cup), some groups threaten, but most know there will be games. They simply want the world to see what is happening.

In April, Mikkel Jensen, an independent Danish journalist, posted an����on his Facebook page saying he was horrified by the human rights violations in Brazil and that, although his dream had been to cover the World Cup, he was leaving the country early. He wrote that poor children were disappearing from the streets of Fortaleza in the government’s efforts to clean things up in advance of the tournament.

It is true that people have been��from their homes to clear the way for new infrastructure, and there have been numerous reports of human rights abuses in Brazil, particularly in regard to the campaign to pacify the country’s favelas. Jensen, however, was unable to cite any reliable sources. Brazilian journalist Luiz Caversan even called the piece .

Despite the problems with Jensen’s report, including his decision to leave the country rather than follow up on the story, the piece went viral in Brazil. The number of times it was enthusiastically reposted reflects the desire of many Brazilians to show the world a reality that their government and FIFA would rather hide. Brazilians, however, do not need to rely on Facebook posts to communicate their message. The metro employees standing near the turnstiles carrying giant, threatening batons and wearing all-black uniforms with white writing saying “Cooperate with FIFA” send a clear message.

Brazilians are divided in their attitudes toward the World Cup. Some view the event as an opportunity to announce their frustration to the global media and to their own government. Others are frustrated and saddened by the constant protests, which they see as rooted in petty political games more than as a genuine movement on the part of the people. Others are afraid.

Very few support the World Cup, and some people are even hoping the Brazilian team loses because they feel that victory in soccer would mean a victory for President Dilma Rousseff this October. The current mood is one of apprehension and frustration. It is difficult to predict whether the climate will change when the games begin on June 12, but one thing is certain: The world will see an image of Brazil that is far more complex than beaches and soccer fans.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Luis von Ahn, creator of the reCAPTCHA verification system that helps digitalize books, has set out to “translate the web into every major language.” In��this , he reminds us the Internet is fragmented into multiple languages and that the biggest portion is in English. “If you don’t speak English,” he points out, “you can’t access it.”

In order to make the web accessible to a wider range of linguistic groups, von Ahn and his research team created Duolingo: a free language-learning app. Once Duolingo students have reached an advanced level of the language they are studying, the app feeds them text to translate. The Duolingo team then compiles the translations and uses an algorithm to come up with a final version, which companies buy for a below-market rate.

Students learn by translating real world texts, as opposed to sentences written for language instruction; companies that contract with Duolingo get cheap translations; and Duolingo remains free.

As a business model, the agreement is highly effective, but Duolingo’s other claims — that their translations are of professional quality and they are making the web more democratic — are highly questionable

Quality Control

Von Ahn correctly notes that while machine translation has evolved significantly, services like Google Translate are notoriously (and sometimes humorously) unreliable. The Duolingo creator uses this series of humorous examples of comments translated from Japanese to English to highlight the problems with machine translations:

Both Google Translate and Duolingo compile large amounts of data and use algorithms to determine the final translated version of a text. However, whereas Google��““��in documents already available online, Duolingo feeds text in its original language to translate.

According to von Ahn, this method is better because the translations are not simply machine-driven — they are crowd-sourced. To vouch for the quality of Duolingo’s translations, von Ahn gives an example of a text translated from German, favorably comparing Duolingo’s translation with that of a professional translator:

The translation reads eloquently, but that does not mean Duolingo is consistently reliable. Google Translate also works well if it is drawing on high-quality content. As Esther Allen explains in her book,��In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What it Means, if you put the first line of García Márquez’s��One Hundred Years of Solitude��into Google Translate, you will get a solid translation because Gregory Rabassa’s professional translation of the famous book has been cited many times online and Google is drawing on that data.

But this does not mean Google Translate is reliable. It just means that, in some cases, translations (by humans) are readily available online and Google reproduces them.

We do not have access to the data Duolingo was compiling to produce this translation from German, but it is doubtful that the translations the app produces will be consistently this stellar. Not only are language students not professional translators, students often tend to make the same mistakes.

To give an example, last semester I taught a course on Spanish-English translation. Although my students were all advanced learners of Spanish, many of them made exactly the same errors. For example, when they translated the last paragraph of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, La busca de Averroes, almost all of my students translated “referí el caso” incorrectly.�� If I had compiled their translations, I would have ended up with an English version that read, “I referred to the case,” when a correct translation would have been something like, “I told the story.”

Duolingo does have some amount of quality control, but even if the proofreader is particularly attentive and the students happen to be skilled translators, a number of other obstacles complicate their model for translation. First, as��, good translators do not work by translating sentences in isolation. Rather, they think about the overall context, tone and readership.

Let’s take, for example, the first phrase (in Portuguese) from�� in Brazil’s O Globo: “A questão dos rolezinhos não deixa de suscitar indagações.” Google translates this as: “The issue of rolezinhos not fail to raise questions.” If Duolingo translated this fragment, the English version would likely resolve the grammatical errors because the app relies on human translators.

However, without the context of the entire article, how would a Duolingo student explain what a��rolezinho��is? They might translate it as “little strolls” as did or as “gatherings organised via social networks” as the����did, or choose another word completely.��

Either way, even the most talented translators would have no way of knowing which choice is best unless they were able to read the entire article, do some research, and know a little bit about their target audience. Because Duolingo’s method dismisses the complexity of translation, it devalues the work of professional translators, who often do extensive research in order to translate cultural and historical references.

An Uneven Flow

Making the web accessible to a broader range of linguistic groups is certainly a lofty goal and Duolingo deserves credit for making a start. However, details of their business model are more problematic than they seem.��

In order to remain free for language learners, Duolingo must profit from their translations. The companies who can afford to pay to translate their content on a large-scale — and, therefore, sustain Duolingo — are profitable entities that already have a strong online presence. They are usually from the English-speaking world.

So far, the two largest companies that have contracted with Duolingo are CNN and BuzzFeed — the rapidly growing host site for viral content on the Internet famous for pieces like these:��“.”

So far, Duolingo translates primarily from English into foreign languages, and not vice versa. By contracting with BuzzFeed, CNN and other American companies interested in aggressively expanding their audience, the app is reinforcing what Lawrence Venuti, in��The Translator’s Invisibility, describes as a “trade imbalance” in the movement of translated material. That is, the US tends to export a great number of texts and import very few and this, according to Venuti, contributes to Anglo cultures being “imperialistic abroad and xenophobic at home.”��

Rather than making the Internet more egalitarian, the exportation of texts and video to other linguistic groups reinforces the reign of US culture, while the English-speaking world continues to import very little from foreign cultures. Because its model is essentially capitalist, Duolingo reinforces this dynamic instead of challenging it.

Because the market demands it, Duolingo is often contracted to translate pieces with strong cultural bias (and a non-critical view of American culture). For example, their team of student translators recently completed�� of “25 Things That Happen When You’re 25.” The piece received over 15,000 “likes” in Spanish, so BuzzFeed is clearly expanding its audience. Some of the material in the translation is left in English, and the cultural references include clips of comedian Amy Poehler and scenes from��Family Guy,��The Simpsons, and��Friends.��

Very few pieces in Duolingo’s����strive for any sort of objectivity or critical thinking. Even the content listed in the “News & Politics” section tends to include articles like,��“,” decidedly unenlightening sorts of pieces that affirm American cultural (and perhaps economic) hegemony.��

Duolingo’s stated mission is to build “a world with free education and no language barriers.” They do succeed in providing a free platform for learning foreign languages and this aspect of the app certainly promotes healthy cross-cultural understanding.

However, it is worth taking a closer look at the direction in which that understanding is being developed, while it is important to think critically about what happens when translation is perceived as a simple mechanical activity with no ideological implications. ����

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Earlier this year the Brazilian government announced that it would substantially increase investments in programs designed to internationalize Brazilian literature. This strengthened commitment is motivated, in part, by upcoming international literary events that will feature Brazil, in particular the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2013, one of the world’s largest events for publishers.

The “Program for Supporting the Translation and Publishing of Brazilian Authors Abroad” also reflects Brazil’s economic growth and is another sign of the country’s greater visibility on a global scale. The 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, both of which will take place in Brazil, allow the country to promote their culture. The translation of literature serves a similar function, and the country is taking an active role in shaping how the rest of the world perceives Brazil.

A few years ago, in 2009, the government invested US$ 35,000 in translation grants for foreign publishers. In 2011, that sum jumped to $266,000. In addition to the translation grants, the government has set up other programs that seek to disseminate culture by providing financial incentives. For example, the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Relations is currently running an essay competition with a first prize of $20,000 and a second prize of $15,000. The contest stipulated that the essays analyze the work of contemporary Brazilian writer Lygia Fagundes Telles and that it would be written by a scholar residing outside of Brazil.

Also this year, the Ministry of Culture, through the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (FBN- National Library Foundation), founded the International Book Center, the entity that will administer the grants as well as the following new programs: stipends that will allow foreign translators to temporarily reside in Brazil; funding to help Brazilian authors promote their work abroad; funding to promote Brazilian literature in other Portuguese-speaking countries; and new grants for the publication of technical, scientific, and professional books. The total investments will reach almost US$38mn by 2020.

Additionally, the FBN collaborates with Itaú Cultural on other projects intended to make Brazilian literature more widely known. They are continually expanding their as well as working on the , a database of scholars overseas that also functions as a global network. This year also saw the launching of Machado de Assis – Literatura Brasileira em Tradução, a magazine for Brazilian literature in translation.

The function of the magazine is to provide basic translations from Portuguese into English and Spanish, fragments of texts that will allow authors and publishers to pitch their books abroad. The translations are not designed to be polished texts; rather, they are a starting point for marketing and distribution in the world market. 

The US publishes notoriously few translated works. Of all the translation grants that the FBN awarded between 1991 (when the grant program was established) and 2012, 74%  went to European publishers and another 17.6% to other Latin American countries. By comparison, only 3.5% went to the U.S., since few applied for grants.

Erroll McDonald, an executive editor at Pantheon Books, has noted that critics like to think about international literature as “a carefully tended garden” but that in reality it is “determined by a multiplicity of power relations.” That is, the movement of literature across national and linguistic borders often reflects and reinforces global power dynamics. The fact that Brazil is promoting its national literature at the same time it emerges as an economic force is not a coincidence. The government is motivated to export the national culture, and has more resources to do so than it did twenty years ago. 

So what image is Brazil looking to export? The authors whose work has been most translated with this government funding are Clarice Lispector (16 grants), followed by Moacyr Scliar (11), Jorge Amado (11), Machado de Assis (8) and Alberto Mussa (8). A number of these authors were already well translated. Lispector (1920-1977), Amado (1912-2001), and de Assis (1839-1908) are among the few Brazilian authors who were already considered classics in translation. Further, Amado’s work has been criticized for presenting an exoticized image of Brazil that reinforces certain stereotypes about the country. However, according to Fabio Lima of the International Book Center in Rio de Janeiro, the translation of any text is a way of making Brazil’s image in the world richer and more complex.

The translation grants do not produce a single unified image of Brazil. Rather, these programs have encouraged the publication of diverse texts that make Brazil’s presence on the world stage more complex and real. Although the impetus for publication still comes primarily from foreign publishers, the Brazilian government helps facilitate the exportation of the national culture, a trend that is likely to continue. 

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