Gerard, while what you are saying is true, I am forced to agree with Bala. You need to work with someone who knows the language to the purest of its form, knows it in and out, and also knows technology. I doubt you'd've come across MANY of those at either WCI or the Hackathon. --~~~~
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:37 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hoi, > > - You agree with me that these people exist. > - The Malayalam Wikisource is getting more attention then the > Malayalam Wikipedia > - It is relatively easy to learn to read the script. > - Having native speakers type text that they could decipher is > something they can do if they choose > - Everybody benefits when more literature is transcribed > > There are no losers here. Yes, there may be more effective ways of finding > people to transcribe. Do that. The key thing we should not forget is that > these people ARE already part of our community. They can make a difference > for the Indic languages and they are even willing to do so, they have done > so. > > Bala would you not agree with me that the people we already know to be > part of our community are at least relevant? > Thanks, > Gerard > > On 30 November 2011 14:53, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabot...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> *One of the reasons why these people are so relevant to me is that they >> are part of the top of the pyramid that is our communities. They are the >> people who work on our technology. We need people who are technically >> capable and interested in working on MediaWiki. We need them as part of our >> language communities because their effort has the ability to enable so many >> more people. We need people to work on our fonts, our keyboard methods, >> automatic transliteration .... It is not only the WMF Localisation team but >> also the language communities themselves that have to work towards the goal >> of making any language / your language as easy to edit as English.* >> >> As far as Tamil is concerned, this isnt true. You have scratched not even >> a tiny portion of whatever pyramid you might be looking for. Again your >> assumption is based on a sample size of what 50-100 that showed up at the >> Mumbai hackathon? (a place that is 2000 km from where Tamil speakers live >> in India). How hard have you tried to find other people who fit your >> description - people who know Tamil and are interested in working on >> Mediawiki?. >> >> Please stop generalising India from a single visit and meeting 100 >> people. This is extremely dangerous and will result in massive wastage of >> time because of wrong understanding of the ground situation. >> >> >> >> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Gerard Meijssen < >> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hoi, >>> During my visit to India, Amir started to teach me to read Devanagari. >>> He did not teach me all the characters but I now have an idea on how to >>> read >>> the script. One of the things we looked at were things like the >>> difference in writing characters for Marathi and Hindi. Effectively we >>> looked at words that were transliterated from English like Coca Cola ... >>> Amir taught himself to read Devanagari during this visit.. Amir is a >>> linguist. >>> >>> Many of the people who are functional illiterates in their mother tongue >>> I met at the hackathon. The way they speak about their language makes me >>> cringe. To them English is superior. I find it sad because they lose their >>> culture in this way. I asked two of them if they wanted their kids to learn >>> to read and write their mother tongue; they said they did. >>> >>> They said that they would not be tempted to read Wikipedia articles; >>> English is better. They might be interested in reading the literature of >>> their language. I know this is a long shot but I am an optimist. I would >>> welcome and applaud these people when they make the effort to learn to read >>> and start reading the literature of their culture. >>> >>> One of the reasons why these people are so relevant to me is that they >>> are part of the top of the pyramid that is our communities. They are the >>> people who work on our technology. We need people who are technically >>> capable and interested in working on MediaWiki. We need them as part of our >>> language communities because their effort has the ability to enable so many >>> more people. We need people to work on our fonts, our keyboard methods, >>> automatic transliteration .... It is not only the WMF Localisation team but >>> also the language communities themselves that have to work towards the goal >>> of making any language / your language as easy to edit as English. >>> Thanks, >>> GerardM >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list >> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > > -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
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