OLPC Spanish America

In the Americas there are three major cultural & linguistic clusters legacy of the colonial period: English, Portuguese and Spanish. Of these three, only the Spanish was fragmented into independent countries; while the English and Portuguese maintained their's: Brazil & USA. Other European nations also colonized the New Continent, but with the exception of France (particularly in Canada) their legacies, although present, are rather small - at least in terms of population.

Not leveraging on this fact fragments the OLPC efforts when dealing in the Americas. Agreements with the UNDP and IADB are important - and give a supra-national structure with which the OLPC can work with - particularly financing and operational levels.

At the content level, this 'theoretically homogeneous' population (~400 million people) is an opportunity that shouldn't be overlooked. Hard science (physics, biology, mathematics, etc.) can be made available (both translated and locally produced) with a relative cost far lower than other localization efforts. Language is another major 'homogeneous' area of development. The concept of 'homogeneity' is always relative, but much in the same way that dubbing into Spanish can be done using 'neutral spanish', content can be developed like-wise.

A major localization 'obstacle' will be History and other social studies. Each country promotes 'their side of the story'—usually in conflict with their neighbor's—and involving a heavily edited version of their own history—usually in detriment of their pre-colonial cultural heritage.

Keeping this in mind would allow the OLPC to have a broad and linguistically homogeneous content base and is the major reason behind this page.

You can see the status by country and the specific section for the Americas.