Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

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‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2018-02-28 1:03 GMT+02:00 Tim Landscheidt :

> Then of course there is the more fundamental problem: If
> those 100,000 monolingual speakers do not speak other lan-
> guages, have no access to encyclopedias, etc., how do they
> interact with a computer now, which web sites do they visit,
> etc.?
>

Quite possibly, they don't visit any websites.

Can Wikipedia be a first website in a given language? Of course.

Who if not Wikipedia? In a lot of languages, the first, and sometimes the
only written work is a translation of the Bible or of the UDHR. (Reminder:
The Bible was the first work that was published in a lot of European
languages, too.) These are usually made by some kind of a funded initiative
that comes from religious or human rights organizations. Why shouldn't it
be a translation of 10,000 Wikipedia articles? Why shouldn't it be an
initiative from Wikimedia or another educational organization?


> I just have a very hard time to imagine a community of
> 100,000 people under those circumstances who are only held
> back by not having access to a Wikipedia.  On the contrary,
> this reminds me very much of traditional development prac-
> tices where third world countries always seem to urgently
> need to buy what first world countries have to sell.  IMHO,
> there is a considerable risk that this creates unhealthy de-
> pendencies.
>

Hey, if people don't want it, they don't have to read it, but I suspect
that if you *let* people read useful information about geography, medicine,
public policy, economics, etc., they will use it.

But in very simplified terms, I see it as a competition between UN, JW,
Facebook, and Wikimedia, and Wikimedia is hardly even participating. UN is
a fine organization, but not very useful in people's daily life. Religious
materials' contribution to development of publishing and literacy
throughout history can't be denied, but the usefulness of their content can
be questioned. Facebook is useful to a lot of people, and it can be
localized easily, but it would be kind of depressing if that's the only
thing that people do in their language. And Facebook is very actively
trying to reach to the farthest corners of the world and get people
connected.

And this leaves Wikimedia, which is hardly doing anything proactive to get
its materials *actually* written in more languages. We are making
*technologies* for translation—Wikidata, Content Translation, and more—and
they are used by thousands of translators to write in dozens of languages,
but we are not doing anything proactive to expand the coverage of languages
beyond the usual suspects: the 70 or so languages that John Erling
mentioned in the email that started this thread. The ~70 big languages take
care of themselves. We've been saying that the rest of the languages can
take care of themselves, but that is naïve.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :

> > I was not trying to say that everybody
> > should learn English. The point I was
> > trying to make there is that knowing
> > English is a privilege and that it is easy
> > to not notice it.
>
> I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to
> the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
> articles?
>
>
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible to
write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching subjects.

Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it
possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.

Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's great.
I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when
Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki
articles.

--
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Gnangarra]

A person language is a key part of their culture, their knowledge, and
their identity to truly understand a concept its best shared in its
original language.  Since our goal is to freely share the sum the all
knowledge we should be endeavouring to encourage every culture to use its
own language.   Indigenous languages have and continue to be suppressed by
the colonial languages making any decision to deny a language project, or
to translate an article based on one written in another language is
political decision that has greater impact.   Wikipedias have by the very
nature of what we have created become to be seen as part of a
languages(cultures) recognition and online identity.

Tim its not hard to imagine a community of 100,000 who are held back
because there is no Wikipedia in their language when you look at how much
Wikimedia projects are now at the centre of knowledge systems on the web.
 For the last four years I have been working with the Noongar community to
establish a Wikipedia in Noongar. The noongar language is widely used
within English language here in Western Australia such is impact that we
have over 2 million people who use noongar in their daily lives yet it gets
called Australian english.  The influence of noongar goes beyond the words
and permeates through the Western Australian culture to understand that
impact one needs to be able to access that knowledge.

So how do those people who are monolingual interact with computers at the
moment, its really quite simple they dont computer literacy in Indigenous
communities is well behind that of the colonial based language communities
in the same country.  In the process of reaching out for that knowledge we
need to ensure we do more than just take.



On 28 February 2018 at 07:25, James Salsman  wrote:

> > I was not trying to say that everybody
> > should learn English. The point I was
> > trying to make there is that knowing
> > English is a privilege and that it is easy
> > to not notice it.
>
> I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to
> the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
> articles?
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
>  wrote:
> > 2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
> >
> >> Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and
> >> ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
> >>
> >
> > ... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder
> > than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have
> > enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical
> > Wikidata.
> >
> >
> >> Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or
> >> not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-
> >> bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
> >>
> >
> > Why not :)
> >
> >
> >> Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said
> >> in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
> >>
> >
> > Um... thanks for the publicity :)
> >
> > But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody
> > should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that
> knowing
> > English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course,
> if
> > that point didn't come through, it's my fault.
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[James Salsman]

> I was not trying to say that everybody
> should learn English. The point I was
> trying to make there is that knowing
> English is a privilege and that it is easy
> to not notice it.

I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to
the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia
articles?


On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
> 2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :
>
>> Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and
>> ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
>>
>
> ... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder
> than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have
> enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical
> Wikidata.
>
>
>> Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or
>> not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-
>> bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
>>
>
> Why not :)
>
>
>> Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said
>> in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
>>
>
> Um... thanks for the publicity :)
>
> But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody
> should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing
> English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course, if
> that point didn't come through, it's my fault.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
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> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Tim Landscheidt]

"Amir E. Aharoni"  wrote:

> […]

> On a more practical and less ideological note, I should note that even
> though I didn't run the numbers, I strongly suspect that translating 10,000
> articles to 100 languages is considerably cheaper than teaching 7 billion
> people English.

Definitely, but your argument was:

| […]

| If there is no substantial Wikipedia in such a language, these people can't
| read Wikipedia in *any language* because they are monolingual. Most likely
| they cannot read any any encyclopedia in any language. They need a
| Wikipedia not in order to preserve the language, but to have access to
| *any* encyclopedic knowledge.

| […]

A large part of humanity *has* access to a reasonably main-
tained Wikipedia in a language they understand, not to speak
of traditional encyclopedias in schools and libraries.

Then of course there is the more fundamental problem: If
those 100,000 monolingual speakers do not speak other lan-
guages, have no access to encyclopedias, etc., how do they
interact with a computer now, which web sites do they visit,
etc.?

I just have a very hard time to imagine a community of
100,000 people under those circumstances who are only held
back by not having access to a Wikipedia.  On the contrary,
this reminds me very much of traditional development prac-
tices where third world countries always seem to urgently
need to buy what first world countries have to sell.  IMHO,
there is a considerable risk that this creates unhealthy de-
pendencies.

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman :

> Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and
> ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
>

... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder
than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have
enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical
Wikidata.


> Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or
> not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-
> bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
>

Why not :)


> Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said
> in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
>

Um... thanks for the publicity :)

But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody
should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing
English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course, if
that point didn't come through, it's my fault.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

I don't think it would be losing focus as it fits directly in the mission
of the movement to share the sum of human knowledge, since languages are
knowledge in themselves.

Yes I agree that Wikiversity could be used for that, but this project
really needs support to get to current standards of "online courses", and I
don't see much push in that direction.

JP


On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 2:23 PM James Salsman  wrote:

> Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and
> ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
>
> Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or
> not:
> https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
>
> Have you seen how much Wiktionary has been growing in Brazil?
> https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2018/02/14/seo-world-rankings-2018/
>
> Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said
> in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
>
> Best regards,
> Jim
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
>  wrote:
> > Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we
> be
> > losing focus if we got into it?
> >
> > Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are
> > they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.
> >
> > בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52,‏ "Jean-Philippe Béland" <
> jpbel...@wikimedia.ca>
> > כתב:
> >
> > Amir,
> >
> > I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge
> > in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an
> effort
> > to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or
> as
> > a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?
> >
> > Jean-Philippe Béland
> > Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada
> > Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User
> Group
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[James Salsman]

Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and
ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)

Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or
not: 
https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/

Have you seen how much Wiktionary has been growing in Brazil?
https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2018/02/14/seo-world-rankings-2018/

Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said
in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s

Best regards,
Jim


On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
> Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we be
> losing focus if we got into it?
>
> Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are
> they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.
>
> בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52,‏ "Jean-Philippe Béland" 
> כתב:
>
> Amir,
>
> I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge
> in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an effort
> to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or as
> a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?
>
> Jean-Philippe Béland
> Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada
> Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we be
losing focus if we got into it?

Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are
they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.

בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52,‏ "Jean-Philippe Béland" 
כתב:

Amir,

I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge
in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an effort
to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or as
a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?

Jean-Philippe Béland
Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada
Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group
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[Wikimedia-l] Global preferences available for testing

[Keegan Peterzell]

Greetings,

Global Preferences [0], a result of the 2016 Community Wishlist campaign
[1], are ready for testing before being released to the wikis.

To test them out and leave feedback, login or register on a beta wiki such
as the English Wikipedia [2], German Wiktionary [3] or Hebrew Wikipedia
[4], then visit your global preferences [5]. After that you can wander
around the beta wikis, trying things out. If you find bugs or anything else
of note to comment on, you can leave feedback on the Help discussion page
[6].

Thanks, see you on the wikis.

​0. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalPreferences
1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Categories/Miscellaneous#Global_settings
2. https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org
3. https://de.wiktionary.beta.wmflabs.org
4. https://he.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org
5. Special:GlobalPreferences (for example
https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:GlobalPreferences )
6. ​https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:Extension:GlobalPreferences

-- 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

Amir,

I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge
in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an effort
to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or as
a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?

Jean-Philippe Béland
Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada
Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Vi to]

(This thread is getting terribly interesting)

I generally think Wikipedia should be a strictly non interfering observer
for various aspects, language included. I fear if a wiki tries to set a
model for a language it may be a model which doesn't represent the reality
of that language: small wikis are often monopolized by a few users. That's
not a fault per se but it may introduce a significant bias in linguistic
models used.

About one of Amir's emails I think a "small" Wikipedia edition is sign of a
series of situations, one of the most common of is an endangered language.
While planning should differentiate between endangered and non endangered
language I think most of problems we have to face are related to languages
endangered at various levels.

On a more practical and less ideological note, I should note that even
though I didn't run the numbers, I strongly suspect that translating 10,000
articles to 100 languages is considerably cheaper than teaching 7 billion
people English.

I don't why but I tend to second your suspects :p


Vito

2018-02-27 16:53 GMT+01:00 Peter Southwood :

> If the people creating the basic encyclopaedic terminology and style in
> the language are native speakers, then it would not be a thing imposed from
> outside. It would be a development within the language, just like it was
> with the languages that already have encyclopaedias. The basic
> encyclopaedic terminology and style in languages that have then also had to
> be created before it existed, it just happened earlier. Living languages
> evolve to deal with the realities of the present. Those which don’t, tend
> to die out as they become less useful. Cheers, Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Vi to
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 1:43 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation
>
> I see Amir's points, which are pretty reasonable, but I fear this would
> suit languages with a significant presence on the web.
>
> Among them I agree with points 1, 3 and 4 while I'm not sure about #2
> "creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language", if we
> want to preserve a language we shouldn't create a thing.
>
> By the way I was wondering my concerns about cultural colonization may be
> addressed -for wikis which has some contents (let's say at least 1000
> articles)- by starting expanding existing articles instead of translating
> new ones. This would solve the problem of choosing what to translate though
> would leave problems about the perspective contents are created.
>
> Vito
>
> 2018-02-27 12:31 GMT+01:00 Amir E. Aharoni :
>
> > 2018-02-27 13:00 GMT+02:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
> > psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :
> > >
> > >> *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable
> > >> Wikipedians.
> > >>
> > >> I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the
> > initial
> > > translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article to
> > evolve
> > > with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist at
> > > all – even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential
> > > contributors will never catch such an evolving cycle.
> >
> >
> > This is one of the issues with what I alluded to in my earlier email
> > in this thread: the privilege that the "big" languages have. It's the
> > privilege of already having other encyclopedias, textbooks, public
> > education, etc., in this language. A lot of languages don't have these
> > things. When you speak a language that has had these things before
> > Wikipedia came along, it's hard to perceive the world like a person
> > who speaks a language that doesn't perceives it.
> >
> > If you define the purpose of paying somebody to translate as "turning
> > the paid translator" into a sustaining editor, then this is indeed
> > likely to fail.
> >
> > But if you define the purpose differently, it may succeed. For
> > example, you may define the purpose as one or more of the following:
> > * Demonstrating that it's possible to write an encyclopedia in that
> > language
> > * Creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language
> > * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in
> > interlanguage links in Wikipedias from bigger languages (English,
> > French, etc.)
> > * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in search
> > results from internet search engines
> >
> > The existence of these things may bring in people who will become
> > volunteer sustaining editors.
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live
> > in peace.” – T. Moore‬ ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2018-02-27 18:04 GMT+02:00 Tim Landscheidt :

> "Amir E. Aharoni"  wrote:
>
> > […]
>
> > Sometimes it is, but there is something much bigger: There are many
> > languages that
> > 1. are alive in speech (and possibly in writing)
> > 2. are not in danger of extinction
> > 3. have a large number of monolingual speakers (let's say 100,000+)
>
> > If there is no substantial Wikipedia in such a language, these people
> can't
> > read Wikipedia in *any language* because they are monolingual. Most
> likely
> > they cannot read any any encyclopedia in any language. They need a
> > Wikipedia not in order to preserve the language, but to have access to
> > *any* encyclopedic knowledge.
>
> > I speak a revitalized language, and I'm very well aware of its history.
> > Language preservation and revitalization are lovely things. But it's not
> > the main point of what Wikimedia does.
>
> "Need a Wikipedia" sounds like a great idea when you are
> selling Wikipedias, but for progress, betterment of humani-
> ty, sustainable development, etc. I think teaching those
> monolingual speakers a second language (for example English)
> is far preferable as it not only enables them to access to a
> few hundred or thousand articles someone paid to have trans-
> lated, but all articles of the English Wikipedia, plus every
> English article, every English book, every English blog, ev-
> ery English video on the InterNet.
>
> It also grows them not only intellectually, but also removes
> economical barriers for trading with other groups.
>
> Tim
>
>
> ... Yeah, it's a tempting thought. Without English we wouldn't be able to
have this conversation, and do thousands of other things.

And yet, that's exactly what we as Wikimedia are not supposed to do, for
reasons that mathieu stumpf guntz suggests: not only what is written in a
language is knowledge; language itself is also knowledge.

On a more practical and less ideological note, I should note that even
though I didn't run the numbers, I strongly suspect that translating 10,000
articles to 100 languages is considerably cheaper than teaching 7 billion
people English.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Tim Landscheidt]

"Amir E. Aharoni"  wrote:

> […]

> Sometimes it is, but there is something much bigger: There are many
> languages that
> 1. are alive in speech (and possibly in writing)
> 2. are not in danger of extinction
> 3. have a large number of monolingual speakers (let's say 100,000+)

> If there is no substantial Wikipedia in such a language, these people can't
> read Wikipedia in *any language* because they are monolingual. Most likely
> they cannot read any any encyclopedia in any language. They need a
> Wikipedia not in order to preserve the language, but to have access to
> *any* encyclopedic knowledge.

> I speak a revitalized language, and I'm very well aware of its history.
> Language preservation and revitalization are lovely things. But it's not
> the main point of what Wikimedia does.

"Need a Wikipedia" sounds like a great idea when you are
selling Wikipedias, but for progress, betterment of humani-
ty, sustainable development, etc. I think teaching those
monolingual speakers a second language (for example English)
is far preferable as it not only enables them to access to a
few hundred or thousand articles someone paid to have trans-
lated, but all articles of the English Wikipedia, plus every
English article, every English book, every English blog, ev-
ery English video on the InterNet.

It also grows them not only intellectually, but also removes
economical barriers for trading with other groups.

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Peter Southwood]

If the people creating the basic encyclopaedic terminology and style in the 
language are native speakers, then it would not be a thing imposed from 
outside. It would be a development within the language, just like it was with 
the languages that already have encyclopaedias. The basic encyclopaedic 
terminology and style in languages that have then also had to be created before 
it existed, it just happened earlier. Living languages evolve to deal with the 
realities of the present. Those which don’t, tend to die out as they become 
less useful. Cheers, Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Vi to
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 1:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

I see Amir's points, which are pretty reasonable, but I fear this would suit 
languages with a significant presence on the web.

Among them I agree with points 1, 3 and 4 while I'm not sure about #2 "creating 
basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language", if we want to 
preserve a language we shouldn't create a thing.

By the way I was wondering my concerns about cultural colonization may be 
addressed -for wikis which has some contents (let's say at least 1000
articles)- by starting expanding existing articles instead of translating new 
ones. This would solve the problem of choosing what to translate though would 
leave problems about the perspective contents are created.

Vito

2018-02-27 12:31 GMT+01:00 Amir E. Aharoni :

> 2018-02-27 13:00 GMT+02:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
> psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:
>
> >
> >
> > Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :
> >
> >> *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable 
> >> Wikipedians.
> >>
> >> I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the
> initial
> > translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article to
> evolve
> > with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist at 
> > all – even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential 
> > contributors will never catch such an evolving cycle.
>
>
> This is one of the issues with what I alluded to in my earlier email 
> in this thread: the privilege that the "big" languages have. It's the 
> privilege of already having other encyclopedias, textbooks, public 
> education, etc., in this language. A lot of languages don't have these 
> things. When you speak a language that has had these things before 
> Wikipedia came along, it's hard to perceive the world like a person 
> who speaks a language that doesn't perceives it.
>
> If you define the purpose of paying somebody to translate as "turning 
> the paid translator" into a sustaining editor, then this is indeed 
> likely to fail.
>
> But if you define the purpose differently, it may succeed. For 
> example, you may define the purpose as one or more of the following:
> * Demonstrating that it's possible to write an encyclopedia in that 
> language
> * Creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language
> * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in 
> interlanguage links in Wikipedias from bigger languages (English, 
> French, etc.)
> * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in search 
> results from internet search engines
>
> The existence of these things may bring in people who will become 
> volunteer sustaining editors.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי 
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live 
> in peace.” – T. Moore‬ ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ 
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ 
> wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

Le 27/02/2018 à 12:42, Vi to a écrit :

I see Amir's points, which are pretty reasonable, but I fear this would
suit languages with a significant presence on the web.

Among them I agree with points 1, 3 and 4 while I'm not sure about #2 "creating
basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language", if we want to
preserve a language we shouldn't create a thing.
I think that here the term "preserving" is misinterpreted. It's not 
about stuff it to put it in a nothing-should-move-anymore museum. It's 
about preserving actual use of diverse language as diachronic phenomena, 
ie as evolving objects.


On this regard, even largest language communities are seeing their use 
changing at an increasing pace, as recognize institutions like Académie 
française (not quite your average neologismophilic neo-punk band).


I think it's also good to recall that there are places where there is 
not yet a a high bandwith reliable internet (or internet at all), but 
that computer are accessibles. For example Libraries Without Borders[2] 
are providing computer boxes, which do include some Wikimedia material 
if I'm not mistaken. Although I'm not enough informed on their actions, 
but it would interesting to be in contact with them if it's not already 
the case. Making encyclopedia shared through travelling USB key would be 
surely possible for example, but that just a sketched idea.


On the other hand, should we recall that we are losing language 
diversity at an increasing pace?[3] And of course when a language die, 
it's whole culture which go with it like a bush medicine engraved in 
aboriginal vocabulary.[4] So really it's not about bringing knowledge to 
communities with less geopolitcally influence, it's about giving mankind 
a chance to loose as few as possible of valuable knowledge by diffusing 
it omnidirectly.



[1] Parce qu’il doit être tout à la fois le greffier de l’usage, le 
témoin de l’histoire et celui du changement le Dictionnaire de 
l’Académie aura donc presque doublé de volume. En consacrant ainsi un 
très grand nombre de mots nouveaux, l’Académie répond aux exigences du 
temps mais elle se montre fidèle aussi à sa tradition. 
http://www.academie-francaise.fr/la-langue-francaise-langue-de-la-modernite-seance-publique-annuelle

[2] https://www.librarieswithoutborders.org/
[3] 
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unesco-half-worlds-languages-will-disappear-by-2100-1498154

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_medicine



By the way I was wondering my concerns about cultural colonization may be
addressed -for wikis which has some contents (let's say at least 1000
articles)- by starting expanding existing articles instead of translating
new ones. This would solve the problem of choosing what to translate though
would leave problems about the perspective contents are created.

Vito

2018-02-27 12:31 GMT+01:00 Amir E. Aharoni :


2018-02-27 13:00 GMT+02:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:



Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :


*finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable
Wikipedians.

I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the

initial

translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article to

evolve

with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist at all –
even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential contributors will
never catch such an evolving cycle.


This is one of the issues with what I alluded to in my earlier email in
this thread: the privilege that the "big" languages have. It's the
privilege of already having other encyclopedias, textbooks, public
education, etc., in this language. A lot of languages don't have these
things. When you speak a language that has had these things before
Wikipedia came along, it's hard to perceive the world like a person who
speaks a language that doesn't perceives it.

If you define the purpose of paying somebody to translate as "turning the
paid translator" into a sustaining editor, then this is indeed likely to
fail.

But if you define the purpose differently, it may succeed. For example, you
may define the purpose as one or more of the following:
* Demonstrating that it's possible to write an encyclopedia in that
language
* Creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language
* Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in interlanguage
links in Wikipedias from bigger languages (English, French, etc.)
* Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in search results
from internet search engines

The existence of these things may bring in people who will become volunteer
sustaining editors.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-27 13:42 GMT+02:00 Vi to :

> I see Amir's points, which are pretty reasonable, but I fear this would
> suit languages with a significant presence on the web.
>
> Among them I agree with points 1, 3 and 4 while I'm not sure about #2
> "creating
> basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language", if we want to
> preserve a language we shouldn't create a thing.
>
> By the way I was wondering my concerns about cultural colonization may be
> addressed -for wikis which has some contents (let's say at least 1000
> articles)- by starting expanding existing articles instead of translating
> new ones. This would solve the problem of choosing what to translate though
> would leave problems about the perspective contents are created.
>
> Vito
>

It's a very common mistake to think that the purpose of Wikipedias in
"small" languages is language preservation or revitalization.

Sometimes it is, but there is something much bigger: There are many
languages that
1. are alive in speech (and possibly in writing)
2. are not in danger of extinction
3. have a large number of monolingual speakers (let's say 100,000+)

If there is no substantial Wikipedia in such a language, these people can't
read Wikipedia in *any language* because they are monolingual. Most likely
they cannot read any any encyclopedia in any language. They need a
Wikipedia not in order to preserve the language, but to have access to
*any* encyclopedic knowledge.

I speak a revitalized language, and I'm very well aware of its history.
Language preservation and revitalization are lovely things. But it's not
the main point of what Wikimedia does.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Vi to]

I see Amir's points, which are pretty reasonable, but I fear this would
suit languages with a significant presence on the web.

Among them I agree with points 1, 3 and 4 while I'm not sure about #2 "creating
basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language", if we want to
preserve a language we shouldn't create a thing.

By the way I was wondering my concerns about cultural colonization may be
addressed -for wikis which has some contents (let's say at least 1000
articles)- by starting expanding existing articles instead of translating
new ones. This would solve the problem of choosing what to translate though
would leave problems about the perspective contents are created.

Vito

2018-02-27 12:31 GMT+01:00 Amir E. Aharoni :

> 2018-02-27 13:00 GMT+02:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
> psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:
>
> >
> >
> > Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :
> >
> >> *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable
> >> Wikipedians.
> >>
> >> I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the
> initial
> > translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article to
> evolve
> > with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist at all –
> > even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential contributors will
> > never catch such an evolving cycle.
>
>
> This is one of the issues with what I alluded to in my earlier email in
> this thread: the privilege that the "big" languages have. It's the
> privilege of already having other encyclopedias, textbooks, public
> education, etc., in this language. A lot of languages don't have these
> things. When you speak a language that has had these things before
> Wikipedia came along, it's hard to perceive the world like a person who
> speaks a language that doesn't perceives it.
>
> If you define the purpose of paying somebody to translate as "turning the
> paid translator" into a sustaining editor, then this is indeed likely to
> fail.
>
> But if you define the purpose differently, it may succeed. For example, you
> may define the purpose as one or more of the following:
> * Demonstrating that it's possible to write an encyclopedia in that
> language
> * Creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language
> * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in interlanguage
> links in Wikipedias from bigger languages (English, French, etc.)
> * Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in search results
> from internet search engines
>
> The existence of these things may bring in people who will become volunteer
> sustaining editors.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2018-02-27 13:00 GMT+02:00 mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org>:

>
>
> Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :
>
>> *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable
>> Wikipedians.
>>
>> I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the initial
> translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article to evolve
> with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist at all –
> even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential contributors will
> never catch such an evolving cycle.


This is one of the issues with what I alluded to in my earlier email in
this thread: the privilege that the "big" languages have. It's the
privilege of already having other encyclopedias, textbooks, public
education, etc., in this language. A lot of languages don't have these
things. When you speak a language that has had these things before
Wikipedia came along, it's hard to perceive the world like a person who
speaks a language that doesn't perceives it.

If you define the purpose of paying somebody to translate as "turning the
paid translator" into a sustaining editor, then this is indeed likely to
fail.

But if you define the purpose differently, it may succeed. For example, you
may define the purpose as one or more of the following:
* Demonstrating that it's possible to write an encyclopedia in that language
* Creating basic encyclopedic terminology and style in that language
* Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in interlanguage
links in Wikipedias from bigger languages (English, French, etc.)
* Creating a bunch of basic articles that would appear in search results
from internet search engines

The existence of these things may bring in people who will become volunteer
sustaining editors.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

Le 24/02/2018 à 18:08, Vi to a écrit :

*finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable Wikipedians.

I think this misses an important point that is, we don't need the 
initial translator to turn into a sustaining editor, we need the article 
to evolve with call to action incentives. And articles which don't exist 
at all – even as a stub – or don't meet an audience of potential 
contributors will never catch such an evolving cycle.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Gnangarra]

Agree with mathieo it needs to be something driven by the receiving
language community with WMF support rather than something being pushed in
to communities from the WMF or other projects.   Such if the Swahili
community thought that having say medical articles translated was something
it felt was needed then the WMF could support by assisting with tools, and
facilities to make it happen.

On 27 February 2018 at 18:42, mathieu stumpf guntz <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

> I'm not against the idea of paid translation /per se/, but it shouldn't be
> managed by the WMF, should it be only to ensure that it doesn't cross too
> far the line of non-intervention regarding editorial decisions.
>
> Debate can go on to which level it stands with this line, but to my mind
> WMF always have been mainly about hosting works, not about what will be
> published by who under which (non-)remunerated conditions. I think that it
> is important that it stay so for example due to legal reasons regarding
> responsibility of what is stated in this works.
>
> From this perspective, it would be probably better to have locale
> collective initiatives which decide what seems the more important to be
> translated and means to achieve them, should it be through paid editing
> with money coming from the said collective itself. Directly financing that
> kind of initiative would blur the line of the hosting position I think. But
> giving visibility to this kind of locale fund raising initiatives could be
> a donation in kind that would be maybe less problematic, wouldn't it?
>
>
>
> Le 24/02/2018 à 13:51, John Erling Blad a écrit :
>
>> This discussion is going to be fun! =D
>>
>> A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more than 65k articles,
>> the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small.
>>
>> What if a base set of articles were opened for paid translators? There are
>> several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand articles from
>> "List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and the ten thousand
>> articles from the expanded list[2].
>>
>> Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01 per word (about $1
>> for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles into another
>> language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in high-cost
>> countries. The pay would also have to be higher for languages that lacks
>> good translation tools.
>>
>> I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the communities, as
>> without a base set of articles it won't be possible to build a community
>> at
>> all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating well-referenced
>> articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be avoided.
>> Perhaps
>> we should also identify good source articles, that would be a help.
>> Translated articles should be above some minimum size, but they does not
>> have to be full translations of the source article.
>>
>> A real problem is that our existing lists of good articles other projects
>> should have is pretty much biased towards Western World, so they need a
>> lot
>> of adjustments. Perhaps such a project would identify our inherit bias?
>>
>> [1]
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikip
>> edia_should_have
>> [2]
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikip
>> edia_should_have/Expanded
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-- 
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Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
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Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8*, UWAP, 2017.  Order
here

.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

I'm not against the idea of paid translation /per se/, but it shouldn't 
be managed by the WMF, should it be only to ensure that it doesn't cross 
too far the line of non-intervention regarding editorial decisions.


Debate can go on to which level it stands with this line, but to my mind 
WMF always have been mainly about hosting works, not about what will be 
published by who under which (non-)remunerated conditions. I think that 
it is important that it stay so for example due to legal reasons 
regarding responsibility of what is stated in this works.


From this perspective, it would be probably better to have locale 
collective initiatives which decide what seems the more important to be 
translated and means to achieve them, should it be through paid editing 
with money coming from the said collective itself. Directly financing 
that kind of initiative would blur the line of the hosting position I 
think. But giving visibility to this kind of locale fund raising 
initiatives could be a donation in kind that would be maybe less 
problematic, wouldn't it?



Le 24/02/2018 à 13:51, John Erling Blad a écrit :

This discussion is going to be fun! =D

A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more than 65k articles,
the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small.

What if a base set of articles were opened for paid translators? There are
several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand articles from
"List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and the ten thousand
articles from the expanded list[2].

Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01 per word (about $1
for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles into another
language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in high-cost
countries. The pay would also have to be higher for languages that lacks
good translation tools.

I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the communities, as
without a base set of articles it won't be possible to build a community at
all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating well-referenced
articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be avoided. Perhaps
we should also identify good source articles, that would be a help.
Translated articles should be above some minimum size, but they does not
have to be full translations of the source article.

A real problem is that our existing lists of good articles other projects
should have is pretty much biased towards Western World, so they need a lot
of adjustments. Perhaps such a project would identify our inherit bias?

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have/Expanded
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Gnangarra]

>
> ​ WWII is not an universal truth. If some small country claim the Nazis
> was
> the good guys, then they are simply wrong.
>

​No even thats not entirely true for some countries WWII in Europe was foot
note, for others WWII was the trigger for escaping colonial rule. Languages
related to individual cultures do have different perspectives on events
​even on en.wp some FA can tend to have bias to US/UK perspective on
events. There is no one truth for history its all about perspectives,
about the significance of differing events, and the impact those events had.

Even when it comes to less disputed topics like biota there can
differences, take Kangaroo there is referred to an Aboriginal Australian
word but in reality there are over 300 different Australian Languages and
each has their own name for a kangaroo.  They each also have different
knowledge and information simply because of the different environmental
conditions.

Paid translations is not the ideal format, it even has flaws if money is to
be spent then making tools and support projects that enable translations.
Translations risk being interpreted at paternalism with a colonial language
deciding how an indigenous language should speak about a subject.


> ​
>
>
On 27 February 2018 at 17:40, John Erling Blad  wrote:

> WWII is not an universal truth. If some small country claim the Nazis was
> the good guys, then they are simply wrong.
>
> Yes there are a lot of projects where information diverge, but usually that
> is because someone added material that somehow seems more appropriate for
> readers in that specific language. Although sometimes the content is really
> wrong, and that happen on all projects.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > I have been involved in a translation project with professional
> translators
> > translating featured articles of the English Wikipedia. The choice for
> > featured articles was done because we expected that the content would not
> > be in dispute. We found different. Several of the translated articles
> were
> > not accepted.. one of them was about World War II.
> >
> > I have also toyed with the idea of content that is not available in the
> > language of a Wikipedia (including English). Translation is one solution
> an
> > other solution is generating basic information from the data available at
> > Wikidata. The benefit is not only to our readers; they will at least be
> > informed up to a point and another benefit will be the quality of the
> > Wikipedia involved. One problem that will be fixed is the one of false
> > friends, when red links are linked to Wikidata, the information provided
> > will always be implicitly correct. Another possibility is to provide the
> > text of a sister Wikipedia.
> >
> > We can do a better job by providing the sum of all knowledge that is
> > available to us.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > On 25 February 2018 at 15:16, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> >
> > > Sorry, but this does not make sense. The core articles apply globally.
> > > There will although be articles in additions to a list of core
> articles,
> > > but I don't try to advocate any of those lists as the one and only
> list.
> > > Actually I have toyed with an idea of automatically create a list of
> core
> > > articles, and that would identify important articles no matter if they
> > are
> > > from a big western language or a minority language.
> > >
> > > The main problem is NOT that minority languages should have articles
> > about
> > > the major cities and important philosophers, *the main problem is that
> > > minor languages can't get started because they lack content*!
> > >
> > > On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 2:41 AM, Vi to  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Cultural appropriation is something different, by "forcing" the
> > contents
> > > in
> > > > a minority language we would actually be at risk of implementing a
> form
> > > of
> > > > "cultural colonialism" which is the opposite of a cultural
> > appropriation.
> > > >
> > > > NOTE: I refer to "the Western" in both cultural and "Wikipedian"
> > sense: I
> > > > mean cultures with a strong presence on the web plus developed and
> > > > flourishing Wikipedia communities.
> > > >
> > > > Helping minority languages with funds/workforce is not bad in my
> > opinion,
> > > > but I think a bottom-up process must be followed, with the "bottom"
> > being
> > > > as closer as possible to relevant linguistic/cultural communities. A
> > > > Wikipedia full of "what the Westerns think is important" in a
> minority
> > > > non-Western language would definitely fail project scopes.
> > > >
> > > > This kind of problem almost does not arise with minority language
> > > > associated to Western cultures since they share the same cultural
> > > > backgrounds: back to my previous example the cultural background of
> > > > Sicilian is substantially 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's making you happy this week? (Week of 18 February 2018)

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

Yes, that's a great milestone, congratulation and thank you to all 
people which made that possible!



Le 22/02/2018 à 20:09, Lionel Allorge a écrit :

Hi,

What is making me happy this week is the start of the 3D models uploads
in Commons:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/20/three-dimensional-models/

Regards.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's making you happy this week? (Week of 18 February 2018)

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

What's making me happy this week is joining the "Telegrafo" discussion 
for ELISo  and I also just 
found Six Degrees of Wikipedia 
.



Le 18/02/2018 à 23:12, Pine W a écrit :

What's making me happy this week is Isarra's persistence in working on the
Timeless skin. Timeless is based on Winter. [0] [1]

For anyone who would like to try Timeless, it's available in Preferences
under Appearance / Skin.

What's making you happy this week?

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )

[0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Timeless
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Indeed. We can all agree that it's OK for a lot of reason to have
differences in content between projects. What these differences are is a
separate discussion.

These differences often come up when discussing translation projects in
Wikipedia, and it's important to recognize them, but it's also important
not to treat them as a blocker or to let them be too much of a distraction.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2018-02-27 11:40 GMT+02:00 John Erling Blad :

> WWII is not an universal truth. If some small country claim the Nazis was
> the good guys, then they are simply wrong.
>
> Yes there are a lot of projects where information diverge, but usually that
> is because someone added material that somehow seems more appropriate for
> readers in that specific language. Although sometimes the content is really
> wrong, and that happen on all projects.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > I have been involved in a translation project with professional
> translators
> > translating featured articles of the English Wikipedia. The choice for
> > featured articles was done because we expected that the content would not
> > be in dispute. We found different. Several of the translated articles
> were
> > not accepted.. one of them was about World War II.
> >
> > I have also toyed with the idea of content that is not available in the
> > language of a Wikipedia (including English). Translation is one solution
> an
> > other solution is generating basic information from the data available at
> > Wikidata. The benefit is not only to our readers; they will at least be
> > informed up to a point and another benefit will be the quality of the
> > Wikipedia involved. One problem that will be fixed is the one of false
> > friends, when red links are linked to Wikidata, the information provided
> > will always be implicitly correct. Another possibility is to provide the
> > text of a sister Wikipedia.
> >
> > We can do a better job by providing the sum of all knowledge that is
> > available to us.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > On 25 February 2018 at 15:16, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> >
> > > Sorry, but this does not make sense. The core articles apply globally.
> > > There will although be articles in additions to a list of core
> articles,
> > > but I don't try to advocate any of those lists as the one and only
> list.
> > > Actually I have toyed with an idea of automatically create a list of
> core
> > > articles, and that would identify important articles no matter if they
> > are
> > > from a big western language or a minority language.
> > >
> > > The main problem is NOT that minority languages should have articles
> > about
> > > the major cities and important philosophers, *the main problem is that
> > > minor languages can't get started because they lack content*!
> > >
> > > On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 2:41 AM, Vi to  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Cultural appropriation is something different, by "forcing" the
> > contents
> > > in
> > > > a minority language we would actually be at risk of implementing a
> form
> > > of
> > > > "cultural colonialism" which is the opposite of a cultural
> > appropriation.
> > > >
> > > > NOTE: I refer to "the Western" in both cultural and "Wikipedian"
> > sense: I
> > > > mean cultures with a strong presence on the web plus developed and
> > > > flourishing Wikipedia communities.
> > > >
> > > > Helping minority languages with funds/workforce is not bad in my
> > opinion,
> > > > but I think a bottom-up process must be followed, with the "bottom"
> > being
> > > > as closer as possible to relevant linguistic/cultural communities. A
> > > > Wikipedia full of "what the Westerns think is important" in a
> minority
> > > > non-Western language would definitely fail project scopes.
> > > >
> > > > This kind of problem almost does not arise with minority language
> > > > associated to Western cultures since they share the same cultural
> > > > backgrounds: back to my previous example the cultural background of
> > > > Sicilian is substantially equal to Italian one. Still, as I already
> > > wrote,
> > > > wikis in minority languages should focus on a certain aspect of wiki
> > > scope:
> > > > Wiki has roughly two main scopes: 1) sharing knowledge in a certain
> > > > language 2) also preserving the cultural heritage associated with
> > > different
> > > > languages. For languages mainly spoken as first language the "sharing
> > > > knowledge" aspect is predominant, while the second should take
> > precedence
> > > > in languages whose speakers are native speakers of a "bigger"
> language.
> > > >
> > > > Vito
> > > >
> > > > 2018-02-24 22:58 GMT+01:00 John Erling Blad :
> > > >
> > > > > Seems like this is mostly about cultural 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation

[John Erling Blad]

WWII is not an universal truth. If some small country claim the Nazis was
the good guys, then they are simply wrong.

Yes there are a lot of projects where information diverge, but usually that
is because someone added material that somehow seems more appropriate for
readers in that specific language. Although sometimes the content is really
wrong, and that happen on all projects.


On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> I have been involved in a translation project with professional translators
> translating featured articles of the English Wikipedia. The choice for
> featured articles was done because we expected that the content would not
> be in dispute. We found different. Several of the translated articles were
> not accepted.. one of them was about World War II.
>
> I have also toyed with the idea of content that is not available in the
> language of a Wikipedia (including English). Translation is one solution an
> other solution is generating basic information from the data available at
> Wikidata. The benefit is not only to our readers; they will at least be
> informed up to a point and another benefit will be the quality of the
> Wikipedia involved. One problem that will be fixed is the one of false
> friends, when red links are linked to Wikidata, the information provided
> will always be implicitly correct. Another possibility is to provide the
> text of a sister Wikipedia.
>
> We can do a better job by providing the sum of all knowledge that is
> available to us.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 25 February 2018 at 15:16, John Erling Blad  wrote:
>
> > Sorry, but this does not make sense. The core articles apply globally.
> > There will although be articles in additions to a list of core articles,
> > but I don't try to advocate any of those lists as the one and only list.
> > Actually I have toyed with an idea of automatically create a list of core
> > articles, and that would identify important articles no matter if they
> are
> > from a big western language or a minority language.
> >
> > The main problem is NOT that minority languages should have articles
> about
> > the major cities and important philosophers, *the main problem is that
> > minor languages can't get started because they lack content*!
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 2:41 AM, Vi to  wrote:
> >
> > > Cultural appropriation is something different, by "forcing" the
> contents
> > in
> > > a minority language we would actually be at risk of implementing a form
> > of
> > > "cultural colonialism" which is the opposite of a cultural
> appropriation.
> > >
> > > NOTE: I refer to "the Western" in both cultural and "Wikipedian"
> sense: I
> > > mean cultures with a strong presence on the web plus developed and
> > > flourishing Wikipedia communities.
> > >
> > > Helping minority languages with funds/workforce is not bad in my
> opinion,
> > > but I think a bottom-up process must be followed, with the "bottom"
> being
> > > as closer as possible to relevant linguistic/cultural communities. A
> > > Wikipedia full of "what the Westerns think is important" in a minority
> > > non-Western language would definitely fail project scopes.
> > >
> > > This kind of problem almost does not arise with minority language
> > > associated to Western cultures since they share the same cultural
> > > backgrounds: back to my previous example the cultural background of
> > > Sicilian is substantially equal to Italian one. Still, as I already
> > wrote,
> > > wikis in minority languages should focus on a certain aspect of wiki
> > scope:
> > > Wiki has roughly two main scopes: 1) sharing knowledge in a certain
> > > language 2) also preserving the cultural heritage associated with
> > different
> > > languages. For languages mainly spoken as first language the "sharing
> > > knowledge" aspect is predominant, while the second should take
> precedence
> > > in languages whose speakers are native speakers of a "bigger" language.
> > >
> > > Vito
> > >
> > > 2018-02-24 22:58 GMT+01:00 John Erling Blad :
> > >
> > > > Seems like this is mostly about cultural ownership and appropriation.
> > Not
> > > > sure if it is possible to agree on this.
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 6:08 PM, Vi to 
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I'll reply to the most recent email just for laziness.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm doubtful for a series of reasons, most of were already
> expressed
> > > in a
> > > > > better way by others:
> > > > > *a remuneration in terms of quantity will weaken the quality of
> > > > > translations unless there's a strong mechanism of quality
> > verification
> > > > > requiring a quantity of resources comparable to translations
> > > themselves;
> > > > > *articles are the result of a long process which reflects cultural
> > > > identity
> > > > > of different communities, I'm not confident with transferring