I've been meaning to start this a long time ago, but it's only till recently that more and more people are emailing me with Baybayin translation requests, slowly making the production of tutorial videos a necessity. I'm always willing to go to conferences, festivals and other forums to present and educate about Baybayin history and methods. That's actually what the Bathala Project is mostly about; education through proliferation. However, lately I've been getting e-mails/messages asking me to translate-this or translate-that with neither a formal introduction or a "please & thank you".
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime.
Usually with these e-mails, I'll first inquire if they're requesting me to do a commissioned piece for them (ala custom name cards, digital prints, canvas pieces, etc). But I'll always include telling them which characters for their translations to use, hoping that by showing them the break-down process, they could figure out for themselves how to translate their desired word into Baybayin. I know it can seem daunting if nobody has explained it to you before, and failure is always an option, as evidenced in my short story in the video. Still, some persist and reply back to me along the lines of "I DON'T WANT TO BUY ANYTHING JUST TRANSLATE IT FOR ME." Yeesh...
So, I hope doing these tutorial videos can weed out translation fiends and help build an online, interactive community to educate and interact with each other. I'm not sure how I'm going to make these videos interactive yet. Maybe I'll ask people to post up videos of their own translations and we'll have a translation critique session? Who knows...
Stay up,
Cyph
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