Description
We offer you this record of the Socio-Economic Seminar held in the University of Malaya from August 9th to 13th 1967. Editing these pages has been a pleasant task, but at times a frustrating one.
Transcribing from recorded tapes, ever so often there is a word that cannot be heard. Where this happens we have tried to build up the passage from the context. If we have garbled any of the speakers words and muddled their ideas, we assure the speakers that this is a defect we have tried very hard to avoid and we trust that they will take any such unintentional misrepresentations in good part. After all it is not always possible to have one's moving speech reported accurately in the daily newspaper, and we make no pretense at skill superior to that of a professional reporter. At times the speaker stood so far away from the microphone that not all the excellence of our Akai ST-1 could pick up his voice, or should we say, that in picking it up, it had to pick up so much background noise that the voice was inaudible. Workshop reports and comments from the floor have given most trouble in the work of transcription. We are very grateful to the group secretaries who handed in written or typed reports and so facilitated some of this work. A special word of thanks is due to Fr. Brena and Fr. Andres who looked after the tape-recorder with such perseverance and such accuracy. We hope that they will be happy to see that their labour was not in vain.
We were unable to record the names of the speakers from the floor. Perhaps this is all to the good. A Seminar allows a good deal of freedom of speech, a healthy opportunity to express opinions very frankly. On the other hand the editors assume no responsibility for views expressed; their duty is to establish as accurately as possible a record of what was said, not to approve or disapprove of the sentiments uttered.
