[Foundation-l] A heads up

[Magnus Manske]

Hi,

I think the questions to ask are:

* How many Indonesians speak Dutch, compared to those that speak English?

* When you try to translate to Indonesian (a laudable goal), will you
have more chances to find translators with Dutch and English, rather
than with just Dutch?

The (obvious) answers aside, if this is going to be a bulk upload,
maybe it should be planned:
* Gather all images, descriptions, and metadata on a (private) machine
* Find a distinct set of often used key terms / tags
* Translate those into English (and Indonesian, if you have a translator ready)
* Assign (English) categories to tags
* Build image descriptions for upload with both Dutch and English terms

I got another, loosely idea: Could we use the language templates in
the descriptions to build a "missing matrix" of translations, for
translators? I speak English and German; I would like to see images
that only have a German description, and translate it to English. A
special site (toolserver?) could show me the image and the German
description, I enter the English one in a text box, and go to a page
with everything prepared for me, just click save and be done.

Cheers,
Magnus



On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Gerard
Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> How does it help to find material in Commons when you do not know English ??
> Practically it is nice that we spend money on improving the upload facility
> of MediaWiki. In the end it makes no difference when you cannot find the
> images. Functionally Commons is useless as a consequence to all the people
> who do not speak English.
>
> When you reply PLEASE remember what the Wikimedia Foundation is there for..
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> 2009/7/15 Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com>
>
>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Gerard
>> Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > Why should the term base be translated ? Is it not more important to be
>> > gained by getting all this material in the public domain ??
>> >
>> > I do however agree with you. All the material that is about Indonesia
>> should
>> > be translated to Indonesian. For them it is very much the opening up of
>> > material that is part of their cultural history. Translating it into
>> English
>> > does not make it easier for Indonesians to find this material.
>> > Thanks,
>> >      GerardM
>> >
>> > 2009/7/15 John at Darkstar <vacuum at jeb.no>
>> >
>> >> At least the term base should be translated.
>> >> John
>> >>
>> >> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> >> > Hoi,
>> >> > I have been in discussion with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam about
>> making
>> >> > their material available on Commons. The Tropenmuseum has an important
>> >> > collection on the colonial past of the Netherlands and contains a rich
>> >> > collection on Suriname and Indonesia. The initial talks are about
>> 100.000
>> >> > images.
>> >> >
>> >> > The annotations of this material is all in Dutch. It will come with
>> >> unique
>> >> > identifiers back to the physical object in the Tropenmuseum and it
>> will
>> >> come
>> >> > with the termbase for the images; this termbase is as I understand it
>> the
>> >> > equivalent of our categories. Some of the material has a partial
>> >> translation
>> >> > in English and, this can be provided to us as well.
>> >> >
>> >> > The key issue I want to raise is that there are hundreds of museums in
>> >> the
>> >> > Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname all using Dutch there are more
>> museums
>> >> in
>> >> > Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein who speak German ....
>> While
>> >> we
>> >> > aim to improve our front end to allow for easy uploads, we do not
>> provide
>> >> > language support. Language support will help people find pictures in
>> >> their
>> >> > language and will help the matching of categories into other
>> languages.
>> >> > Thanks,
>> >> >       GerardM
>> >> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>> There is certainly a value to having things in English. It aids translation
>> into
>> more languages. It's a lot harder to find people who speak Dutch and
>> Spanish,
>> French and Russian or Greek and Japanese. You're more likely to find people
>> who speak English in addition to their native tongue, which allows them to
>> translate it.
>>
>> -Chad
>>
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