Very interesting article, and
comments.
Although I do agree with Juliana that it is
interesting to see the different views if different cultures, I think
translation is indeed a pretty good way to introduce a student to wiki-editing.
I saw it work for my daughter: she's been watching me editing the past 5 years
(on Greek Wikipedia primarily), and she decided to give it a try herself by
translating a ballet-related article from English into Greek. She has very good
command of the English language, but she used Google translate as a "rough"
tool, and then corrected and refined the translation to produce a good
piece of work. Needless to say, I could never have done such a good job (ballet
bores me to death). But when a student chooses to translate an article on a
subject he/she is confident in, using translation tools is handy, so long as
they don't get lazy and leave it unprocessed. But the teacher can certainly
judge whether the student has been lazy or not.
On another level, I recommended assigning Wikipedia
articles to a friend of mine who teaches at the Aegean University, and she says
that she still does it (she is not an avid Wikipedian herself, but she's
definitely a supporter) because as I told her, it's a practically foolproof
way to prevent students from plagiarising. And I definitely agree that it
helps build the mentality of prventing plagiarism in communities where students
are not so accustomed to the principle.
Mina (user "saintfevrier")
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 1:21
AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Fwd:
Wikipedia Signpost article
I strongly discourage my students when they want to translate
articles. However, these are the rules of the game, so, if they insist, they
may do so. My two objections are:
- There is no guarantee that the original articles are good enough - so
we have to come back to criticism exercises to evaluate them, thus going away
from the intended translation exercise.
- It is a priceless asset to have different cultures stating their own
views on the same subjects. Here I'm thinking about non-technical articles,
mainly.
(Not to say that I've spotted lots of cases of lazy Google Translator
work).
However, I do agree that the goals of this Mexico project are also
important for the students. Just adding my 2 cents, then.
Juliana.
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