TED Community » Alkis Diamantakos

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About Me

Location:
Greece, Kavala

TED Translator

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  • A reply on Talk: Paul Ewald asks, Can we domesticate germs?

    Jan 29 2013: He addressed this when he talked about Malaria. He said that by mosquito-proofing the houses, the sick people who'd be at home wouldn't get bitten again and thus infect others. This way, only the more benign strains of malaria, those which would let people feel well enough to leave their houses and get bitten again, would be selected for.

    I also think that when he said "across the board", he was talking about the mentality of examining the germs from an evolutionary POV. That is, limit their transmission options to those which require a relatively healthy host.
  • +1

    A reply on Talk: Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life"

    Jul 19 2012: Jay Bradner's talk on open source cancer research would most likely interest you :D
  • +2

    A comment on Conversation: Would you translate (or spread) a TED talk if you didn't agree with it's topic or the speaker's point of view?

    Apr 25 2012: The reason I joined the open translation project was to help spread ideas I felt were worth spreading. There are way too many TED videos out there and far too little time to translate all the ones I've loved, much less the ones I didn't.

    Nevertheless, I agree with the point you made in one of your posts: even if I disagree with a video, translating it would allow for a bigger audience and a bigger audience would mean more people to think about the idea, criticize it and even refine it.

    Now, having said the above, I should also mention that so far I haven't watched a single TED video that I felt opposed to. All the reactions I recall having ranged from "meh =/ " to "AWESOME!! o/", never "OUTRAGEOUS!! >("

    As for the second part of your question, yes, I believe people would automatically assume I agree with the video. We're all volunteers here, we don't need to translate these videos to make a living, so it seems natural to me that one would assume I chose a particular video because I liked something about it. Of course a volunteer could only be translating in order to hone their skills and choosing videos solely based on how easy or hard the English transcript looks, but I don't think the average viewer would bother thinking that deeply into the matter :p

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