On 12/27/2011 8:23 PM, Ms. Anne Frazer wrote:
On Wednesday, December 28, 2011 1:23 AM Carol Moore
<carolmooredc(a)verizon.net> wrote:
"No matter what the main language of the Wikimedia foundation - and
who knows what it might be 50 years from now - finding ways to more
actively get non-main language speakers involved is necessary. Other
ways to do that would be to make sure Wikipedia has a number of
employees who speak fluently at least 2 or 3 of the top 5 to 10
languages worldwide. It probably has some already."
Language is a generic challenge across the global Wikimedia movement
in all its facets including of course the cultural aspects that lend
themselves to meaning and understanding. However just focusing on the
different languages and the challenge that presents is really
interesting. I'd like for instance to allocate into my interactive
wikimedia life some time to familiarise myself with other languages,
and so I'd like to ask if anyone might have a good idea, on how we who
sit at the beckoned call of our computers, can use the technology to
assist in the familiarisation and take up of any one or other of the
those top 5 to 10 languages. For instance, I use for the French
language,
french.about.com, it is free on line. The 'about.com'
language system is from English to French, to German, to Italian, to
Japanese, to Mandarin and to Spanish. There may be more. I don't know
if it works the other way around, it probably does. That is, Spanish
to English, to German, and etc. Does anyone know of a better on line
system to use. Also does anybody know of a good 'parsing' software
that can be obtained.
Cheers,
Anne
Glad to see someone taking the general topic and possible solutions
seriously. Hope the WikiFoundation people and those in heated debate
about foundation issues do too :-)