Question - bilingual opening

[Peggy Holman]

When I did the OS in Colombia for the street kids, there were virtually no 
English speakers.  Since I don't speak Spanish, we discussed my not opening 
the space at all.  In the end, the sponsors felt that having this person who 
came so far - me -  be visible was part of the creation of a welcoming 
space.  So the approach we took was that I'd say a sentence in English, then 
my partner, Andres Agudelo, would say a paragraph in Spanish filling in all 
the details.

It worked.

from rainy Seattle,
Peggy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jo Toepfer" <jotoepfer at boscop.de>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Question - bilingual opening


> Hi Esther,
>
> I had a bi-lingual setting for a number of times. For me it works best if 
> a second person walks the circle right behind me who not pretends to be 
> the facilitator but rather behaves as a shadow of me who has a voice in 
> the other language.
>
> Greetings from Kiev
> Jo
> **********************
> Communications Esther Matte schrieb:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Yes, it was a great conference with Deb at Rococo. People there were 
>> really impressed with OS. Hopefully, we'll gather a few people for our 
>> FoFo in Val David this fall :-)
>>
>> Deb and I learned a lot, of course, as we do every time we facilitate OS. 
>> One of the questions we played with was the bilingual opening. We briefly 
>> considered doing the opening together, each in one language, but quickly 
>> realized we couldn't walk the circle together. So we cut down on the 
>> opening text so that Deb could do it systematically in both languages 
>> (French and English). And she did a great job! However, it was still too 
>> long. Later in the event, people started to ask that we do just English 
>> since everyone there understood. But we were in Montreal after all, so 
>> Deb maintained the French, and the organizers were happy about that. They 
>> wanted to hold a bilingual event and they wanted the French to be 
>> present.
>>
>> Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if we could have done two 
>> circles just for the opening. To put people in the OS frame of mind and 
>> spirit in their own language. Then, merge the 2 in 1 circle, have them 
>> look around it, feel the energy and richness of knowledge, experience, 
>> etc. and then start the agenda. For the other circles, keep the bilingual 
>> format, but with bits of French here and there instead of systematic 
>> translation.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Looking forward to reading your thoughts :-))
>>
>> Esther
>>
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>
> -- 
> Jo Toepfer, boscop eg
> Dolziger Str. 40, 10247 Berlin
> ++49-30-42018000
> www.boscop.de    www.joconsult.de
>
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>From  Sun May 27 14:46:25 2007
Message-Id: <SUN.27.MAY.2007.144625.0400.>
Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 14:46:25 -0400
Reply-To: deborah at hartmann.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Deborah Hartmann <deborah at hartmann.net>
Subject: Re: Question - bilingual opening
In-Reply-To: <014801c7a08d$92a6db30$0a00a8c0 at Traveler>
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Thanks, Peggy. Did you two walk the circle?
deb

Peggy Holman wrote:
> When I did the OS in Colombia for the street kids, there were 
> virtually no English speakers.  Since I don't speak Spanish, we 
> discussed my not opening the space at all.  In the end, the sponsors 
> felt that having this person who came so far - me -  be visible was 
> part of the creation of a welcoming space.  So the approach we took 
> was that I'd say a sentence in English, then my partner, Andres 
> Agudelo, would say a paragraph in Spanish filling in all the details.
>
> It worked.
>
> from rainy Seattle,
> Peggy

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