Translator: Ivan Stamenković Recezent: Senzos Osijek
My name is Ivan.
I was born in 1987 in Osijek.
I went to school there and finished my agricultural school.
There I grew up and I got friends.
And shortly after graduating from college, I sat on the computer and took the time.
I mean, who in Slavonia really needs a farmer?
So it was normal to sit on the computer.
And someone sent me a link to a TED speech.
I started that TED speech, wondering who this guy is Ted,
and what will he now excuse me in that video?
After a few minutes of video I realized that it was actually an organization
which deals with valuable expanding ideas.
And in this video it was a group of people who gathered and wanted
the young man who remained immobile and could not communicate with the environment
allow him to move again, to communicate with the world around him
and to draw again, because he was a writer, a graphite artist.
Of course, they succeeded in this endeavor, and that was not what surprised me.
They made trolleys similar to those of Stephen Hawking,
but what was strange was that they were
plans and plans for making it
give it free of charge to everyone in the world.
They just wanted to help someone who was in a similar situation.
And now you can imagine me.
I watch this video, I expect the classic story of commercialization
and great success, earns
and I get a story about volunteering, selfless giving and success
despite the small chances of this being happening.
And, it really was completely unthinkable to me.
By then, I thought that for everything I did,
any idea I need to get compensation.
And what is the greater the compensation, the better.
So I have to get as much money for that idea.
And now there are crazy Americans here and they have given it all for free.
Normally, I wrote it just as a characteristic of these crazy Americans.
By the end of the video I learned another thing:
What I wrote as a characteristic of mad Americans
is an open source, a concept that designs and provides instructions for making something free
to use and modify it all over the world and it is not unusual at all.
And under the impression of some ten minutes that made me think
I continued to look at what’s on the page
and I noticed that this speech has a few translations.
And my first question was, normally, why is there no Croatian?
As I looked further, a button appeared in front of me
on which he wrote “Help us translate.”
I clicked on him and saw that he really was looking for my help.
They were looking for help to give that idea the voice
in the Croatian language through its translation.
I decided to do it.
Through a simple platform that’s your first translation.
Now, what followed was pretty manic.
I came back to the site, refreshed, and waited for my translation to appear
And then when I received the mail that told me: “Your translation is published.”
The next thing I was really interested in, as the counter viewer grew up,
how many people in Croatia looked at this video.
At that point I could not get that information,
and I concluded that this is the first and last translation I will make.
Please do not ask me to predict something, because I have recently switched over 700 speeches
which I translated, reviewed or transcribed.
(Applause)
You are talking about, with Croatian subtitles reviewed about 110 thousand times.
And when you multiply it with ten minutes, how much does TED speak on average,
in Croatia, the videos with my translation are about 17 and a half thousand hours.
On that day, all of the thousands and thousands of videos available at TED looked at that.
That one who spoke something in me what I did not know there was
And who was fortunate without a Croatian translation.
I decided to click and become a volunteer.
By clicking this in 2011 I became part of a global community
which was called the Open Translation Project and is now only TED Translators.
Here are 27,000 volunteers who translate TED and TEDx talk, and TED ED lessons
in 114 world languages.
And the number of translations has passed a recent figure of 110,000.
And I’ve been trying to figure this out and count but how the number of reviews is going to billions,
lose yourself in those numbers so I do not have to share with you now.
I’m going to jump right now.
I’ll jump in 2013 when I got one interesting call.
I got a call to the first regional workshop for TED translators
which, from all places, was held in Novi Sad.
One sentence explained how they chose
precisely the region of former Yugoslavia as a place for the first regional workshop,
because we could work well because of the similarities of our cultures and languages.
Now, I do not have to tell anyone when you put a bunch of Balkans
in one room, the first thing about mind is no co-operation.
But at that workshop for one big round table
We sat with Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Slovenes and Croats.
We really talked about how we can translate,
what is troubling us how we can work together better.
We have united in that ideas have the power to change the world.
We realized that our environment needed a lot of change.
Despite all the things, despite our differences, we united around that idea.
At that workshop are some of the things I learned from the small,
which bombard us in the media, they dropped into the water.
This is a higher goal, that kind of work for something
of which we will not have direct benefits, it has linked us.
This event reminded me of that story from the beginning, the first speech I looked at.
But the most important thing was that I understood
as far as I was not open to the world around.
Along the end of this workshop,
the girl I met and later became my beloved friend
she told me one important thing.
She told me:
Try, you never know what can happen.
It was about motivating me here
to apply for one of several scholarships for translators,
with whom we can go to Canada, at the TED conference.
I decided to listen and report.
I mean, you know how it looks when you do not try,
you’ve already written this thing up for failure, do not hope it’s over.
But that’s the thing.
When you try, there is a little worm of doubt, that little hope that says:
And what if that happens? What if he calls me?
What if I’m going to go there?
To my happiness, that really happened,
they invited me to join them next year at the conference.
I soon came to the plane for the first time,
I crossed the ocean, came to another continent, at the TED conference.
I actually came to a place quite similar to what we are today.
Overflowing with the wonderful participants, the interlocutors you can run with
horribly interesting stories, fantastic ideas that spring everywhere,
and most importantly, a lot of opportunities waiting to be exploited.
And me?
I’m your first night free of some organized activities
decided to spend in her room.
With snacks and some movie, I was planning to sleep and get rid of the jet of the laga.
Truly, one of my most exciting plans.
But fortunately, as I walked out of the hotel, a girl jumped again,
and asked me what plans are for tonight.
I told her what she replied:
Okay, if you’re really tired, go get some sleep. We’ll hang out tomorrow.
But it would be a pity to miss the opportunity to socialize,
You never know what can happen.
To shorten the whole story, by the end of the conference I did not sleep,
I did not get rid of the jet lag, but I used a lot of opportunities that they offered.
I complained later about those I did not have time to take advantage of.
I got out of the comfort zone, I met people there.
I told them about myself, about what I was doing, which was driving me.
When you are in such an environment, it’s easy to think
that all your achievements and the things you do are all right
somehow small and irrelevant to everything around you.
But this environment was such that I did not feel bad.
I was motivated, wanted to do more, I wanted to be more.
I wanted to try again.
There, at that conference, all those things that started to crumble
still in Novi Sad have disappeared completely.
They carefully built the walls around me, all I did
protected from the world around me, they fell.
I returned to Croatia feeling like a new person.
I came back full of new experiences, ideas, with the desire to work more,
to be more with the few new friends I got there.
When I got back I listened to what I felt after the conference.
I became a mentor to the new translators in the project,
I organized a series of TEDx events in Osijek,
in order to give local ideas of valuable expansions their voice
and to make people understand that it can still, despite the surrounding environment.
I changed my job, moved, and there was a long list of things that happened.
But nothing would have been possible if I did not try it for the first time.
If I did not go against anything I had always learned.
Speak to us: do not try, because you are so good as it is.
Do not try, something bad will happen.
Do not try, you never know what can happen.
And this last, extremely negative statement,
with a small modification it becomes something extremely motivating, something good.
It’s a try: you never know what can happen.
I mentioned those friends from Whistler, Canada.
One year after the conference we found ourselves in Berlin.
Belarusian, Brazilian, girl from Mauritius, Taiwan, and me, Croat.
This strange team of people got in, and we talked
about everything that happened in just a year.
We talked about how our plans changed,
how translators influenced us and our lives.
And here we have come up with one spell, she has stayed with us until today,
although we were initially laughing at her.
But we said: I am a translator, and what is your superpower?
As I have said, we are part of the global community, devoted to valuable expanding ideas.
Translating, giving your free time to get these ideas out.
And all this happens without any compensation and more and more volunteers join.
When you look at it in black and white, it looks stupid, not superpower.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about getting me back to that project.
The project started out quite modest in 2009, there were 20-30 languages and 200-300 translations.
And then the project is growing steadily, and people are coming back,
they give voice to ideas of valuable spread in their own language.
For me it’s actually just one thing that keeps me coming back to the project.
And that’s the possibility.
The possibility of somewhere among these views of speech,
Among those words that are viewed with my subtitles, there is a story.
Not necessarily such a story I’m talking about here,
but the story of change, about what is unmistakable for the actors of that story.
And that’s what brings me back to the project, and that’s what always motivates me again.
I believe that it is with other volunteers in any project.
I know this sounds pretty naughty.
And I’m aware that if I am you, you, you, or any of us in the hall
we try to change the world itself,
chances are that the world will remain the same, nothing will change.
But one thing is inevitable in this process.
It is a fact that my or your world will completely change.
Because I tried, today I stand here before you and say,
I am a translator, and what is your superpower?
Try. You never know what can happen.
(Applause)
My name is Ivan.
I was born in 1987 in Osijek.
I went to school there and finished my agricultural school.
There I grew up and I got friends.
And shortly after graduating from college, I sat on the computer and took the time.
I mean, who in Slavonia really needs a farmer?
So it was normal to sit on the computer.
And someone sent me a link to a TED speech.
I started that TED speech, wondering who this guy is Ted,
and what will he now excuse me in that video?
After a few minutes of video I realized that it was actually an organization
which deals with valuable expanding ideas.
And in this video it was a group of people who gathered and wanted
the young man who remained immobile and could not communicate with the environment
allow him to move again, to communicate with the world around him
and to draw again, because he was a writer, a graphite artist.
Of course, they succeeded in this endeavor, and that was not what surprised me.
They made trolleys similar to those of Stephen Hawking,
but what was strange was that they were
plans and plans for making it
give it free of charge to everyone in the world.
They just wanted to help someone who was in a similar situation.
And now you can imagine me.
I watch this video, I expect the classic story of commercialization
and great success, earns
and I get a story about volunteering, selfless giving and success
despite the small chances of this being happening.
And, it really was completely unthinkable to me.
By then, I thought that for everything I did,
any idea I need to get compensation.
And what is the greater the compensation, the better.
So I have to get as much money for that idea.
And now there are crazy Americans here and they have given it all for free.
Normally, I wrote it just as a characteristic of these crazy Americans.
By the end of the video I learned another thing:
What I wrote as a characteristic of mad Americans
is an open source, a concept that designs and provides instructions for making something free
to use and modify it all over the world and it is not unusual at all.
And under the impression of some ten minutes that made me think
I continued to look at what’s on the page
and I noticed that this speech has a few translations.
And my first question was, normally, why is there no Croatian?
As I looked further, a button appeared in front of me
on which he wrote “Help us translate.”
I clicked on him and saw that he really was looking for my help.
They were looking for help to give that idea the voice
in the Croatian language through its translation.
I decided to do it.
Through a simple platform that’s your first translation.
Now, what followed was pretty manic.
I came back to the site, refreshed, and waited for my translation to appear
And then when I received the mail that told me: “Your translation is published.”
The next thing I was really interested in, as the counter viewer grew up,
how many people in Croatia looked at this video.
At that point I could not get that information,
and I concluded that this is the first and last translation I will make.
Please do not ask me to predict something, because I have recently switched over 700 speeches
which I translated, reviewed or transcribed.
(Applause)
You are talking about, with Croatian subtitles reviewed about 110 thousand times.
And when you multiply it with ten minutes, how much does TED speak on average,
in Croatia, the videos with my translation are about 17 and a half thousand hours.
On that day, all of the thousands and thousands of videos available at TED looked at that.
That one who spoke something in me what I did not know there was
And who was fortunate without a Croatian translation.
I decided to click and become a volunteer.
By clicking this in 2011 I became part of a global community
which was called the Open Translation Project and is now only TED Translators.
Here are 27,000 volunteers who translate TED and TEDx talk, and TED ED lessons
in 114 world languages.
And the number of translations has passed a recent figure of 110,000.
And I’ve been trying to figure this out and count but how the number of reviews is going to billions,
lose yourself in those numbers so I do not have to share with you now.
I’m going to jump right now.
I’ll jump in 2013 when I got one interesting call.
I got a call to the first regional workshop for TED translators
which, from all places, was held in Novi Sad.
One sentence explained how they chose
precisely the region of former Yugoslavia as a place for the first regional workshop,
because we could work well because of the similarities of our cultures and languages.
Now, I do not have to tell anyone when you put a bunch of Balkans
in one room, the first thing about mind is no co-operation.
But at that workshop for one big round table
We sat with Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Slovenes and Croats.
We really talked about how we can translate,
what is troubling us how we can work together better.
We have united in that ideas have the power to change the world.
We realized that our environment needed a lot of change.
Despite all the things, despite our differences, we united around that idea.
At that workshop are some of the things I learned from the small,
which bombard us in the media, they dropped into the water.
This is a higher goal, that kind of work for something
of which we will not have direct benefits, it has linked us.
This event reminded me of that story from the beginning, the first speech I looked at.
But the most important thing was that I understood
as far as I was not open to the world around.
Along the end of this workshop,
the girl I met and later became my beloved friend
she told me one important thing.
She told me:
Try, you never know what can happen.
It was about motivating me here
to apply for one of several scholarships for translators,
with whom we can go to Canada, at the TED conference.
I decided to listen and report.
I mean, you know how it looks when you do not try,
you’ve already written this thing up for failure, do not hope it’s over.
But that’s the thing.
When you try, there is a little worm of doubt, that little hope that says:
And what if that happens? What if he calls me?
What if I’m going to go there?
To my happiness, that really happened,
they invited me to join them next year at the conference.
I soon came to the plane for the first time,
I crossed the ocean, came to another continent, at the TED conference.
I actually came to a place quite similar to what we are today.
Overflowing with the wonderful participants, the interlocutors you can run with
horribly interesting stories, fantastic ideas that spring everywhere,
and most importantly, a lot of opportunities waiting to be exploited.
And me?
I’m your first night free of some organized activities
decided to spend in her room.
With snacks and some movie, I was planning to sleep and get rid of the jet of the laga.
Truly, one of my most exciting plans.
But fortunately, as I walked out of the hotel, a girl jumped again,
and asked me what plans are for tonight.
I told her what she replied:
Okay, if you’re really tired, go get some sleep. We’ll hang out tomorrow.
But it would be a pity to miss the opportunity to socialize,
You never know what can happen.
To shorten the whole story, by the end of the conference I did not sleep,
I did not get rid of the jet lag, but I used a lot of opportunities that they offered.
I complained later about those I did not have time to take advantage of.
I got out of the comfort zone, I met people there.
I told them about myself, about what I was doing, which was driving me.
When you are in such an environment, it’s easy to think
that all your achievements and the things you do are all right
somehow small and irrelevant to everything around you.
But this environment was such that I did not feel bad.
I was motivated, wanted to do more, I wanted to be more.
I wanted to try again.
There, at that conference, all those things that started to crumble
still in Novi Sad have disappeared completely.
They carefully built the walls around me, all I did
protected from the world around me, they fell.
I returned to Croatia feeling like a new person.
I came back full of new experiences, ideas, with the desire to work more,
to be more with the few new friends I got there.
When I got back I listened to what I felt after the conference.
I became a mentor to the new translators in the project,
I organized a series of TEDx events in Osijek,
in order to give local ideas of valuable expansions their voice
and to make people understand that it can still, despite the surrounding environment.
I changed my job, moved, and there was a long list of things that happened.
But nothing would have been possible if I did not try it for the first time.
If I did not go against anything I had always learned.
Speak to us: do not try, because you are so good as it is.
Do not try, something bad will happen.
Do not try, you never know what can happen.
And this last, extremely negative statement,
with a small modification it becomes something extremely motivating, something good.
It’s a try: you never know what can happen.
I mentioned those friends from Whistler, Canada.
One year after the conference we found ourselves in Berlin.
Belarusian, Brazilian, girl from Mauritius, Taiwan, and me, Croat.
This strange team of people got in, and we talked
about everything that happened in just a year.
We talked about how our plans changed,
how translators influenced us and our lives.
And here we have come up with one spell, she has stayed with us until today,
although we were initially laughing at her.
But we said: I am a translator, and what is your superpower?
As I have said, we are part of the global community, devoted to valuable expanding ideas.
Translating, giving your free time to get these ideas out.
And all this happens without any compensation and more and more volunteers join.
When you look at it in black and white, it looks stupid, not superpower.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about getting me back to that project.
The project started out quite modest in 2009, there were 20-30 languages and 200-300 translations.
And then the project is growing steadily, and people are coming back,
they give voice to ideas of valuable spread in their own language.
For me it’s actually just one thing that keeps me coming back to the project.
And that’s the possibility.
The possibility of somewhere among these views of speech,
Among those words that are viewed with my subtitles, there is a story.
Not necessarily such a story I’m talking about here,
but the story of change, about what is unmistakable for the actors of that story.
And that’s what brings me back to the project, and that’s what always motivates me again.
I believe that it is with other volunteers in any project.
I know this sounds pretty naughty.
And I’m aware that if I am you, you, you, or any of us in the hall
we try to change the world itself,
chances are that the world will remain the same, nothing will change.
But one thing is inevitable in this process.
It is a fact that my or your world will completely change.
Because I tried, today I stand here before you and say,
I am a translator, and what is your superpower?
Try. You never know what can happen.
(Applause)
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