It is an interesting phenomenon and an eye-opener for me.
Out of the 6,000-plus who accessed this blog over the twelve months since I started it, the most popular posts have been Bahay Kubo (and other English translations of Filipino folk songs), in a near dead-heat with the origami CD envelope I designed myself. (For comparison, the video instructions for the origami CD envelope I posted on YouTube eleven months ago has logged more than 20,000 accesses.)
What is interesting is that folk song accesses seem to come in waves — a steady 3-5 accesses a day, then every two weeks or so, I’d see 15-20 folk song accesses on a single day. Often it is Bahay Kubo, but sometimes, Sitsiritsit alibangbang, Paru-parong bukid or Leron, Leron sinta.
I am imagining that an elementary class somewhere in the Philippines is given an assignment to translate a folk song into English, and the students go in groups to a nearby Internet cafe, to search the Web for a translation. They find my site, and their work is done.
Hopefully, they’d realize that it would be easy for their teacher to notice that the translations look alike, so they’d each try to make some major or minor changes here and there, exercising further their skills in English, rhyme, rhythm and thinking.
Ecology, technology and social change 