I have just started to look into the translation requests. I wonder a
couple of things, and I bring it to the list since I am sure there
must be plenty other translators in similar situations.
The pages for the current fundraiser will only be used for a couple of
weeks, but many other pages remain for a long time. Those pages
generally get changed and updated as reality changes. In the current
translation requests, there is for example the page on the Board, and
on the current staff. In both cases, new people will come and others
will leave. If a page like this is translated and not updated, it
looks very bad. Old or wrong information is often worse than no
information at all, and in this case outdated translated info will
prevent people to instead visit the corresponding page in a language
where the info is correct.
If I translate a page, I can not promise to be here to update it
later. If my local community was bigger - and/or more generally
interested in stuff above the local community level - I could count on
other people replacing me, but as things are now I can that is
something I can hope for but not count on. If we don't implement some
kind of system to deal with outdated pages, I am a little afraid of
translating such pages. I feel that in the end I might have done more
bad than good.
How can we deal with outdated translations? One _could_ tag a
translated page saying which version of another page it is translated
from. Others who don't speak the language in question can then decide
whether the information is too outdated to be around, and somehow
remove the page - I suppose redirecting it to the English, or other
suitable, version is a working idea. Does anyone have a better
suggestion?
/habj
Different languages translate real names to varying degree. Do you
translate the name "Wikimedia Foundation" to your individual
languages, or do you leave it as it is?
For a start, I did translate "Foundation" to "Stiftelsen" ("Wikimedia
Foundation" => "stiftelsen Wikimedia"). I took Wikimedia for the name,
and "foundation" as a description. Then I was told that WMF
technically actually is not a foundation, but a non-commercial
company. If the WMF actually is not a foundation it seems misleading
to translate the word "Foundation", and anyhow translations of true
names is a troublesome business. Currently I most of the time
abbreviate it "WMF", which seems smoother than writing "Wikimedia
Foundation" over and over in Swedish text.
Has this been discussed anywhere? Has the Board, or anyone else,
voiced opinions?
/HB
Hello,
Thank you for your translation of the Wikimedia FAQ, former
[[Wikimedia:About Wikimedia]]. The new version is very uptodate and
informative. I love to read it ... if you haven't, please visit the
page. I would invite all to visit the page, all those who are
interested to be involved into the Foundation level activities.
Now we are translating the page ... I'd like to inform you that we
made recently two big changes to the original. It would be nice to
reflect to your version(s).
1. "WMF in 2007" part is removed (just before "Contact us").
2. Danny Wool has added some information to the FAQ about Wikia and its
relationship to the Wikimedia Foundation, just before "Contact us".
This part can be found
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_is_Wiki…
The meta source version (En) is already identical with the website
version, but I haven't touched to the ongoing translations. We'll
appreciate your careful check for synchronizing your version to the
original.
The past version of this page "About Wikimedia" was available in eight
languages including English; Es, Fr, Ja, Fi, Nl, Ru, Tr and Zh.
Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi everybody!
So as you may have noticed, we've been running our big year-end
fundraiser for Wikimedia. The site keeps getting bigger and more
popular, and we need to bring in money to run our servers, keep our
internet connection up, and pay the small office and tech staff that
keeps things humming so everybody can keep Wikipedia and friends fun and
exciting.
But the the visual notices on the site to show people the status of the
fundraising have been... not as well organized as we'd like.
In particular, the notices (especially those which mention organizations
matching public donations, which are slightly controversial) have not
been laid out, shown to the community, and provided to translators ahead
of time.
I'd like us to improve that situation, if possible.
The first quick thing I'm doing is to take a more direct hand in the
fundraising notices and making sure they're available to translators. I
hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, but I would like to get a little
more involved with the translators to prepare things for software
changes as well as this immediate fundraiser issue. :)
For today only there is a notice about matching donations by Virgin
Unite, which hasn't been widely translated yet.
I know, I know, last minute stuff... but in the future there will be
others; we will have at least one other matching donor during the course
of this fundraising run. If possible I'd like to make sure we have this
notice translated more widely by the end of today, and I definitely hope
we can have it ready in most languages for the next one, which will
happen in a couple of weeks.
I've put a generic one-line matching-donation notice up for translation
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenoti…
Some wikis probably already have this translated locally, so can be
copied back to this master page for later reference. Others maybe
haven't updated yet, or are even on an older version altogether.
It's my hope that for the next one we'll be more organized ahead of time
and we can get these things to you guys on time.
Thanks to everybody; it's a big help and I hope I can hold up the other
end of things when asking for things in the future. :)
Feel free to send me hate mail / love letters. Getting your communities
to comment on the form of the notices for the future is also very
welcome; we don't want these things to be surprises like they were for
many today.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Forgive me if this is the wrong forum, I am still pretty confused
about all this...
These two are not very similar.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
Which one should be translated? OK it is fairly late so I guess most
of those that are not yet translated will not be. Maybe some of them
needs updating? But which version is the valid one?
/habj
habj,
I am very pleased that you have brought the problem up.
I had a suggestion some time ago, which is related to this problem, but at that time I have not brought it to public attention.
My concern was translating an organisational document such as the bylaws which could possibly change with time, and my thoughts were well founded. I started to translate the bylaws, but found that a new one was already discussed.
I suggested that such documents should have an Issue number attached to them, so that the translator is aware which version he is translating. The superseeded articles could, or perhaps should be archived. I also envisaged that such articles should have the date of issue, the name of the board member who authorised its creation and/or approved it. With translations Translator and Copy editor would substitute the names of the Authoriser and Approver.
I now came up with another problem and suggestion.
When we send messages to a group of people such as Translators for easy reference we leave the original text in the response, which after a number of responses can grow to a fair size and it is a waste of time searching through all these to see what is new.
What I would suggest is that if we would write our response in a different police style (eg Arial), and/or size we could easily see the latest communication, which thereafter could be changed bach to the original for the next response.
A third problem is knowing who translates what ? When the community is not large enough for a translation coordinator, but more than one person is prepared to do translation work a system ought to be set up which tells you if a translation has been taken into hand or not. Once it has been translated, it is true, we have a record of further stages of the document, such as copy editing etc, but we ought to signal immediately as soon as someone starts a document.
It is of course possible that some of the solutions to these problems are already being solved or have been solved. They are thoughts, which might reduce any time wastage.
LouisBB
----- Message d'origine ----
De : habj <sweetadelaide(a)gmail.com>
À : translators-l(a)wikimedia.org
Envoyé le : Samedi, 23 Décembre 2006, 11h20mn 21s
Objet : [Translators-l] What to do with outdated translated pages?
I have just started to look into the translation requests. I wonder a
couple of things, and I bring it to the list since I am sure there
must be plenty other translators in similar situations.
The pages for the current fundraiser will only be used for a couple of
weeks, but many other pages remain for a long time. Those pages
generally get changed and updated as reality changes. In the current
translation requests, there is for example the page on the Board, and
on the current staff. In both cases, new people will come and others
will leave. If a page like this is translated and not updated, it
looks very bad. Old or wrong information is often worse than no
information at all, and in this case outdated translated info will
prevent people to instead visit the corresponding page in a language
where the info is correct.
If I translate a page, I can not promise to be here to update it
later. If my local community was bigger - and/or more generally
interested in stuff above the local community level - I could count on
other people replacing me, but as things are now I can that is
something I can hope for but not count on. If we don't implement some
kind of system to deal with outdated pages, I am a little afraid of
translating such pages. I feel that in the end I might have done more
bad than good.
How can we deal with outdated translations? One _could_ tag a
translated page saying which version of another page it is translated
from. Others who don't speak the language in question can then decide
whether the information is too outdated to be around, and somehow
remove the page - I suppose redirecting it to the English, or other
suitable, version is a working idea. Does anyone have a better
suggestion?
/habj
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Hello, 'morning (at least for Asian folks)
I've scanned the page - we have now six language versions. Thank you
all for your help.
I would however like you to examine your version, fellow translators,
because I am afraid now no version hasn't reflected with the previous
mail of Brad; "donor" was replaced with "friend": donatore anonimo,
doador anônimo, anonieme donateur and (einen) anonymen Förderer. I
have no idea what Hungarian words mean.
We will appreciate your consideration if this change can be reflected
to your version.
Personally I am wondering if that modification is within copyediting
which is only meaningful within English context and hard to transfer
to other languages, but it is good to examine if this slight
difference can be expressed in your own language.
Since Japanese doesn't say herein "friend", I replaced the word in my
former version with an equivalent of "benefactor" and then
"supporter". Such modification could be worthy to consider.
And I would like to stress that this request hasn't been closed yet,
if you are unsure if your language version has been done, please give
a look to the meta page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenoti…
Cheers,
On 12/20/06, Brad Patrick <bpatrick(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I was corrected. We will say "anonymous friend" instead of donor.
>
> Aphaia wrote:
> > Hello guys n' girls,
> > here is a brand-new request for translation and it is very important,
> > because it is based on contract with the Foundation and a third party
> > anonymous donor.
> >
> > Sentence is:
> >
> > "Your contribution today will be matched by an anonymous donor."
> >
> > We'll greately appreciate your cooperation on translation on the page
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenoti…
> >
> >
> > It contains three links to the Foundation wiki; Fundraising page,
> > Fundraising FAQ and Wikipedia "anonymous". Please make the translation
> > of this one-line message first and then check if those links leads
> > visitors to appropriate pages. But now, this request is in our highest
> > priorities. Let us go!
> >
> > Cheers,
>
--
KIZU Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
Hello guys n' girls,
here is a brand-new request for translation and it is very important,
because it is based on contract with the Foundation and a third party
anonymous donor.
Sentence is:
"Your contribution today will be matched by an anonymous donor."
We'll greately appreciate your cooperation on translation on the page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenoti…
It contains three links to the Foundation wiki; Fundraising page,
Fundraising FAQ and Wikipedia "anonymous". Please make the translation
of this one-line message first and then check if those links leads
visitors to appropriate pages. But now, this request is in our highest
priorities. Let us go!
Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* Nessuna poesia prima di noi *