Hoi,
When you speak English at your level, there is no issue. When people do not
comprehend what is being written, they will not be able to make full
advantage of the existing functionality. You may state that for some readers
not all of the functionality needs to be localised; this is recognised in
the requirement of localisation for a first project in a language. This only
leaves the editors out to fend for themselves. It is for this reason that we
require full localisation for subsequent projects. We hope that the multi
lingual people of a project share our belief and continue to work on the
localisation when their project is approved. When they do, their whole
language community benefits.
Localisation is one of the few things we can do to to make life easier for
the people who speak only one language. We should not assume that a valuable
editor is multi lingual. For every living language there are people who
benefit a lot when we provide our user interface in their language.
Language localisation on the project itself in its MediaWiki namespace
represents a waste of effort. It is much easier and much more effective to
localise in the specialised environment as provided at
.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 12:43 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What we do is done to make information available.
Our main objective is
not
the creation of content, but the publication of
content to readers. It is
a
well established fact that localisation is one of
the best methods of
making
our content more accessible to our readers.
Is it well established? And even if it is, surely to make the content
available to the readers only a small section of the interface is
needed.
Andre, you and I are fortunate that both the
English, the German, the
Dutch
and the French Wikipedias have a continued great
localisation. These are
the
languages that a typical Dutch person will read.
Consequently ou do not
know
the problem of limited localisation because you
do not experience it.
You forget that I am a LONG time Wikipedian. When I came, there was no
Dutch Wikipedia. When I went to the Dutch Wikipedia, there was no
localisation. Did I find that unpleasant? Yes. Did I find that a huge
problem? No. When the Dutch Wikipedia went to the MediaWiki software
(now called phase 3), we spent quite some time translating all the
message that then existed first. Afterward, I thought that it was too
much. When the Frisian Wikipedia started, I advised them that they
should definitely translate the namespace names, and apart from that
just what they thought most important. Anything that had not been
translated could be translated later if they needed it. And that is
what I said BEFORE there was a Mediawiki: namespace or a Betawiki.
Every new translation had to be submitted to a developer. But still, I
felt that people could translate when they felt the need for it. And
that's what I still do.
When you say that it is a bother for editors that
they have to localise,
I
will agree. However, all this work is necessary
to make the content they
create more accessible to the readers. It is the readers and getting more
readers that everything centres around.
No person will read one page less on a wiki if the block log isn't
localised or if bureaucrats have to read the messages about changing
account names in English. Make translation possibilities available,
like the MediaWiki namespace and Betawiki do. What needs to be
translated will be translated. What doesn't need to be translated,
will take longer, maybe never. If the users themselves don't think
incomplete interface translation is a problem, why would we come in
and force them to change their mind?
--
André Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
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