“la parole exportée”

I hadn’t been to the FreeRice website for some time, and was quite overwhelmed to see how much progress has been made.

This blog’s last post on the subject had mentioned a total of 7,536,669,470 grains of rice donated since October 2007.

Yesterday, the Total All Dates stood at 35,081,544,030 grains of rice.

While exploring their FAQ to identify how many grains to a ton (the most usual metric used when talking about bulk goods), I found this much more evocative fact:

How much rice does it take to feed a person for a day? How many grains of rice in a gram?

The composition of UN World Food Program (WFP) food baskets varies from country to country and region to region, depending upon the eating habits of the people WFP feeds. In countries where rice is a staple part of the diet, WFP provides, on average, about 400 grams of rice per person, per day (for families, including children and adults). That is intended for two meals that include other ingredients to ensure a minimum of 2,100 kilocalories per day. There are about 48 grains of rice in a gram.

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… but I wish I had.

This is a beautiful web film, with the French version here:

http://www.unfpa.org/emergencies/psa/film_french.html

And a selection of other languages, there:

http://www.unfpa.org/emergencies/psa/index.html

However, I have an issue with the capital A in the panel on “les réfugiés afghans”, as adjectives of nationalities are not capitalized in French, and another issue with “condamnation à la mort.” Little things like these are the reason why people are always a little afraid of my proofreading… In my opinion, it should be “condamnation à mort.” It would be interesting to know why they inserted the article “la” in a standard phrase. To me, the article is inserted only when the kind of death is specified.

Maybe you would have an idea?

This is completely off-topic, but because I work for children’s charities, I feel involved, in a way.

If you want to find out more, click on the badge in the sidebar. This will take you to Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian’s website on Congenital Heart Defects.

‘Congenital Heart Defects (CHD) are a lethal constellation of birth defects of the heart that affect millions of newborn infants and children worldwide; a killer that claims thousands of lives every year. Eight of every 1000 children born alive (0.8%) will have some form of congenital heart defect.’

In view of the fact that some readers of this blog are using it, and returning to it, to reach the FreeRice donation website, I feel I owe you an update on the current totals.

So it’s like this: Total All Dates now stands at 7,536,669,470 grains of rice donated since October.

Lots of other sites are also offering a link to FreeRice. We mustn’t forget that the underlying idea is to donate to the starving.

FreeRice have found a way to make it a win-win situation. They have also found a brilliant way to demonstrate the power of viral marketing.