New subject: [African Wikimedians] 4. Re: Afripédia Douala (Nkansah Rexford) Akan wikipedia

1 Dec 2014

Nkansah,
to build up a small wikipedia I would not go to translate from English version. Many
articles in big wikipedias like English, German have grown to an extent that only part of
readers will read all. If you go to translate these very long and often complicated
articles you have a higher risk that your language will be less AKAN than English put in
Akan words. Different languages have different structures of thought and expression. I
sometimes sit long time trying to find a Swahili noun for an English one till I remember
that in Swahili we use far less nouns but say it differently with a verbal expression.

Short entries with basic information are just fine. And less tiring for you who tries to
build a base.

I often take the simple:Wikipedia entry as a basis (if it makes sense...), open some other
language versions I can read and see how they start the explanation and then put it into
Swahili. So less translating but let yourself be inspired by the choice and structure of
information about topics. And then boil it down to what you think readers in your
environment and culture should know first.

Referencing I often (mostly) do by copying the ref-sections from English because for East
African readers who are looking for referecing English is the language of choice if there
is no Swahili literature (as it is most of the time).

What Akan standard to use? No idea!  (just a quote by Martin Luther: Pecca fortiter! -dare
to sin-)

Cheers
Kipala - Ingo

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:59:23 +0000
From: Nkansah Rexford &lt;nkansahrexford(a)gmail.com&gt;

In the case of the Akan language, there're many speakers. And many schools
teach the language, how to write and speak from primary schools to even
sometimes senior high school.

I, myself, can go back to writing articles onto the Akan Wikipedia. What I
ask myself sometimes is that, "Will I have to translate the english
versions for whatever article I wanna write to Akan? How will I provide
referencing for the articles I write in Akan? What is the standardized Akan
language to use?"

I have lots of interest in improving the Akan Wikipedia, and I'm gonna fix
it in my workflow and help improve it.

Because, Why not?

Thanks for suggestions.

Re: [African Wikimedians] 4. Re: Afripédia Douala (Nkansah Rexford) Akan wikipedia