On 8/30/07, Andrew <bouncey2k(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I was wondering "what about a requiring-language
template?"
For example we could add in the information template - in the
description field - the main language-templates:
{{Information
|Description =
{{de|...}}
{{en|...}}
{{es|...}}
{{fr|...}}
{{it|...}}
When a language-template is not filled it could appear
en: description of XXX
fr: *description in french language required*
it: descrizione di XXX
ecc..
When a language is missing, the picture could be automatically put in
a category like [[Category: French description required]].
The problem with this is that nearly every image on Commons needs to be
translated into some language. The only images that are consistently
translated into more than 5 are the featured pictures and pictures of the
day, but considering how many files Commons has that is certainly a small
percentage.
Categories such as you describe may seem like a good idea, but they will
contain about (very very vague guess here) 95% of all the files we currently
have; at 1,828,506
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics>files and
counting, that is a lot of files to have in a category. The only
category that will be less full would be the "English translation required"
category, but that one will have quite a number of files as well.
I think a better way to do it is probably to increase awareness about
translation efforts, ask for volunteers to translate images as they come
across them, or even let other-language wikis know that their contributors
are more than welcome to come to Commons and translate the description of a
file they are using. If every person who comes from it. or fr. or de. or ru.
or zh. (etc. etc.) wiki to find a picture for a new article on their
wikipedia translated the descriptions of the 5 - 10 files they come across
in their search, that would be a huge help. If there are 200 people from
other-language wikis coming to Commons every day to look for images, each
look at at 3 images and translate the descriptions, that's 600 new
translations per day.
--
Ayelie
~Editor at Large