BioC Asia 2021 challenged to overcoming language barriers and respected diversity

BioC Asia 2021 organizing committee used Zoom and YouTube to “add real-time English captions”, “add Japanese translation captions for English keynote”, and “run 3 parallel workshops: English, Japanese, and Mandarin”.

BioC
Diversity
Author

Kozo Nishida

Published

December 9, 2021

We, the BioC Asia 2021 organizing Committee, held the Bioconductor Asia regional conference BioC Asia 2021 virtually from November 1st to 4th, 2021. In this post, I present our attempt to overcome the language barriers to respect diversity in BioC Asia 2021.

We have tried to overcome language barriers using the following three.

  1. Zoom live transcription
  2. Subtitles for Japanese translation of English speech using YouTube (however, the translation by manually in advance, not live translation)
  3. Parallel workshops in 3 languages with multiple Zoom Meetings (Japanese, English, Mandarin)

Zoom live transcription

Zoom has a live transcription feature. We have applied this feature to English-speaking presenters in an attempt to lower the barriers for understanding English.

Subtitles for Japanese translation of English speech using YouTube

The talk of the keynote speaker Lori Ann Shepherd on November 2, 2021 was made by broadcasting a YouTube video with Japanese translation subtitles on a pre-recorded English speech.

You can see this Japanese translation subtitles by opening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMv27jgHRb4 and setting the subtitles on YouTube as shown in the image below.

Parallel workshops in 3 languages with multiple Zoom Meetings

We also promoted the parallel workshops in non-English languages, which began in BioC Asia 2020. In 2020, the parallel workshops were held in English and Mandarin, but in 2021, we held parallel workshops in his three languages, including Japanese.

Conclusion

BioC Asia 2021 respects language diversity that began from the BioC Asia 2020 Mandarin workshop, and newly realized “live transcription for English talk”, “Japanese subtitles of recoreded English keynote”, and “3 parallel workshops in more diverse languages”. Bioconductor is a community that respects diversity. We welcome attempts to achieve such diversity.