TED Global 2013 Found in Translation An Xaio Mina

In the TED Found in Translation Session following her talk, An explores the culture of the internet with fellow TEDGlobal Speaker, Hetain Patel, and a global panel of TED Translators.

Hello, everybody. Welcome
to the Open Translation lounge

for the TED Found In Translation
sessions here at TEDGlobal in Scotland.

Today, we have two speakers.
First for us this week,

we have An Xiao Mina,
who just left the stage minutes ago.

And Hetain Patel, who actually
delivered his talk several days ago.

Also joining us here on the stage
is Coco from Hong Kong,

Shadia from Mauritius Island,
and Jan from the Czech Republic.

Joining us online, over here,
we have Matti from Hong Kong,

Jason from Hong Kong as well,

Anna from Italy and Anja from Slovenia.

- Hi.

- Welcome. I'm going
to start with you, An.

Fantastic talk,
thank you so much for joining us.

Your talk was all about memes
as a means of expression.

And the examples were really highly
localised, but they're also universal.

Everyone got them immediately.
Could you talk about that in the context

of having all these people
from around the world?

- Sure, yeah. I think what's really
interesting to me about Internet culture

is if we think about Hollywood -
I grew up partially in the Philippines,

my family is Filipino-Chinese -

and I remember travelling around
and going to the most rural areas

of the Philippines,
seeing people with Coke bottles

or watching Hollywood movies.
There's always the sense of Hollywood

or mass media providing
a global culture.

What I'm interested in
is Internet culture.

It's more like a ground up version of
that, it's coming from a local version.

That's why I used the word 'street-art',
or hip-hop culture.

I'm interested in how Internet culture
can become this bridge culture.

Just like I can talk about
Arnold Schwarzenegger in rural Uganda,

or in New York City.

Just two days ago, I was talking
with an Italian, an Indian and then me -

sounds like an intro to a joke,

and it was because we were all
talking about how people in Italy, in India

and in Uganda were all filming their
ministers of government falling asleep.

That became an Internet meme.

It suddenly became this bridge.

"Oh, your ministers fall asleep, too!"

And, so, I'm interested in how
this Internet culture can be

a bridge culture
that's driven by people.

It is incredibly local
and becomes a bridge for storytelling,

and maybe even for global,
civic engagement,

global understanding - now I know
a little bit more about

what's going on in India,
in a way I can relate to.

So, that's really what I hope
people really got from the talk.

And kind of what I'm looking at with
my founding partner, Jason Li,

with our new site,
called The Civic Beat, is can this be

a bridge for storytelling, and then,
from there, active engagement online.

And global understanding.

- Great.

Actually, I'd like to take
a question from the Skype crowd.

Does anybody have a question
An to begin with?

- I can start,
but I don't think I have a question.

I'd like to comment on this activism,
side of the argument

because we recently had
some protests in Slovenia

and it was quite a shock because a lot
of people said they would be coming,

and not a lot of people came.

So are memes just a form
of online activism

that isn't translated into public space,

and, therefore, lacks some kind of
political legitimacy

for politicians and the government?

- That's a really great question.

It's something I've struggled with a lot

because it does seem like
we're sharing pictures of cats.

Like, what is this doing?

You know, one phrase I use,
and the reason I brought in this

essay from Havel, is this notion
of a ladder of engagement

to civic expression.
It always starts with little steps.

And, certainly, many times,

you see instances where
people are talking a lot online.

And it doesn't seem like
they're engaging offline.

But, then, over time,

and one of my favourite examples
is the sunglasses meme

that I ended the talk on,

where everyone was wearing
sunglasses for Chen Guangcheng.

OK, it seems like
this is just empty expression,

it's not going anywhere,
nothing's happening.

But, again, if you think about
the context of China,

where there's heavy suppression of any
kind of political-public assembly,

there is actually reports of people
wearing sunglasses

in a form of flash mob
in physical space.

They actually went to the town where
Chen was being held,

nearby where he was being held,

and they assembled together,
and all wore sunglasses.

That became a form of
physical public assembly.

So, it's hard to imagine that happening
without first the meme popping up.

So, it doesn't always happen that way,

but there's so many cases where
we're seeing how a meme presages

any kind of physical action or assembly
that it's really convince me that

it really is the beginning of
a larger engagement.

And it might be discouraging
at the beginning to see people

clicking and pointing, but I don't
want to see that as a dichotomy.

If you go to a protest wearing a button,

that meme is very much similar
to a button -

it's a form of visual expression

that we've seen in all kinds of
social movements in history.

- I'd like to bring in Hetain.

We were talking yesterday
about how, obviously,

memes are a way
of expressing ourselves,

and how language actually.
We express ourselves in different ways.

The idea of do we have a different
identity in every language that we speak.

- Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reasons
why you might feel as though

you have a different identity
when you speak a different language.

It might be due to vocabulary.

So, from my personal experience,
if I'm speaking Gujarati,

an Indian language,
there's certain things

I'm used to talking about
in that language

with my grandmother,
domestic things.

In English, I might talk about
a whole different kind of things.

In French something else.

So, it might be the kind of topic
you speak about,

and, then, also, something
comes in in the vocabulary also,

in how you think about things,
through different languages.

And actually think
it's not just language.

Even with one language,
you kind of change who you are,

depending who you talk to anyway.
I guess, every day,

we're performing different
versions of ourselves, kind of thing.

- One of the most popular things
I've seen

is Photoshop remixes of police brutality.

There's a meme in China
called The Fat Cop.

And there was a protest
in Shifang about pollution,

and there's this fat cop
that was hitting people.

And, obviously, very frightening.

People took that cop and started
putting him into other images,

cos he looked like he was running, so
they put him into, like, movies

where he looks like he's chasing after
Tom Cruise, they put him into

all these weird images.

And a really similar thing happened
in the United States where,

I don't know who's from the US,

but if you remember the pepper
spraying cop, the famous cop who

was pepper spraying students who were
engaging in the Occupy movement.

And he looked like he was
literally watering the plants.

And, so, people took that image of him,
again, a terrifying image,

and they took that terror away
by putting it into a quantitative humour

and started Photoshopping him
into images of him, like,

watering the roses,
or spray painting in a movie.

So, those images, they break language.

I know exactly what's going on in China,
I know exactly what is happening,

even if I'm looking at
a meme that's coming from Egypt,

and I don't speak the language,

but I can see and understand it,
in a way, cos it's a visual language,

and that's really compelling to me.

- I want to bring in someone from Skype.
Anna, I'd like to bring you.

Do you have a question for either Hetain
or four An Xiao Mina?

- Yes, hello.

I was wondering if you think there's any
difference between memes in China

and in the other countries,
just because China Internet is censored?

- I think we see a lot of creativity
because of censorship.

A lot of the talks this week were
talking about how creativity

and innovation come out of necessity.

And, so, China has two things... China's
Internet has two things going for it.

It's one of the
world's largest Internets.

I think it may have recently become
THE world's largest Internet.

The infrastructure is there to support
a lot of creativity and remixing.

Then, on the other side, it's one
of the world's most censored Internets.

So, you have these two factors.
A lot of people can be creative online,

but then their voices
are stamped on more often.

So, recently, there were images
of Tiananmen Square -

I don't know if you remember
the infamous tank image, three tanks,

and the man standing up to it -

there were two images
that stuck out to me.

One was someone had replaced
the tanks with a kitten

looking at the person.

And another one, they actually replaced
the tanks with rubber ducks,

and rubber ducks had become
a meme earlier because

there's a big rubber duck floating around
in Hong Kong, an art installation.

And, so, that image is incredibly,
incredibly censored in China.

But by creating these other ways,
putting in a cat,

I mean, what goes more viral
on the Internet than a cat?

It's a way to get the message
out there, really quickly.

Of course, it got deleted pretty quickly,
but it also spread pretty quickly.

So, I don't want to say that
creativity limited.

Part of my talk is that there's actually
a lot of really similar creativity

around the world, but, in China,
you DO have this element

of censorship that compels creativity
in more frequent cases, at least for now.

- OK, thank you.
- I think, you know,

I've only looked at three contexts -
at China, a little bit of Philippines,

and Uganda,
and then United States.

And there are some similar themes.

Police brutality tends to be actually
a similar theme across all of these areas.

And growing up in Los Angeles,
I understand why that is.

I grew up, I saw
police brutality myself.

It's a frightening situation.

So, using humour diffuses that,

so, it becomes a very common
way to express ourselves

and often people, especially in areas
where there's limited free speech,

people will remix images of their leaders,
so you see a lot of that.

But, often, it's very local.

Some of the more compelling meme
coming out of Sub-Saharan Africa,

I showed one,
Tweet Like A Foreign Journalist,

where the Spanish Prime Minister
had said...

The Spanish economy was tanking,

the Spanish Prime Minister sent a text
message to his finance minister

and he said, "Don't worry -
Spain is not Uganda."

Uganda's pounced on this. They started
saying, "Uganda is not Spain."

And they started posting statistics
about how Uganda's economy is rising,

all these kinds of issues.

That's something really common
I've seen in Sub-Saharan Africa,

because Sub-Saharan Africa in particular
is misrepresented in global media

much more often than other places.

So, yes, there are some themes,

but you can find very local ones
that are really interesting.

- We have a question from Hong Kong.
Actually, Matti.

- Do you think is this a new
phenomenon,

merged with the Internet,
or do you have

any pre-Internet samples of remixing,
for example picture of leaders,

and stuff like that?

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

What's new about the Internet
is that it's faster.

I haven't seen anything in history
that's filled with such weirdness.

I haven't seen cats and llamas
and dogs and pigs.

But I was just talking with someone,
since we're in the UK, this is appropriate,

there's this British publisher,

I forget the century,
but his name was John Wilkes.

He was publishing
the North Briton newspaper.

It was considered at the time
a very edgy newspaper.

The 45th issue angered the government
so much that they destroyed

all the printing presses
and they censored the magazine.

And then they arrested John Wilkes.

But, then, shortly after he's arrested,

just like the sunflower seeds,
the number 45

started popping up on walls and, again,

this is why I bring that analogy
with street art,

that there is a long history of people

taking symbols and images
and putting them out

as a way of speaking out, even when
that message is being suppressed.

- Actually, I just want to bring in
some of our translator panellists.

Do you have a question
for either Hetain or An?

- Our president gets mocked a lot,
but, like, he never...

I always thought if he can reply
with a humour,

it would be really nice
to sever the situation,

so I'm wondering, is there any example

of how government can handle
this in a rather humorous way?

- Humorous way,
yeah, that's a great question.

I don't know if any
Americans here remember

the Hillary Clinton texting meme
that popped up?

That wasn't a political commentary.
It was just her looking really bad-ass.

She was wearing sunglasses
and texting.

And there are all kinds of joke texts
coming from her

about how cool she was.

And her Twitter account, she just opened
a Twitter account, and it's that photo.

So, I think she's doing it well.

Granted, it wasn't criticising her,

but she did it well
in terms of embracing it.

And I think, there's certainly
a culture gap, a generation gap,

and I do hope that it opens up
the door for using humour

because I think that would be great,

if persons in power can use humour

to help talk about
often very difficult issues.

- We're going to have to wrap it,

we have to head back
into session.

Thank you, An Xiao Mina, and thank
you, Hetain Patel, for joining us.

And thank you, all the translators.
Thank you very much.