[Translators-l] localisation of the fundraiser within chapter regions

This year there are three chapters running fundraising campaigns: Germany, France and Switzerland. There are about 20 indigenous non-state languages with WMF projects within the three chapter regions plus other languages with significant numbers of speakers living within these regions. In past years there have been many difficulties in localising the fundraiser within these regions, resulting in the fundraiser, sometimes including the central notices, appearing in a different language to the wiki language. This has several effects, all bad: 1)   The number of donors is likely to be very low. 2)   The reputation of the wiki is lowered for its readership, and also the reputation of WMF, the chapter, and the translators. 3)   The translators give up in disgust. Since many translators were unaware that the chapters wouldn't use the translations done on meta, we wasted time making translations which most wiki users (those living within the chapter regions) couldn't see. The translators also couldn't check that their translations had been correctly published on meta. The only information provided by the fundraising team (eventually) was a tiny note at the bottom of the translation hub on meta, which you had to scroll down to find. No e-mails had been sent to translators, no posts had been done on the translators-l list and no posts had been put on the Wiki community pages, either by WMF or the chapters.  When queries were raised, with WMF, the chapters or on meta, they often went unanswered, or the replies were unhelpful. The situation last year for Alemannic, as far as its translator could tell, was: Switzerland: Promised to add Alemannic but nothing happened. France: Jimmy letter published in Alemannic Germany: Reply received that nothing could be done for technical reasons. I wish to propose the following: 1) If the chapter cannot or will not support the localisation of the fundraiser, then if a wiki has at some time past or present, translated the fundraiser banners on meta, it should be allowed to request (after reaching a consensus) that the fundraiser banners be removed from the wiki, or redirected to WMF (which is localised). 2) If the fundraiser is allowed to be localised within chapters, then - the chapter should communicate with the wikis.  It could post on the community pages of its indigenous language wikis (and possibly any other languages with significant numbers of users within their region), explaining how to contact them with regard to the localisation of the fundraiser. Posts to translators-l list and on the fundraiser translation page on meta would also be useful. In practice, the worst part of the fundraiser to appear in the wrong language are the banners. - the chapter could have a translation hub on its own wiki, similar to the one which Wikimedia UK had last year ( http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2011_Fundraiser/translation ), to organise the localisation of the chapter-specific fundraiser texts. - meta should liaise with the chapters, including during the testing phase, so that the fundraiser (especially the banners) appear in the correct language at all times. I have copied the post to the fundraiser 2012 translation talk page on meta ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012/Translation ), so that discussion can continue there, off this list but still in public. Eleri James ________________________________ From: Michael Wolf <milupo(a)sorbzilla.de> To: Wikimedia Translators <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Thursday, 15 November 2012, 22:19 Subject: Re: [Translators-l] 24 Hour Global Fundraising test - issues? problems? Hungarian appearing as Turkish? Joseph Seddon schrieb: Hi Joseph, seems that anybody had the glorious idea to use the chapter country language again. I see always the current banner in German, no matter what Wikipedia I am in. That's terrible, a discrimination of the Wikipedias of language minorities. The same shit as in the last years. Therefore Eleri doesn't see the banner in Cymric. The main language of the UK chapter is English and here for the chapter in Germany it is German. That the banner should appear in Upper Sorbian Wikipedia in Upper Sorbian and in Lower Sorbian Wikipedia in Lower Sorbian is ignored. When the responsible people learn that there are minority languages and not only "big" languages? In 2009 all was still OK. I coulkd even translate all Fundraising texts and they were shown in the Wikipedias. Since 2010 this is useless but at least the centralnotices were shown in the Wikipedia language. This doesn#t work anymore as well. Michawiki _______________________________________________ Translators-l mailing list Translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l