Turkse versie van Robert’s rules verschenen!!

Netwerk lid Sema Alpan maakte een vertaling met cultuurgebonden veranderingen en nieuwe simulaties van het boek Robert’s rules.

Zij schrijft:
“I  did not translate the Introduction chapter of the original book, because it does not fit in the Turkish context. Instead I wrote an Introduction with some subtitles like:
-who can benefit from this book?
-working with groups

-terminology and concepts ( I had to adapt some parts of the original book to Turkish; e.g. I substituted Webster’s Dictionary with Turkish Language Dictionary; since I have to refer to this book. Otherwise, I explained some concepts and why I used this term instead of the other. Some concepts and some words do not exist in Turkish. For example “consensus building” and “facilitator”. I had to explain why I translated them into Turkish in such a way.

-about the source and the authors of this book: tells about the original book, Lawrence Susskind and his books; how we met, etc. since we do not have  or know about Robert’s Rules in Turkish; I had to summarize the Robert’s Rules in a box.

-content of the book: mainly the translation from the 4th page of the original book; as well as short explanation of each chapter and appendices.

The other chapters are the translation of the original book except the examples/simulations and some additions in “barriers to consensus building”.

I wrote two new simulations:
1. a somewhat modified and adapted version of Blaine: in my case Bahtiyar, where the municipality would like to build a new park at an old, abandoned  industrial site. 3 men, 3 women and the mayor are the players. (it is more or less direct translation and about 40 pages)
2. the urban renewal case with 10 stakeholders (about 40 pages) that replaced appendix D in the original book.

I changed this in the Blaine case:

1. The facilitator is a man; because in a small town in Turkey, it is unlikely the a man and a woman have lunch to discuss something. They would arouse a lot of gossip.
2. We do not have African-Americans in Turkey but the Kurdish issue is hot. So Sally (in my case Yonca) works in an environmental NGO. However, she is traditional.
3. Ralph is a woman (Arzu), who is a retired teacher, and is a volunteer in an NGO, working with the schools.
4. Molly (in my case ?nci) works professionally in Human Resources department in a computer company. She is a volunteer in the human rights NGO.
5. They work on the design criteria of the new park.
6. Since the park is not a one-time event, the conflicts arise especially on the monument to be erected in the park.
7. In my case, Molly raises the issue of some Christian minority would like to be represented in the monument with one of their historical heroic figure.(Maybe I should change the roles of Yonca, who is an environmentalist and Inci, who advocates human rights)
8. There is no budget sub-committee, however, there is a sponsorship sub-committee, who identifies the sponsors and donations.

There are 5 appendices: They are the translation of the appendices in the original book, except  appendix D: general Robert Goes to Town Meeting. I replaced this content with an urban renewal case simulation.”

Ik denk dat het belangrijk is dit werk van ons netwerk lid, met wie enkelen van ons hebben les gegeven in Turkije, op onze site te vermelden. In het komende politieke jaar zou niet alleen het Nederlandstalige werk een rol kunnen spelen in het vinden van consensus over belangrijke issues. Zoals bekend wijkt “Het kan wel” ,de versie voor Nederland, nogal af van het origineel. Dat is in andere landen in mindere mate het geval, maar ook daar zijn er eigen versies. Sommige staan bij Amazon , andere niet. Voor zover mij bekend zijn er ook versies in het Italiaans, Spaans, Russisch, en Frans.