Riverfront Times April 19, 2012 : Page 6
www.riverfronttimes.com VISIT Best Enjoyed with Standout dispatches from our news blog, updated all day, every day D AIL YRF T .COM Charter Internet ™ CLOTHING FROM NEW BORN TO 86" IN PANTS s3HORTSUPTOSIZE s0OLO3TYLE3HIRTSTO8 s3HORT3LEEVE3HIRTSUPTO8 s#ARDINALS&ULL:IP 7INDBREAKERSSIZE8�d;8 s$ICKIES0ANTSUPTOSIZE s$ICKIES"OOTSTOSIZE s"OYS-ENS3UITSUPTO s-ENS$RESS3LACKS 3ETUPTO8 s-ENS$RESS3HIRTSUPTO8 s.EW%RACAPSUPTOSIZE�f; s4�d;3HIRTS3WEATPANTSUP TO 8 LEVIN’S Lost In Twitter Translation GET READY for SPRING and SUMMER! I NEW Merchandise Arriving Daily! SAT 9:30-3 SUN 11-3 HOURS: MON-FRI 9-5 Alterations Available  7!3().'4/.s �d; �d;  f you’re one of the five remaining speakers of “Yuchi” — a near-extinct Native American language in Okla-homa — your tweets will look insane, even to those within your linguistic group. That’s because the “@” character is part of your alphabet, so whenever you type it in, Twitter will wrongly think you’re using Twitterese to refer to a different user, such as @Joe_Smith. This is the kind of programming problem that Twitter is coming across more and more as it tries to make inroads where non-Euro-pean languages hold sway. And it’s exactly the kind of problem that a computational linguist such as professor Kevin Scannell of Saint Louis University is equipped to solve. Since October, Scannell has been fl ying out to Twitter’s headquarters in San Fran-cisco one week per month to consult with their international team on stuff like this. Or this one: When folks label their tweets with “hashtags,” they type “#” then add text that fl ows to the right, as in #OccupyWallStreet. But what about Arabic, which fl ows in the opposite direction? Or what if, in the middle of a tweet in Arabic, the user wants to write “Hillary Clinton”? Scannell was a member of the Twitter team that rewrote the code to handle such linguistic miscegenation. The California Web company discovered Scannell last summer when they became aware of his pet project, a website called “Indigenous Tweets.” The site uses auto-mated processes to trawl the vast ocean of Twitter for obscure tongues. It then groups those users together and tracks their usage. But why did he start the site in the fi rst place? “There was a personal aspect to the work,” says Scannell, who in addition to his A student exhibition celebrating visions of cultural diversity Gallery Visio 170 MSC One University Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63121 tel. 314.516.7922 www.umsl.edu/~galviso This event is free and open to the public. KEVIN HUIZENGA/USSCATA S T R OPHE.COM Celebrating visions of multiculturalism, this exhibition will showcase a collection of diverse artistic expressions created by UMSL students and alumni. This exhibition is co-sponsored by Multi-Cultural Relations. 6 RIVERFR ONT TIMES APRIL 1 9-25, 2 012 riverfronttimes.com
DailyRFT.com
Lost In Twitter Translation <br /> <br /> If you’re one of the five remaining speakers of “Yuchi” — a near-extinct Native American language in Oklahoma — your tweets will look insane, even to those within your linguistic group.<br /> <br /> That’s because the “@” character is part of your alphabet, so whenever you type it in, Twitter will wrongly think you’re using Twitterese to refer to a different user, such as @Joe_Smith.<br /> <br /> This is the kind of programming problem that Twitter is coming across more and more as it tries to make inroads where non-European languages hold sway. And it’s exactly the kind of problem that a computational linguist such as professor Kevin Scannell of Saint Louis University is equipped to solve.<br /> <br /> Since October, Scannell has been flying out to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco one week per month to consult with their international team on stuff like this. Or this one: When folks label their tweets with “hashtags,” they type “#” then add text that flows to the right, as in #OccupyWallStreet. But what about Arabic, which flows in the opposite direction? Or what if, in the middle of a tweet in Arabic, the user wants to write “Hillary Clinton”?<br /> <br /> Scannell was a member of the Twitter team that rewrote the code to handle such linguistic miscegenation.<br /> <br /> The California Web company discovered Scannell last summer when they became aware of his pet project, a website called “Indigenous Tweets.” The site uses automated processes to trawl the vast ocean of Twitter for obscure tongues. It then groups those users together and tracks their usage.<br /> <br /> But why did he start the site in the first place?<br /> <br /> “There was a personal aspect to the work,” says Scannell, who in addition to his native English also speaks Gaelic, used by only 20,000 people or so in western Ireland. “One of the things we’ve been encouraging in Gaelic is the use of social media, but on Twitter, we were having trouble finding other speakers. So this was me personally trying to find other people who spoke my language. Then we took that approach to other languages.” <br /> <br /> Scannell’s site is now tracking 129 indigenous languages on Twitter. The five most common, by number of users, are:<br /> <br /> 1) Haitian Creole (14,259 users)<br /> <br /> 2) Basque (7,063 users)<br /> <br /> 3) Welsh (4,808 users)<br /> <br /> 4) Irish Gaelic (2,712 users)<br /> <br /> 5) Frisian (2,034 users) <br /> <br /> Of course, at the other end of the list are 28 languages with a only one lonely tweeter, such as Gamilaraay (in southeastern Australia) and Wayuunaiki (in northeastern Colombia).<br /> <br /> But Scannell says there are plenty of indigenous languages on Twitter he hasn’t even tracked yet, including Yuchi, the language that uses the “@” in its alphabet. (Yuchi does boast at least one tweeter).<br /> <br /> “I mentioned [Yuchi] to the people at Twitter,” says Scannell, who recently returned from a trip out west. “I jokingly said they should change the way they do user names just to accommodate the Yuchi community.<br /> <br /> “I don’t think they’re gonna do it,” he concludes. <br /> <br /> — NICHOLAS PHILLIPS <br /> <br /> A Dog’s (Second) Life <br /> <br /> Last time we wrote about the dog named Our Little Girl was back in October when Randy Grim’s Stray Rescue discovered the pup and her littermate, Our Little Boy, living in squalid conditions in north St. Louis.<br /> <br /> The owner of the animals had tossed Our Little Boy in an alley Dumpster. The severely starved animal was clinging to life and would die hours later of malnutrition. Our Little Girl wasn’t in much better shape, her ribs and hip bones protruding from under her dingy coat of fur.<br /> <br /> A week after her rescue, veterinarians at Stray Rescue performed emergency surgery to remove plastic and other garbage the dog had eaten when scavenging for food in the basement where she was kept.<br /> <br /> Now, six months after her rescue, Our Little Girl is a robust version of her former self.<br /> <br /> We know because her new guardian, Lynn Teller, contacted Daily RFT last week asking if we might have a larger copy of the photo of Grim with Our Little Girl that accompanied our story last fall. Sadly, we didn’t, but there are dozens of other photos of Our Little Girl out there. You can find a ton of them on the dog’s Facebook page.<br /> <br /> Yep, the pooch is down with social media — and socializing in general, says Teller.<br /> <br /> “She’s fantastic with other dogs and with kids,” reports Teller who, with her husband Mike, adopted Our Little Girl in January and moved the animal into their Crestwood home.<br /> <br /> Today Our Little Girl — an American bulldog mix — has gained 41 pounds to come in at a healthy 66 pounds. She’s also found a new best friend in Cabbage, a two-year-old pit bull that the Tellers adopted from Stray Rescue earlier.<br /> <br /> “The two dogs are inseparable,” says Teller, who encourages others to check out Stray Rescue’s canines when considering adopting a new dog.<br /> <br /> “My parents joke that Our Little Girl won the lottery when she found us, but I think we have. She and Cabbage are absolutely sweet dogs.” <br /> <br /> — CHAD GARRISON <br /> <br /> Two more dogs who found homes courtesy of Stray Rescue: Cabbage (left), a pit bull, and Our Little Girl, an American bull-dog mix.