2009/9/14 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab(a)gmail.com>om>:
Anyway these rumored individuals who said they
"wouldn't come because
it was bilingual" probably had mistaken prejudgements about the
implementation. Perhaps they thought a Spanish speaking person would
be standing on stage with the speaker translating every sentence the
speaker said?
Before the conference, I assumed correctly that there would be a track
about Latin America with most talks in Spanish, but I didn't know
there were gonna be simultaneous translations, let alone that English
talks would have Spanish translations. I don't know if this was
communicated in advance, maybe I missed that. I didn't particularly
like having the closing ceremony partly in Spanish, especially since I
wasn't expecting it and didn't grab a headset.
I'm generally supportive of the efforts to make Wikimania
multilingual, and I would support similar setups with Polish and
French (or whatever the language of the organizing city in 2011), but
I think more consideration should be taken for people who don't speak
the second language. The schedule should be more explicit about which
language(s) are spoken in which sessions, including plenary sessions,
so people don't end up attending a session they don't understand.
Also, we could do more outreach among people who speak only the second
language; I don't know what the 2009 team did about this, but when
Stallman asked (in Spanish) who didn't speak English, I saw less than
ten people raise their hands.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)