Hello, Is there a specific reason why your students are supposed to translate from the native language to English, and not the other way round? Writing for English Wikipedia is very difficult even to English speaking students. If the text quality of the contributions is (too) low, you might receive hostile reactions from English Wikipedians. Also, it is important not to regard Wikipedia as a place where to "dump" loads of texts. A text must be curated afterwards. At least for a couple of days, the students should be online and accept feedback in order to improve the texts. This time must be planned in your schedule. Again, if Wikipedians get the impression that "their Wikipedia" is "abused" as a "data dump place", leaving the work to improve and wikify the texts to them, the Wikipedia volunteers, it is possible that the reactions are hostile and that "articles" will be deleted. I hope this does not sound too pessimistic. :-) Also, I would advise to consider to let students something else do that "writing an article". I think that that is something a beginner should not start with. Happy to hear about your proceedings, on this list. If someone is interested, I could report about experiences with regard to German students translating from English. Kind regards Ziko 2015-05-21 18:10 GMT+02:00 Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre(a)hotmail.com>om>:

In the last message, I meant "dedicated volunteers" not "restless volunteers". Sorry for that silly mistake! On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:05 PM, Samir Elsharbaty &lt;selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org > > Hi Jirka Daněk, > > Thank you for the great initiative you are planning to take at your > university and for reaching out to the Wikimedia Education mailing list. > > I agree with the voices recommending that students translate from English > to Czech not the opposite. For example, there are +4,500 featured articles > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles> on the > English Wikipedia and most of them do not exist or not in a good state on > the Czech Wikipedia. Students can start enriching the Czech content by > translating some of these articles. > > I agree with Anna that coordinating with Vojtech and the Czech Wikimedia > Chapter would be of the best helping options. Their great experience and > restless volunteers will help a lot with your promising plan. > > Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have. > > Regards, > > -- > Samir Elsharbaty, > Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program > Wikimedia Foundation > +2.011.200.696.77 > selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org > education.wikimedia.org > > On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 7:26 PM, Ziko van Dijk &lt;zvandijk(a)gmail.com> >> Hello, >> >> Is there a specific reason why your students are supposed to translate >> from the native language to English, and not the other way round? >> Writing for English Wikipedia is very difficult even to English >> speaking students. If the text quality of the contributions is (too) >> low, you might receive hostile reactions from English Wikipedians. >> Also, it is important not to regard Wikipedia as a place where to >> "dump" loads of texts. A text must be curated afterwards. At least for >> a couple of days, the students should be online and accept feedback in >> order to improve the texts. This time must be planned in your >> schedule. Again, if Wikipedians get the impression that "their >> Wikipedia" is "abused" as a "data dump place", leaving the work to >> improve and wikify the texts to them, the Wikipedia volunteers, it is >> possible that the reactions are hostile and that "articles" will be >> deleted. >> I hope this does not sound too pessimistic. :-) Also, I would advise >> to consider to let students something else do that "writing an >> article". I think that that is something a beginner should not start >> with. >> >> Happy to hear about your proceedings, on this list. >> >> If someone is interested, I could report about experiences with regard >> to German students translating from English. >> >> Kind regards >> Ziko >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> 2015-05-21 18:10 GMT+02:00 Leigh Thelmadatter &lt;osamadre(a)hotmail.com&gt;om>: >> > Ive worked for some time here in Mexico with Wikipedia, doing everything >> > from writing articles in English, to translation, to photography and >> > subtitling projects in Commons. >> > >> > I very much do recommend you contact the Czech education people, who >> are a >> > great bunch and can give you invaluable hands-on support. >> > >> > In my experience, I have found having students write new text in their >> > non-native language to be extremely challenging, and you have to be sure >> > that students are up for it. Translation gives the basic structure (a >> +) >> > but it also has problems with L1 interference in L2. (and vice versa but >> > particularly problematic for L1--> L2) >> > >> > If you are not sure if students are up for this (or you have the time), >> I >> > have a couple of suggestions for experimenting... >> > >> > 1) Have students review articles in English on Czech topics for >> inaccuracies >> > and/or out-of-date information and/or missing details or citations. The >> > Visual Editor tool has made article improvement a bit easier, >> especially the >> > addition of references. >> > >> > 2) Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) has videos in English >> that need >> > subtitles. One teacher at my school Karen Mazanec, had students create >> > English subtitles for English video as intensive listening practice. >> > >> https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/April_2015/New_to_… >> > >> > >> > Interesting to to get your mail today as I had a meeting where they are >> > talking more about modualizing (not a word, I know) courses. If you >> could >> > send me a link about your course at Masaryk, I would appreciate it >> greatly. >> > >> > Leigh >> > >> > >> > >> > ________________________________ >> > From: dnk(a)mail.muni.cz >> > Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 17:40:12 +0200 >> > To: education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] confirm >> > 69ccb875820d9c89580605f70c3db83e8a426db7 >> > >> > >> > Hello, >> > >> > I am a teaching assistant in ONLINE_A, e-learning English course at >> Masaryk >> > University, Czech Republic. This course is structured around students >> > completing various English practice tasks and in that way gaining points >> > towards credit. I came up with the idea to make writing a Wikipedia >> article >> > one of those tasks. The course is relatively large, but since this is >> going >> > to be one of the more difficult tasks available and only the more >> advanced >> > students can actually do it, I assume there would be only about 6 to 12 >> > students every semester doing this task. I would not be able to coach >> more >> > of them anyways. The students are unlikely to have previous editor >> > experience on WIkipedia. To accommodate for that, I plan to have them >> > translate an article from Czech to English Wikipedia and instruct them >> to >> > refer to an existing similar article on English Wikipedia to get a feel >> for >> > what they need to create. >> > >> > Example: Translate https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Tu%C4%8Dn%C3%BD >> as >> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Tu%C4%8Dn%C3%BD referring to >> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers as a source of inspiration. >> > >> > I am looking for an existing Wikimedia Education initiative under which >> this >> > initiative of my could be put into practice. I found "Studenti píší >> > Wikipedii" at >> > https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/Czech_Republic. >> Is >> > it the correct bunch of people to turn to, given that I target >> WIkipedia in >> > English, not the Czech one? >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ Education mailing list >> > Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Education mailing list >> > Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Education mailing list >> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education >> > > > > -- > Samir Elsharbaty, > Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program > Wikimedia Foundation > +2.011.200.696.77 > selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org > education.wikimedia.org > -- Samir Elsharbaty, Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program Wikimedia Foundation +2.011.200.696.77 selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org education.wikimedia.org

Indeed :) When do you plan to do it? I'd ve happy to give you tech support with this. (Disclaimer: I'm in the team that develops ContentTranslation.) בתאריך 21 במאי 2015 19:27,‏ "Kavya Manohar" &lt;sakhi.kavya(a)gmail.com&gt; כתב:

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. I realized that translating from English instead of the other way around is certainly a better way to approach this. Using ContentTranslation seems the best option, even though it currently does not contain support for auto translating the en/cs language pair. It is important to me to be able to see somebody else's unfinished translation and as far as I know, ContentTranslation does not support that yet. Is this feature planned? Making subtitles or translating subtitles has the advantage that the student can work on small chunks each time. A subtitle translated, a minute of video transcribed. It does not feel so daunting a task as translating a whole article may be. It seems to me a good idea to add this activity to the course. It gives students an opportunity to work with video content, which is something the course currently lacks. I am not sure how much work it is going to be to oversee the students, though. I worry it would be too much for me. I would probably have to pick one of either subtitles or articles and focus only on that at first. I will think it through some more, talk to the course coordinator (I am just a lowly teaching assistant, you know ;) and to the people at Czech Wikipedia who got in touch with me regarding my first e-mail to the mailinglist and we will figure something out. Thanks for your help. Finally, I apologize for this thread's meaningless subject line. That is my tl;dr response. Before I put it together, I responded inline to all your messages: On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter &lt;osamadre(a)hotmail.com&gt; wrote: I got a private response from one of them. There apparently is somebody working at the University's rector's office I can talk to about this. The articles which cs Wiki has and en Wiki does not tend to be about Czech and Slovak geography, municipalities and people. The language does not tend to be very convoluted for topics like that. I see your point that translating into a foreign language is rather difficult. There is about 1200 students taking the course each semester, though, and finding a couple who would be both willing to participate and up to it should be possible. Translating into one's native language is probably a better proposition. It is also much easier on me, the person who has to check everything that students hand in. Every year, there is about 50 people in the course whose native language is not Czech or Slovak (med students from the Near East and Erasmus exchange students, mostly). I would have to find somebody else to check their work if they decide to participate in this activity. just told them to go looking for low-hanging-fruit edits, they would probably ignore that activity. The only people who may participate are existing WIkipedia editors who would use it to get points for something they are already familiar with. Furthermore, there is the question how many points should they get for their work and what the work actually constitutes. Should they get points for telling me that they did not find anything, that a page is all-right? This sounds interesting. I toyed with a few ideas about subtitling videos myself. My biggest hurdle here is teaching students to use any software they would need. I planned to use Amara.org as a subtitle editor, mainly because on-line services tend to focus more on user friendliness and streamlining than desktop apps. Amara can subtitle any video, as long as it is possible to directly link to the video file. I guess it should be possible (technically and legally) to use Amara for Wikimedia content, but I have to check. Is it supposed to mean the same thing as modularizing? ;) I'll write you an e-mail about how is it working for us. On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 6:27 PM, Kavya Manohar &lt;sakhi.kavya(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I know the tool. I was one of the people who campaigned for having it enabled on cs.Wikipedia ;) On that occasion I made a comparison table for all available translation tools for WIkipedia I know of (Duolingo, Google Translate Toolkit, ContentTranslation) and CT is a clear winner. Duolingo has problematic ToS and drops formatting and references, Google Translate for WIkipedia is not being actively worked on and drops some formatting and references. I guess as the developers you know all about that ;) What I like about Duolingo is that the translation unit is a sentence, not a paragraph. It is much easier for a language learner to work with individual sentences first and focus on whole paragraphs only later while revising. Having to translate a whole paragraph at once does feel overwhelming at times. What Duolingo users tend to do is to nibble on easy sentences and gradually move to translating more difficult ones. This is a workflow that ContentTranslation does not support. (I am not saying that it should support it. There are strong reasons for preferring paragraphs, too. I remember reading something about that on CT's page.) On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il&gt; wrote: October 2015 at the soonest. November is more likely.