Dear friends and colleagues
Please permit me to publicise an academic conference that we're holding at
Hong Kong Baptist University on 15-17 December 2021.
The conference will be an ideal forum in which to discuss research
methodologies, issues of collaborativity, theoretical frameworks that have
proven valuable for the study of Wikipedia translation, the use of
Wikipedia in the translation classroom and by translation professionals,
and the nature of Wikipedia translation and how it differs not only from
other more traditional types of translation but also from other newly
emerging types. While the conference's main focus is interlingual
translation within the online encyclopaedia, we are also interested
in research into the multilingual Wikipedia that makes no explicit
reference to translation issues.
The conference will be online, face-to-face or mixed mode, depending on
prevailing circumstances. Please see the conference website at
https://ctn.hkbu.edu.hk/wikiconf2021/ for full details and the Call for
Papers.
I hope to see some of you there!
Mark
Professor Mark Shuttleworth 夏致遠
Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies
Hong Kong Baptist University
Phone: +852 3411 6641
http://www.tran.hkbu.edu.hkhttps://ctn.hkbu.edu.hk/wikiconf2021/
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Kia ora koutou (greetings to everyone),The Aotearoa New Zealand User Group is working on creating an incorporated society and applying to become a chapter. We are looking for an open source member management system which would enable us to store member details, record membership payments, record membership history (e.g. periods of memberships, type of membership), export lists of names and contact details and create email lists or send emails to groups of members. Is any affiliate using a member management system which they would recommend we investigate?Many thanks,Heather (for the Aotearoa NZ User Group)
Hello,
I would like to share some experiences with the Content Translation
tool when I translated an article from German to English Wikipedia.
There are issues that could need a movement wide discussion,
especially: the use of references, and the use of automatic
translation.
Links:
About the tool: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation
My article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Crisis_1850 (The
subject is a conflict in the German history of the 19th century.)
1. Why use the tool at all?
In general, I am quite impressed with the tool as it is now. It saves
me the hassle to deal with Wikidata, as the link is made
automatically. It also makes it easy to use the pictures in the
original article. Sometimes, the tool even manages to translate an
internal link to another Wikipedia article. (In many other cases, I
had to do the linking manually, as "Otto von Manteuffel" was not
recognised as the same person as in the already existing article
[[en:Otto Theodor von Manteuffel]].)
I also like that the tool saves my edits, so that I can continue
translating another day without having to save the text externally.
2. What about automatic translation?
I decided to make use of automatic translation, name "deepl.com" as
this website does an excellent job (at least between the languages
that I understand). The main reason for me is to save time: the
website knows many English terms I would have to look up. It is not
just about the terms but also the correct prepositions etc. Also: is
it "campsite" or "camp site"?
The automatic translation, still, is not perfect, and I would never
advise to use it without checking each and every sentence. You always
have to read carefully the original paragraph and then the proposed
translation. At that occasion, I consult my online dictionary a lot.
And, frankly, when I translate from a foreign language (such English)
to my native language (German), I don't use the automatic translation
but create the German text all by myself. My own wording may differ
significantly from the original, because it is my goal to create a
readable German article, not to preserve the original text with all
its details and difficulties.
Usual problems with the automatic translation of deepl.com are:
* a strange wording, even the omission of whole words
* a misunderstanding of the original text; for example, the original
German article in this case dealt with the "Confederation" and the
"Union" in Germany 1850, and deepl.com at one occasion wrote
"Confederation" where it should have been "Union"
* Deepl.com does not always recognize proper scientific terms. Also,
in some cases, the German term differs from the usual one in English,
e.g. the "German Dualism" is usually called the "Austrian-Prussian
rivalry" in English.
* Deepl.com sometimes translated "Kurhessen" to "Kurhessen", in other
cases to "Electoral Hesse", in others to "Electorate of Hesse". All of
these translations are correct, but I decided to use only "Kurhessen"
in the final text.
So in general, I think that the translations from deepl.com are often
astonishingly great. But you have to check them carefully.
3. Should we integrate automatic translation into the tool?
As you know, many Wikipedia language versions do not allow for the use
of automatic translation within our tool. The main reason: some people
deliver articles without a clean-up. The result are unreadable or
misleading new articles in, e.g., English Wikipedia. (In German
Wikipedia, we call unreadable articles "Babel Fish accidents".)
But should the discussion end here? For example, we might want to
allow automatic translation for those editors who actually do the
clean-up. Why not giving the permission to editors who apply for the
right to use automatic translation within the tool? Should an editor
indeed deliver bad translations, the editor could still loose this
right.
By the way, I made use of deepl.com translations by simply
copying+pasting the paragraphs. Alas, I had to do this for every
single paragraph which is quite a hassle. It would have saved me a lot
of work if I was allowed to copy and paste whole article texts, or
have an integrated automatic translation option.
4. What was the major problem when using the tool?
The tool had a problem to deal with the references in the original
article. The original article had 14 footnotes, and the tool indicated
a problem with 3 references ("template problem"). I did not understand
the problem because the article did not use specific templates for the
footnotes. I decidede to publish the new English article anyway. - The
result? All references lacked in the English article. I had to add
them manually, which I found quite inconvenient.
We would need a unified system how to deal with references in general,
for all Wikipedias. This system should be easy to use and allow an
easy re-use in other language versions.
5. How good an article was the final text?
Then, the English article needed some more clean-up: a line too much,
a missing heading (my fault) etc. But that's okay. I also changed the
English text by adding some information about the historical situation
described. English readers may have less background knowledge than
German readers, and German Wikipedia has some articles with additional
information that lack in English Wikipedia.
Conclusion: Yes, I recommend to use the content translation tool
(provided by the WMF) and automatic translation (provided, in this
case, by deepl.com). It saves time. But the issues I mentioned prevent
me from translating more articles.
Kind regards,
Ziko
--
Dr. Ziko van Dijk / zikovandijk.de
Autor von "Wikis und die Wikipedia verstehen"
"Niederlande & Deutschland": https://www.youtube.com/ZikovanDijk
Greetings from Afrocine Project,
It is already the end of the Months of African Cinema global contest and a
lot has been achieved! We have been able to get over 4,000 articles created
in 16 languages!
We are about to constitute the International Jury team, which will consist
of members from all the languages that participated in the global
contest/edit-a-thon. If you would like to join us in the Jury team, please
let us know by 31 December 2021 by filling this form.[1]
Thanks for all your contributions this year and congratulations to you!
Together we are bridging the content gap and improving on the systemic
bias, in-respect of the African continent.
Regards,
Ebenezer Mlay
Community Liaison – Afrocine project
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrt_xGsVNV1rJthKrEQvRlPOTAlgTU0Iz…
I am pleased to share with you a new proposal for a Wikimedia project: Wikianswers. The project intends to integrate artificial intelligence question-answering systems with a wiki question-and-answer platform.
Like similar projects, users will receive one or more answers to their questions from artificial intelligence question-answering systems, but, unlike other projects, they will subsequently be able to edit those answers, as well as any provided explanations and argumentation, per wiki technology. User-corrected content could later be utilized to retrain the question-answering systems.
The proposed project aims to provide value as a new resource for users and as training data for multiple artificial intelligence systems.
While the proposed project can provide users with answers across various question domains, a scenario of interest to me is that of moral question answering. I hope that this scenario is also of some interest to you.
The hyperlink to the project proposal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikianswers .
Thank you for any ideas, comments, questions, or suggestions with which to improve the project proposal. Thank you for taking the time to express your support of or opposition to the proposed new project.
Best regards,
Adam Sobieski
http://www.phoster.com
Hi everyone!
The second edition of the Coolest Tool Award
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award
will happen online on Friday 14 January 2022 at 17:00 UTC!
See https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1642179615 for your timezone.
The awarded tools will be showcased in a virtual event, with
broadcasted video and chat channels for socializing.
We will send more details and links soon.
Save the date, and join us celebrating the great work volunteer
developers do for the Wikimedia communities.
We hope to see you there!
andre, for the Coolest Tool Academy 2021
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
Dear all,
We want to inform you that the Wikimedia Foundation’s Independent Auditors’
Report for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2021 is now published and
available at: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. We
have also posted on Meta-Wiki answers to frequently asked questions (“FAQ”)
about the Independent Auditors’ Report:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audi…,
in addition to our standard practice of documenting and publishing the
Audit Committee meeting minutes regarding the review and approval of the
Independent Auditors’ Report by the Audit Committee - a board subcommittee.
The external audit is conducted annually by an independent third-party
audit firm (KPMG) as a part of our financial oversight and provides an
overview of basic information about the organization's financial position
and its financial activities.
Please contact me or Shelby Langan (<slangan(a)wikimedia.org>) via email, or
ask a question on the talk page
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial…
if you have any questions.
Saludos,
Jaime
Jaime Villagomez
Chief Financial Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate.
<https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
TL;DR: The Global Data & Insights team is recruiting [1] Wikimedia movement
researchers, organizers, grantees, and affiliates to partner in piloting
and consulting on some new movement metrics in February and March 2022.
The Global Data & Insights team will launch a pilot [2] beginning February
2022 for consultation on a new project mapping existing Wikimedia Movement
engagement data by geography. The project intends to surface existing data
to help our movement have a better understanding of diversity, equity, and
inclusion across known pathways for engaging with Wikimedia, including
reading and editing or organizing programs, grants, or affiliates. It will
help us answer shared questions about who is in our movement, what voices
may be missing, and where.
They are looking for volunteers who are actively engaged in strategic
planning, implementation, or research focused on the Wikimedia movement’s
development along two specific use cases to which the pilot metrics are
geared toward.
* Use Case 1: Directing grant funds and resource opportunities to spaces
ready for growth
* Use Case 2: Directing non-monetary support and partnership opportunities
to spaces ready for development and able to support the work.
Read more in our diff blog [1] and meta portal [3].
Thanks for your time and attention.
Best,
Jaime
[1]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/15/measuring-our-movement-ecosystem-a-ne…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Data_and_Insights_Team/Movement_Data…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Data_and_Insights_Team/Movement_Data…
--
Jaime Anstee, PhD (she/her/they)
Lead Strategist, Global Data & Insights
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*Local Timezone: Pacific (UTC-8)*
*"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." *
Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org>