That's not a real problem, but for not Dutch people it's quite difficult to prononce it ;) French people can't prononce "Rijksmonument" :pand for a lot of persons a National Heritage Site have more meaning than a word which sounds like monument.
My comment was a general one. If someone want to find the monuments protected in nederlands needs to know this word. So he loose time to find this word first. Of course he could find it, but no body knows how to do a "perfect search" on Commons...
Well, if I want to search "National Heritage Site in Nederlands" and most of descriptions of the images are not in English and if also the category not in English, I will find with the commons research, and also google research configurate to research only in Commons, I'll find only the files which a description with a mention of "National Heritage Site" and "Nederlands". Certainly peanuts. Well I'm speaking about English because it's one of the most spoken languages. But we need to keep in mind that everybody do not speak English very well.
Translating categories will increasethe efficience of the search and the visibility of Commons.
You could but a sondage on yours wikipedia about Commons, you'll see few people like to search on it...
Florian Farge aka Otourly Sur lesprojets wikimédiens et l'Association française,sur OxyRadio, OSM, et sur MOVIM Socio di Wikimedia Italia
De : Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com À : Otourly Wiki otourly@yahoo.fr; Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org Envoyé le : Lundi 1 Août 2011 14h26 Objet : Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Re : Identification structure on Commons, a must have before 1 september.
Thanks for the replies!
Maybe what we need to do here is brush up our English. In my reality, living in the Netherlands, a "Rijksmonument" is a concept of a building that has a certain stamp-of-approval from the Dutch government. This building is so important to the cultural heritage of the country, that they put a blue-and-white label on it (and a brown label on it, and a white label on it,.. OK I won't bore you with more details).
I could call this building a "National Heritage Site" using the English term as it is used in the US, or I could call it a "Listed building" as that term is used in the UK, but what I really want to call it is a "Rijksmonument", since that is what the Dutch government and the Dutch tourist offices call it. Using the Dutch term makes it clear also for people interested in heritage. I vote to use the Dutch term, and guess what? That is also what is used on Commons. It may not be strictly English, but it is the internationally correct term to use, as it is defined in the Netherlands. Therefore, I vote to call this an English term!! http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rijksmonumenten Ergo, let's do this for all countries (yes even for those cyrillic users!)
Jane
2011/8/1 Otourly Wiki otourly@yahoo.fr
Yes all commons categories are in English or should be in English. I still dream that these categories should be translated with an English base. I'm speaking about a real translation of categories, not about redirects which are not a solution.
Because for more efficient search on commons, we currently have to search on wikipedias and then use the link given by the template commonscat (or derivative) when it is there.
Direct search don't give the same ressult in every language. In one hand commons should be a multilingual and multimedia bank online, in another hand all is done to not use commons directly...
But it's another debate... Florian Farge aka Otourly Sur lesprojets wikimédiens et l'Association française,sur OxyRadio, OSM, et sur MOVIM Socio di Wikimedia Italia