Translation project and some book spreading

Griller

The Force is Strong With This One
Got some free time? Feel that the world could be made a better place? If you're missing the tools for that, I, or permaculture, might be able to give you a hand:

Translation project

Hey everyone, I'm new here. I'm a permaculture student (self-study for now) from Finland, got another full-time job so ain't doing it full-time, and due to my lack of university education in languages I wouldn't quite likely be accepted anywhere as a regular professional translator, it's papers what matter these days in getting a job, not can you actually do it and if you got more than half a brain, I've noticed. But that's it with the excuses.

Permaculture, if you've never heard of it before, is farming with nature. Hard-core natural farming. The main points are in observing nature and encouraging the species of your choise in a manner that suits nature the best. Which is not pesticides nor use of machines, but simply the processes you have in nature. Biomass holds nutrients and waters, plants create biomass from rock and sand and water and corpses and whatnot, animals and bacteria transform it to other usable forms and recycle the plants to be cannibalised by other plants. The system in itself has been proven to be able to grow things in desert without much external water supplies, where regular plow-the-field farming can't manage there without a constant huge external water supply. It makes there be more room for different species aka. boosts biodiversity, and gives double the harvest yields of what you get from conventional farming. It's also all-natural, no need to poison your food with pesticides, herbacides, fungacides and whatnots. Hard to believe? Try watching "A Farm for the Future" -document, has a lot of good resources. It's also simple math: if you plant trees and bushes you get more edible stuff than planting edible weeds like grain and rice and soy. And simple logic: nature has refined it's systems over billions of years, and human technology has existed for what, thousands of years? I'd say that we should at least not ignore nature in this aspect.

So, I'm halfway done with that "A Farm for the Future" document's translation for my language, Finland. I can give the english text version and time stamps for free for anyone, will put up a link here once it's ready. Since it's a document with a professional touch, it might be accepted in public TV channels, so I'll propose it to my country's channels and to the Natural World document series office once I'm done. I encourage anyone with free time, will to help the world get better and decent english and your native non-english language skills to do the same.

This is not as good as doing a document of my own about this and sharing it for free. I'm not a professional filmmaker but that doesn't matter as much as I've just recently been starting to study this thing, for a few months now, and right now I've got far too little practical experience on permaculture to make any document. There are things I might not yet understand about the big picture or anything related, and I want to give myself some time to bite them before starting that project which I will do one day unless someone gets ahead of me. Then I'll just offer help with translating that doc if I find it.


How to make video subtitles

If you make timestamps aka. subtitle timings yourself, you should get a video player program that shows the time in a whole number, like 49327, not just as 22:54, else you'll be doing quite a bit of more work.

To make a subtitle file, create a notepad file in the same folder with your video, and give the notepad file the same name as your video has. Now video players like VLC will usually play the subtitles automatically.

The subtitle file itself will look something like this:
{40233}{40299}Tiedämme että se toimii vuodesta toiseen.
{40300}{40480}Rehua riittää, voimme tuottaa karjaa ja lampaita ja myydä ne ja pysyä leivässä
{40483}{40649}Ja mitä ikinä tapahtuukin öljyn hinnoille tai millekään muulle, tiedämme voivamme jatkaa näin.
{40684}{40892}Mutta nämä ihmeelliset ruohot eivät ole sattumankauppaa. Charlotten ja Benin edesmennyt isä Arthur Hollins
{40912}{41005}oli paikallinen sankari ja omasi näkemystä viljelystä.
That's finnish from the doc I'm translating and those are called timestamps. First come the timestamps in order of:
{start}{end}
then add the text right after. You can try other codes like font, color etc... they work too and there's plenty of info on the net about this if you wanna personalize them. If you understood what you just red, apart from the finnish part, you can make subtitles.


Book spreading

When you think of how to make valuable information like this available to people, what comes to your mind? Take your time.

If you didn't think the same I'm about to say, why not post it? :) My thought was about buying some library books and giving them to the local library. How would people know there's any books, how would they know what to look for? Is reading in english okay for them? Not for many in my country, since there's a lot of new words in those books. Translating them is a real back-breaker though, compared to translating a hour-long document I'm at right now, and even that takes hours even if you got the timestamps and english text ready and even if you can trust those timestamps and english text. See my point? You will if you try adding some subtitles to any video clip you got. But if it's what might make things better... and I've found it to be a good way to learn more about those things you translate.
 
Griller said:
Permaculture, if you've never heard of it before, is farming with nature. Hard-core natural farming. The main points are in observing nature and encouraging the species of your choise in a manner that suits nature the best. Which is not pesticides nor use of machines, but simply the processes you have in nature. Biomass holds nutrients and waters, plants create biomass from rock and sand and water and corpses and whatnot, animals and bacteria transform it to other usable forms and recycle the plants to be cannibalised by other plants. The system in itself has been proven to be able to grow things in desert without much external water supplies, where regular plow-the-field farming can't manage there without a constant huge external water supply. It makes there be more room for different species aka. boosts biodiversity, and gives double the harvest yields of what you get from conventional farming. It's also all-natural, no need to poison your food with pesticides, herbacides, fungacides and whatnots. Hard to believe? Try watching "A Farm for the Future" -document, has a lot of good resources. It's also simple math: if you plant trees and bushes you get more edible stuff than planting edible weeds like grain and rice and soy. And simple logic: nature has refined it's systems over billions of years, and human technology has existed for what, thousands of years? I'd say that we should at least not ignore nature in this aspect.

Hi Griller,

There are some threads on here related to Permaculture. Here's one:

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,7682.msg67984.html#msg67984

If you do a search on the term, you should find some more threads where the topic is discussed.

[quote author=G]This is not as good as doing a document of my own about this and sharing it for free. I'm not a professional filmmaker but that doesn't matter as much as I've just recently been starting to study this thing, for a few months now, and right now I've got far too little practical experience on permaculture to make any document. There are things I might not yet understand about the big picture or anything related, and I want to give myself some time to bite them before starting that project which I will do one day unless someone gets ahead of me. Then I'll just offer help with translating that doc if I find it.[/quote]

Years ago I read a couple books on the topic of permaculture. It seems to have managed to attract a sizable following among farmers and environmental activists. I noticed that there are various strains of permaculture out there. Some are geared more towards suburban home landscaping, while others deal with serious food production. I think as a method of bulk food production with the traditional agriculture mindset, permaculture falls short, but there are other ways of thinking about it. For instance, I started my own little "food forest" using a portion of my backyard. I found it incredibly difficult to get started because each fall and winter the deer would come out of the woods and eat all my trees and shrubs! Most annoying. I eventually built a large 6' fence to keep the critters out so the plants could at least grow unmolested.

Upon thinking about this years later and after reading up on the Paleo Diet and coming to understand that the optimal food for humans consists of more animal products instead of anything from a plant, shrub or tree, I now see these "food forests" as a good way for attracting wildlife which could provide a better food source for humans. In fact, I realize that there are a lot of people who live far out in the woods who already do this to attract deer for hunting. They plant cherry and apple trees hoping the deer will come around in the fall and be an easy target. So in that context, permaculture makes a lot more sense to me. Because it really could never provide the bulk of carbohydrate foods that civilization demands at present, but as a way of attracting and nurturing wildlife which may provide a more optimal food source for humans, I think its a great idea. Of course, people could still pick a berry or two from time to time for their own consumption. ;) Anyways, I just thought I'd mention my experience here in case you were interested.

[quote author=G]
Book spreading

When you think of how to make valuable information like this available to people, what comes to your mind? Take your time.

If you didn't think the same I'm about to say, why not post it? :) My thought was about buying some library books and giving them to the local library. How would people know there's any books, how would they know what to look for? Is reading in english okay for them? Not for many in my country, since there's a lot of new words in those books. Translating them is a real back-breaker though, compared to translating a hour-long document I'm at right now, and even that takes hours even if you got the timestamps and english text ready and even if you can trust those timestamps and english text. See my point? You will if you try adding some subtitles to any video clip you got. But if it's what might make things better... and I've found it to be a good way to learn more about those things you translate.
[/quote]

Yes, purchasing or recommending books for a library is a great idea and one that I had awhile back when it came to making Red Pill Press books available to a wider audience. My local library had a way of requested a book for them to purchase, so I filled out the forms in a few months they purchased a copy of Political Ponerology and Laura's Secret History of the World. In fact, I'd recommend everybody try this, or at least inquire with their library about purchasing books that are worthwhile or helpful to others in some way. So, yes, this is a very good idea, imo. :)
 
Hi Griller, and welcome to the forum.

As a Scandinavian too, I would be interested in hearing about how you found your way here and how familiar you are with Laura's work. It would be great if you could write an introduction HERE.
 
Hey Ryan and Aragorn, thanks for the welcome!

RyanX said:
Years ago I read a couple books on the topic of permaculture. It seems to have managed to attract a sizable following among farmers and environmental activists. I noticed that there are various strains of permaculture out there. Some are geared more towards suburban home landscaping, while others deal with serious food production. I think as a method of bulk food production with the traditional agriculture mindset, permaculture falls short, but there are other ways of thinking about it. For instance, I started my own little "food forest" using a portion of my backyard. I found it incredibly difficult to get started because each fall and winter the deer would come out of the woods and eat all my trees and shrubs! Most annoying. I eventually built a large 6' fence to keep the critters out so the plants could at least grow unmolested.

Toby Hemenway had a similiar problem with his garden, he described it in his book. He planted some hedges to block the deers from browsing the berries, and planted some maximillian sunflowers if I remember right, some plants that worked as an effective deer-repellant. If you use the blocking strategy only, I don't think you should fully block their access to berries or else they just might try to find another way. Growing a hedge takes a few years so it's not an instant solution, but it's still good. The deers might be actually useful if they do some of the pruning for you. You know you can use the fence to be a supporting structure for some plants too, for vines at least. It's good for mellowing down the wind effect if you try plant something sensitive in a windy spot. And there's also the firewood option although it's a bit of a shame to burn something you've made with your own hands. Just some options, you know.^^
 
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