Crossing Your Inner Borders - Anwar Dafa-Alla at TEDxBerlin

What limits and borders are we faced with as individuals, as a society? Who or what defines these boundaries? What are the results of these barriers that may even result in scientific or artistic limitations to us as individuals and to the society as a whole? Are they arbitrarily defined or are they imposed due to their necessity? Are they obstacles or are they beneficial? What happens if we overcome these borders?

[Crossing Borders]

Thank you so much.

I love you all.

Thank you.

(Applause)

So, I'm from Sudan.

And what you see behind me

are typical pictures that you'll find
whenever you search Google.

You put in "Sudan,"
you will find these kind of images.

This is Sudan as perceived in the media.

This is Sudan that I'm developing.

The communities of intellect in action.

People, where they gather,

they will change the situation
from point A to point B.

In Sudan, we have a couple of borders

that we should cross as soon as possible.

Just to reach out
where the future is heading to.

We have borders in education.

We have high illiteracy.

We have a problem
with access to information.

We have a problem with languages.

We have over 70 languages in Sudan.

I mean it!

70 languages, not to mention the dialects.

Arabic happens to be the dominant
and the official language in Sudan.

So people communicate in Arabic,

even in Southern Sudan,
the new-formed country,

there is a version of Arabic
called Arabic Juba.

The Southern tribes communicate
with each other using this language

the Arabic Juba.

Well, I'm an educator, myself.

I'm passionate about education,

and I know how important it is

for the development of any nation,

and how crucial it is to have education

at the center of the development.

In 2009, I was in South Korea,

and yes, this is Korean,
Chungbuk Daehakgyo.

I was doing my Ph.D. in Computer Science.

And we had a kind of culture of sharing

anything that came into our hands.

I throw a video to a friend of mine,

he throws me a link and so on.

And one day...

We were focusing on data mining

and multidisciplinary research,
and so on.

One day Ibrahim Musa,

who was doing his Master's
back then in South Korea,

he sent me a link to this talk.

It was from YouTube back then.

"How stats fool juries."

It was so interesting for me.

I'm a researcher.

And I do a lot of presentations.

You know the academic presentations,
how it looks.

It's so dull!

Right? It's boring.

(Laughter)

But now, there's a piece of content
about statistics

and there is an element of storytelling.

It was so interesting for me!

So the neurons of research just went --

(Explosion sound)

I needed to know
where this video came from.

So, I went to TED.com, the website.

And one of the links said
there is an Open Translation Project.

Because of that video,

what came to my inner self,

[was that] this video and this content
should be shared

with my friends,

my research collaborators,

my colleagues, my friends,

my brothers, my sisters,

my nation.

So, how can I do that?

And then I found this
Open Translation Project,

where I can use the subtitles,
translate them into Arabic,

and give it for free
to my friends, as a gift,

to my daughter,
as a security for her future,

to thank the speaker himself or herself,

who gave it for free.

And since June 2009,

I've been through a wonderful journey,

diving deeply
inside all sorts of sciences.

From space into the deep blue seas,

from the kindergarten
into the professorship.

All sorts of stories.

It was wonderful.

It is and it will continue
as a wonderful story.

I've met fascinating people,

amazing people, extraordinary people,

through this Open Translation Project.

We had different workshops here and there.

We discuss how we can improve this,

how we take the Project from here

to another level.

We've met a couple of times,

two times in the United States,
two times in the United Kingdom.

And we're always on Facebook together.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm one of the most active
volunteer translators at TED.

And yes, I spent more
than two years of working hours.

(Applause)

I do this

because it's crossing borders
by its nature.

We are crossing the border
of the language,

the border of the ideas,

the border of the nationality,

the border of the religions.

Whatever border it is.

Two years of working hours.

Frankly speaking, I didn't count it.

My friend did the math.

(Laughter)

She said, "OK, you have two years
of translating TEDTalks."

I said, "OK, it was worth doing."

But it wasn't only about that.

It wasn't only about translating
and crossing borders.

There is an extra mile here.

I translated the talk of JD Schramm.

He was talking about
preventing the second [suicide attempt].

So the talk is really wonderful.

The idea of saving lives.

You committed suicide once,
you are saved.

You will commit it again.

So how to prevent this
is really a great notion, right?

Then, I went to the TEDActive conference.

And I saw him speaking on the stage.

Live, just like me now, in front of you.

And while he was speaking he said,

"Me and my husband were --"

I looked at my friend,
a fellow translator and said,

"Did he say 'my husband'?"

(Laughter)

He said yes.

"He's gay."

At that point,
I had a conflict of emotions.

Because of my social upbringing,

Muslim, being raised
and growing up in Sudan,

I know there are gays,
I know there is homosexuality.

But this was the first time for me

to see someone openly say "I am a gay,"

and "my husband",

and I was involved
in translating his TEDTalk.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

It was a time of conflict for me.

It's not crossing the borders
of the language and the barriers.

It's now about crossing my inner borders.

My beliefs...

My cultural upbringing...

Shall I say this to my friend?

Shall I share this with those
who consume the talks,

the Arabic-speaking world?

There are 300 million
speaking the Arabic language.

TED celebrated 1 billion views of TEDTalks.

A big bite of this consumption

was from the Arabic-speaking countries.

I'm so proud of this.

But shall I share this with my community?

There's another issue here.

It's not about "he's an atheist",

or Jewish, or Christian.

I translated all sorts of speakers' talks.

It's about being gay in my culture,

how my culture is perceiving
this specific notion.

But there must be a border crossing here.

Right?

The talk that I translated
is still the same.

The idea I've translated is still the same.

The only thing that changed
was my perception.

Right?

Right?

So what?

(Laughter)

So what?

So what?

I needed to cross my inner border.

I needed to share this with the community.

With everyone.

To cross my inner border.

The idea was still the same.

The lesson?

What is the lesson
that I got from this experience?

It's not about how many translations
I have published,

rather it's how I understood
the essence of what I do.

And the essence of what I do?

I translate ideas.

I spread knowledge.

I'm not personalizing stuff.

So I crossed my inner border.

I crossed my inner border.

Would you?

Would you?

Would you?

Would you?

Thank you.

(Applause)