Last week, in Amsterdam, approximately 70 people from around the world gathered in one big room to discuss the current state of affairs in open translation. We discussed open-source translation software, open and volunteer translation communities, openly licensed works – both translated and for translating, open databases for machine translation, and the intersection of translation with open education, open video, open business practices, and more.

It was a whirlwind of a time, and it was clear that everyone was excited about the pace of development and the promise of open translation for building cultural bridges, facilitating the free exchange of ideas, and empowering those who are not able to participate in the current linguistically and technologically dominant paradigms. Look for additional information on host Aspiration Tech’s site, and check out the new manual on open translation tools which was generated by a book sprint immediately following the conference.

If this meeting was any indication, we suspect that the benefits of permitting translations (through the application of an appropriate CC license, for example) will quickly be matched with both software and communities poised to leverage those permissions. Can we imagine a world where the language of origin serves to authenticate communications rather than hampering them?