The March

Digital Translation by Lizzy Palmquist

An Inside Look on Lizzy’s The March Digital Translation

 

The translation work that I have been performing during Spring Term 2020 has been transferring the digital project, The March, from its WordPress website format to a Pressbooks e-book format. Doing this is meant to make the information about The March more accessible as a condensed book. The March is a 1964 documentary by James Blue that shows the process that went into organizing and executing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The digital project, The March, discusses who James Blue was, how the film was made, and the responses the film received in connection with its impact on the Civil Rights Movement. 

The digital project, The March, contains multimedia data in the form of jpeg images, audio files, videos, and text. The images, which were mostly made up of stills from the James Blue documentary, were downloaded into the Pressbooks system and given alternative text and captions, and were then inserted into their designated pages. The audio files used in the project consisted of recorded telephone conversations Lyndon B. Johnson had with other U.S. leaders about the film in question. The codes of these recordings were embedded into the Pressbooks program to be made available within the ebook format. The videos, which consisted of interviews with historians about the film as well as the film itself, were embedded using the same process. 

The March is significant in that it is the only documentary about the March on Washington that chronicled the events that took place to organize the March on Washington, before it even happened. Having this information openly accessible through Pressbooks will allow students to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement and the film itself.

Reflections by the student who created the digital translation