I'm an English speaker with almost no Spanish and this was my first Wikimania, so I don't have a monolingual wikimania to compare it to. To be honest I didn't use the translation service much, but it didn't significantly intrude either. But I think the idea is great and fully inline with the idea that we are building a global encyclopaedia.
The closing Spanish remarks by the head of Wikipedia Argentina needed no translation - he was obviously thanking all and sundry and I'm sure I wasn't the only "no hablo espagnol" pedian who clapped at the appropriate places. Such speeches are better made by an unintelligible enthusiast than a dull but all too comprehendable bore.
I think the big questions we will have to face in the future include:
1 Which languages have to be covered at every Wikimania? The de-facto minimum is probably now host country plus English, but that might rise in future. 2 What weighting will languages covered be given when considering bids for future Wikimanias? 3 How many attendees who only speak a particular language does it need to justify full or even partial translation? 4 With skype etc can we get the necessary translation done by volunteers over the web?
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@gmail.com:
2009/9/14 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com:
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)
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