'On the Road' in Cambodia

(Sun, The (Lowell, MA) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 31--LOWELL -- Fifty years ago, the face of Lowell was Greek, French-Canadian, Irish, Polish.The average Lowellian probably could not find Cambodia on a map.Today, with an estimated 25,000 Cambodians living in the city, the second-largest Cambodian population in the United States, you are more likely to hear folks strolling down Chelmsford Street speaking Khmer than English.The time has come for the Mill City's new sons to get to know its favorite son.Jack Kerouac's 1957 seminal American road-trip novel On The Road, the book that defined the 1950s Beat generation, is being translated into Khmer, the latest of more than 25 languages into which the book has been translated.Jason Rosette, a 40-year-old Ohio native and graduate of New York University's film school, has been teaching and working on media projects in Cambodia since 2003. He recently acquired the rights to translate the novel into the native tongue of Cambodia from publisher Sterling Lord.