PCC Geography: Mr. Lee

Volunteer English to Thai Language Translators Needed

The ESSI Northern Thailand Volunteer Project

This page last updated: 28 Aug 2005

Photo (c) 2005, G.K. Lee. ESSI volunteers assist Na Fa Teachers with oral translations in the field during the Summer 2005 NASA CERES S'COOL project training.

Earth Systems Science, Inc., an educational non-profit group provides community-based environmental education to families and sustainable neighborhoods.

Since summer 2004, ESSI American volunteers have been working with Na Fa Elementary School in northern Thailand (Nan Province) to share their environmental knowledge and skills in an effort to upgrade rural Thai education in the areas of math, environmental science, English, technology, and sustainability.

The training will focus on sustainable agricultural practices (non-toxic pest control, no-till agriculture, soil erosion control, composting, and alternatiave energy.)

American volunteers will train in the US prior to leaving for Thailand. Tentative plans call for a volunteer effort in Jan/Feb 2007.

(In the near future, the effort may be expanded to Cambodia. A core team of Cambodian coordinators has been formed and began exploratory efforts in summer 2005.)

Translation from English to Thai

The continuing effort requires translation of new and old lessons from English to Thai. Some materials are text documents, while others are digital presentations (e.g. PowerPoint).

ESSI is preparing simplified lesson sheets for the students and their families. The hope is to improve their environmental education and English as well. So the lessons will be machine translated from English to Thai. However, these rough machine translations need to be reviewed, revised, and smoothed to common Thai language.

GEOG 1 / GEOG 10 Extra Credit

We are working with ESSI to assess and estimate the time involvement for the translation work. One of the difficulties is the lessons are of different sizes and complexity. Once this is completed, we can better determine the amount of extra credit to assign each lesson.

Anyone interested in earning extra credit for doing English to Thai translation work should contact Saifon Lee (in either Thai or English).

Email us
earthsystemsscience@yahoo.com

Learn More about the Thai Volunteer Project

ESSI Thai Summer 2005 Project Photo Report
Illustrated Text Report on the ESSI Thailand Project (2004-2005)
Past Thai Project
Origins of the ESSI Community-based Education Approach