Browse the Web with AgoraGETTING ONLINE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1. Locating
Human Rights Information on the Internet
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All I have is an email account. Can I still get information from the Web?
The Internet is host to several services that allow you to search the contents of the Internet and to request specific documents by simply sending an email message. Almost any Internet resource can be accessed using email alone. [9]
One of the most popular and easy-to-use World Wide Web email browsers is Agora, with servers located in Japan and the United Kingdom. You can send a request for a specific Web page or other Internet-based resource to Agora or you can request that Agora perform an Internet search for you.
To request a specific Web page, in this case, the AAAS Science and Human Rights homepage, type the command send http://shr.aaas.org/ in the body of an email message and send it to the address of one of the Agora servers.[10] After a while, an email message will arrive with the text of your requested page in the body of the message or as an attachment if there is a lot of text (Figure 11).
Figure 11: An email message from Agora with the text from a requested URL (AAAS Science & Human Rights Program at http://shr.aaas.org/)
Each link (reference to another Web resource) on the page is followed by a reference number in brackets. At the bottom of the message will be a list of the reference numbers with their associated URLs.
To request Agora to return the contents of one or more of the links, send a message back to Agora specifying the original URL in the subject field in the format Re: (URL: original URL). In the body of the message, specify the reference number(s) for the link or links you would like to see. For example, if you received the email message in Figure 11 from Agora and you wanted to see what is contained on the "What's New" page (link reference number 2), you would send the following message back to Agora (Figure 12):
Figure 12: Email message to Agora requesting link
number 2 from the URL http://shr.aaas.org/
In addition, you can simply paste the desired URL(s) themselves into the body of a new message and send it back to Agora.
You may also use Agora to send email search requests to several Internet search engines (Lycos, InfoSeek, Webcrawler, Excite, AltaVista, and Yahoo!). Agora queries the indices, organizes and ranks the results, assigns each a number based on its position in the list, and returns them to you in an email message. The syntax (form) of search requests through Agora varies between search engines. For more information on using Agora, send an email message to Agora with the message:
send http://www.dna.affrc.go.jp/htdocs/Agora/Help.txt
Agora also allows you to browse several newsgroups, including alt,
bionet, comp, rec, sci, and soc [11] (see Section 4, Join a Usenet Newsgroup). If you send a message to Agora, and in the body of the message include the text:
send news: soc.rights.human
you will get an index list of subject titles in the soc.rights.human newsgroup with Agora reference numbers for each entry. Unfortunately, Agora does not support posting or responding to newsgroups.
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There are a growing number of human rights resources on the Internet in languages other than English. Is there any way to access them?
In the past, most of the material on the Internet has been in English. Any user had to have good knowledge of English in order to make effective use of the tools and materials that were available on the Internet. As access to the Internet increases worldwide, more and more non-English speakers are using it to post human rights information and conduct email correspondence. As the number of languages represented on the Internet increases, so do the options available to help bridge Internet language barriers.
Use Search
Engines in Other Languages
The Netscape homepage (http://home.netscape.com/) supports Internet use in several languages, including access to various Internet search engines (Excite, Yahoo! and AltaVista) in those languages. From the Netscape homepage, changing to your desired language is as easy as adding a two-letter code to the end of the Netscape URL. For example, to view the Netscape homepage in Spanish, you need simply to add /es to the Netscape URL, changing it to http://home.netscape.com/es (or /fr for French, or /it for Italian). From there, you may use the search engines that are available in that language.
AltaVista currently supports searching the Web in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Once your browser has been configured to read in one of these languages, you can enter a search strategy in one of these languages in the search box and use the AltaVista search engine to find pages in these languages on the World Wide Web. In addition, many directories of Internet search engines are available, categorized by language and/or country. [13]
Translate
Information Automatically
AltaVista offers assistance in bridging language barriers on the Internet. AltaVista's Translation Assistant provides a free translation service for use on the Internet, which translates words, phrases, and entire Web sites, allowing users to share material and information across languages. The Translation Assistant will translate a Web site or document from one language to another. Though not always a perfect translation, with mistranslations or lost nuances, the translations are usually grammatically correct and offer a good understanding of the content. Currently, AltaVista supports translations between English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German, in any combination of these languages.
You can access the Translation Assistant directly at: http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate? Or, once a list of search hits has been retrieved, simply select the translate link at the end of the document summary (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Search result in AltaVista showing the translate option
When you select the translate option from the AltaVista search results screen, you will link to the Translation Assistant window where you can select the original and destination languages for a translation (Figure 14). The URL of your selected page will appear in the input window. Once the translation is complete, the page will appear in your browser in the requested language with most of its original formatting, graphics, and links.
Figure 14: AltaVista Translation Assistant window
If you maintain a Web site, consider putting links from your Web pages to the AltaVista Translation Assistant. This will help users who might not otherwise be able to do so to read your materials.
Tip: The AltaVista Translation Assistant is not limited to translating only Web pages. You can use it to translate any text that can be pasted into the translation dialog box, for example the text of an email message.
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