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Wellesley Alumna Leads 2012 World Development Report
Alumna's Senior Thesis Inspires Timely Internet Piracy Study
A study coauthored by Brett Danaher , assistant professor in economics, Siwen Chen '11 , and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, is stirring up controversy around a French copyright law. According to Danaher, Chen's senior thesis was what inspired the study. Chen presented her thesis, Battle against Internet Piracy in France: Does “HADOPI” Affect Sales in the Media Industry? at The 2011 Ruhlman Conference and won a Jerome A. Schiff Fellowship .
The law, known as HADOPI, was introduced in 2009 as a means to control and regulate internet access and encourage compliance with copyright laws. HADOPI is the acronym of the French government agency created to administer it (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet). Violators of the law risk losing their access to the Internet.
Danaher and Chen's study, titled " The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France ," found evidence that HADOPI has had a positive impact on iTunes sales in France. The analysis found that French iTunes sales saw a significant increase at exactly the period when awareness of HADOPI was at its highest. The study also found that the increase in sales was larger for more heavily-pirated genres, such as rap, and smaller for less-pirated genres, such as jazz. The "Digital Music Report 2012," a publication of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) quoted the researchers as saying:
“We see sales in France for heavily pirated genres rise much faster than less pirated genres, which suggests that this sales increase is due to a reduction in French piracy levels,” say the authors. “Our results have important implications for other countries in Europe and abroad who are considering passing similar graduated response laws.... We also note that our study likely understates the true impact of HADOPI.”
Danaher and Chen's study has been discussed in the French publication Le Monde , the Spanish publication El Publico (links are in French and Spanish, respectively), and in Billboard Magazine .
Translations from World Literature Published by Wellesley College Students
Translations from World Literature is a compilation of English translations of literature from 17 different languages. The book includes the original language of the work and its English translation side by side, and includes works from languages rarely translated into English. The literary works are transated from Arabic, Chinese, French, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Latin, Malay, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Urdu, and Vietnamese. The book's introduction offers a basic background and cultural context for some of the more difficult-to-understand translations.
The book is available at the Wellesley Bookstore, Harvard Coop, Wellesley Booksmith, Porter Square Books, and Amazon . Author and editor Lela G. Jgerenaia is an international student at Wellesley College, and an alumna of Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX), a program run by the U.S. Department of State that allows high school students from Eastern European and neighboring Asian countries to live with a host family and attend high school in the United States for a year. Gjerenaia has been translating literature for four years; her work has been published in English language newspapers in the Republic of Georgia, her native country. Translations were contributed to this book by 23 other Wellesley College students who are either native or well proficient in the languages of their translated works.
Funding for the project came from several departments on campus, with the Russian Department the main donor. From the profits, the students will pay back the Russian Department; any further profits will go to a small fund to help Wellesley College students fund their creative ideas. "So, this book is a way to give back to Wellesley College," says Jgerenaia.
From the Preface to Translations from World Literature
The idea for this compilation was conceived, like many great ideas, over a cup of tea while discussing poetry with friends. As I shared my translations of Georgian poetry with my friends, which I did gradually as I feel that poetry is quite personal, I realized that these works were not meant for only Georgians or myself, but for everyone.
Vazha Pshavela's work had a significant impact on me. He lived in the mountainous region of Georgia during the 19th century, where war and revenge were the common rule of people's daily lives. He protested the brutality of what he saw. He appreciated the beauty of nature and it was his main inspiration, as well as life itself with its injustices. What struck me in reading other translated works were the eloquent illustrations of cultural differences as well as the profoundly universal nature of the common themes. Vazha Pshavela’s “Why Was I Made as a Human?” asks a question that has been echoed since the dawn of human consciousness. This work is as relevant today as it was in 19th-century Georgia.
As my friends and I shared more of our translated works with each other, I became more interested in international literary translations. Although collections of translated works from a single language or author abounded, there were few with works from different cultures and languages. There were certainly no such compilations available in my native Georgian language! Thus, this work was inspired by my own personal love of poetry, the enthusiasm of other literary translators in sharing their own works, and the joy of understanding and comparing different cultures through literature and poetry. I hope you enjoy reading this compilation as much as I enjoyed putting it together to share with you.
—Lela Jgerenaia
