Just another dent in the damage…

Google have been providing their useful Google Translate service for quite a while now but today seems to be a rather special day. They’ve finally released a support for Persian, something I think is much more appropriate than colouring the Google logo green for a day – simply because this is it far more useful to the current online ‘revolution’. It means I can not only translate useful sources such as BBC Persian but also all those Persian blogs I so wanted to read during my dissertation hell.

However, I think it’s important to say that this is a machine translation and of course it’s not perfect. But it’s a start and it means it can be developed and evolve into a practical solution for the spread of information. And, with respect to the theme of my dissertation it may in fact be used as another strategy to overcome online censorship, through enabling Iranians to translate English into Persian.

Facebook are also in on the action and the launch of Apple’s latest iPhone software has introduced support for the Persian script – Read more about this on Is This Ta’arof?.

So it seems Google is ‘officially’ blocked in Iran. Sadly it means that not only will fellow Gmailers have trouble accessing their email accounts but also that Google Reader, which numerous Iranians rely upon to get round government restrictions on Persian weblogs, is also now a no go zone. I have no doubt that the authorities are assuming this to be a more successful strategy of Internet censorship than those previously used with regards to Google searches such as filtering search terms and key words but surely they’re going to realise that this is just taking it too far??

UPDATE – Wait, it seems they have acknowledged their mistake (hat tip: Boing Boing). Apparently the whole episode was made in ‘error’.