The Los Baños Script. DevCom & Com Arts. Wake up! UP Los Baños

MANILA - I have just uploaded my essay "Challenge to Asian science media. How Mohamed can move mountains!" (19 September 2011, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com), and it's all about creating an Internet-accessible database that translates the technical into the popular, scientific terms into plain English, modern knowledge into everyday talk. Everyday science to serve the people everyday. The legendary lady Maria Makiling would be proud.

And Chancellor candidate Rene Rafael C Espino's email is the first reaction, where he asks rhetorically that, isn't it? that's the job of UP Los Baños' College of Development Communication (DevCom) and the people of Communication Arts (Com Arts) under the College of Arts & Sciences.

That has given me an idea: Why not the DevCom and Com Arts people join hands and create what I shall call here The Los Baños Script.

This will be a modern database or infobase of technical terms defined technically, definitions translated into everyday English with examples in use, along with figures of speech created to further illuminate the technical terms: metaphor, simile, personification, synecdoche etcetera.

The Los Baños Script as infobase will be accessible to everyone via the Internet and searchable via technical and common words. You could search the database without knowing any technical term and you would get it, along with the translations. (You can translate from English to Ilocano or Tagalog or Ilonggo or whatever later, but not at the beginning of the project.)

This will require of course that the DevCom and Com Arts people get together and work on a common project. Aye, there's the rub! I know they have not been seeing eye-to-eye. But no one in his right mind will try to explain why we have 2 separate institutions within UP Los Baños, 1 college and 1 course, dealing with communication. And I wonder why all those Chancellors either did not recognize it or evaded the issue?

This is a challenge to them from this alumnus, a 1965 BSA graduate, major in Ag Education, a creative writer who knows that the Waterloo of science writers is understanding and translating technical English into plain English. Am I communicating yet?

Also, this will require that UP Los Baños build an ultra-fast, world-class Internet facility. Which reminds me that this was one of the promises of Espino in the statement of his Vision during the "Presentation of the Nominees" for the new Chancellor of UP Los Baños on 18 August 2011 at the Umali Auditorium (see my "UP Nationalism? They seek a Chancellor, I don't see Charice!" 19 August 2011, University Matters, blogspot.com).

In a subsequent interview, Espino was telling me how, if given the chance, he would build the Internet infrastructure of UP Los Baños without funds - all you need is more imagination, and more experience managing more funds and working with more individuals and institutions outside the University. That is to say, when people say they can't do anything because "There's no budget for that," they're not using their heads.

As of now, the Internet facilities of UP Los Baños are worse class, not world-class. We can't build The Los Baños Script on those, can we?