Geoff Brigham wrote:
WMF is getting professional translations in German,
French, Spanish, and
Japanese, and will post by Tuesday.
I know that the RfC on PRISM has already been closed, but I have only
remembered this today: what happened with the professional translations
of <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PRISM>? As far as I can see, the
German, French and Spanish translations have all been created (and then
reviewed) by volunteers, and the Japanese version isn't finished to this
day.
I'm asking this question now because I noticed that Garfield (Byrd) has
spoken about the translation of the Annual Plan into other languages in
the current issue of the English Wikipedia Singpost, saying: "I am
hoping that some key parts of the annual plan can be translated and the
Foundation is prepared to commit resources to this task."
I understand that it is the prerogative of the Foundation to decide how
they want to spend their budget, but seeing how (seemingly) badly the
translation of the relative short announcement on PRISM has been
managed, I'm not really convinced that getting professional translations
of the Annual Plan is that good an idea.
Our caring and motivated translation community has proven many times in
the past that they can provide good quality translations of even the
most important content; after long years of waiting, we now can use
wonderful software (the Translate extension) that makes the job smooth
and easy, so I'd just like us to give the volunteers a try before
spending huge amounts of money on translating stuff.
Tomasz