MEPEACE.ORG: LANGUAGE AS A BARRIER TO PEACE

People who participate in sites like mepeace are a self selected group who are can and do communicate in English, even if that is not their native language. It is an online community dedicated to promoting conversation among Israelis, Palestinians, and others interested in peace in the Middle East.  The other day they participated in a discussion about whether language is a barrier to peacemaking on the Internet.

Here are a few exerpts: 

Tomer Z:   We have been struggling with this issue HotPeace.org, because the mission of the site is precisely to get people talking who normally wouldn’t participate in such efforts, so language may be an important concern for the success of the site.

What does everyone think? Do you have friends who do not participate because of language barriers?

Yigal D. Kahana:  This is a no brainer, Tomer.
Of course language is a barrier to peacemaking! A huge barrier.
Peacemaking absolutely requires good communication….
And yes, some mepeace members I know probably would post more if their English were stronger.
Being multilingual makes one a much more efficient communicator.

Neri Ban-On:  We talked that we should encourage to write in mother tongue so any one who want to express him/her self in Arabic can do that, and some times other translate for the “other language”.
In Face to face meeting we ask people to speak their mother tongue and ask other to translate even when the person know English because we express ourselves better in our mother tongue.
We have some people who brought some links to places to learn Hebrew and Arabic.

Corey Gil Shuster:  First, google translate has a translation tool so that is an option. Second, I don’t think the issue is just language. I think there are deep cultural differences between the Arab world and the Jewish world. We use words to mean very different things. for example, we both say we want peace. But peace means something different to each side and we then get into arguments because we haven’t talked about definitions and understanding. I think there should be key words linked to wiki definitions giving a general Israeli and a general Palestinian perspective for each concept. That may help. I would be happy to help on this.

Basil Keilani:  I somewhat agree with Corey that it is not simply about speaking and writing different languages. It’s the words one uses, and that includes Jews who are pro-Palestinian and Palestinians and their arguments and those Israeli Jews who disagree with such a world-view and their supporters. It is not simply, of course, about Arabs having a different world view because many Jewish supporters have a similar view in North America to some of the Arabs when it comes to the issues. I do think Corey brings up some valid points. People can bring up how different people the conflict whether it’s a variety of Jewish and Arab groups to do so.

Question to the Blogosphere:  Is language a barrier to developing common ground and peace, in your opinion?  Do instruments like Google Translater really solve the communication problem inherent for people who do not speak the same languages?  Does access to the Internet ameliorate this problem, or is it the same online and offline?