"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.