Hello,
I just came back from a 3 weeks trip to India, where I got the opportunity for doing research for Wikimedia on two subjects:
- Recruiting new volunteers for Indian languages projects, mainly Hindi
and Gujarati languages.
My tentative to recruit new volunteers directly was not very successful, so it leads me to look for new ways of promotion. However I had a nice wikimeet with three Wikimedians in Ahmedadad. All three are computer students and only edit the English Wikipedia. Hopefully direct contact will enable us to work better together on a promotion campaign.
Instead on a bottom-up approach, I would like to try a top-down tentative, writing to officials in universities, goovernments and medias. I already started a page for coordinating this: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_South_Asian_languages_projects/... I would like to write an letter in behalf of the Foundation requesting people to spread the word about Indian languages projects. A draft is available on the page above. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.
I was also able to meet people from Blossom Charitable Trust, an NGO doing computer education in rural areas (see http://blossomedua.org). They translated computer manuals in Gujarati, the local language, which not very common, but they still use Windows in English. They would like to be part of the One Laptop Per Child project (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home). So we talked about content, free software and using software in local languages. Interesting developments will certainly come here.
- Contacting organisations and people who have some data which may be
suitable for Wikimedia projects, mainly Commons and Wikisource.
I was able to get some documents on Gandhi not available outside India: a copy of the "Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" (100 volumes!) and multimedia CDROMs. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Collected_Works_of_Mahatma_Gandhi
More important, I met people who might be able to give publication permissions for these documents and others. I was confirmed that the images and sound recordings of Gandhi published on Commons are in the public domain and that the claims of the Gandhiserve Foundation are bullshit. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
Regards,
Yann
On 25/01/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Instead on a bottom-up approach, I would like to try a top-down tentative, writing to officials in universities, goovernments and medias. I already started a page for coordinating this: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_South_Asian_languages_projects/... I would like to write an letter in behalf of the Foundation requesting people to spread the word about Indian languages projects. A draft is available on the page above. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.
I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years, languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
- d.
On 1/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years, languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of linguistic pride getting involved?
In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language. Personaly I don't have a problem with this.
On 25/01/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years, languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of linguistic pride getting involved?
I think applying it places outside the Balkans is fine. They would be an example of an edge case making a bad rule, and I would invoke "no, don't be dicks."
In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language. Personaly I don't have a problem with this.
I'd think quite a lot of people here would ...
- d.
On 1/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think applying it places outside the Balkans is fine. They would be an example of an edge case making a bad rule, and I would invoke "no, don't be dicks."
India has issues with hindu nationalism. While I don't think this has spilt over into language politics yet it is not a risk I would like to take
I'd think quite a lot of people here would ...
People had problems with decimalisation back in the day. In any case it doesn't matter. While goverments may be able to slow the things stopping them in a free societly will be near imposible.
Viva la weekend
geni schreef:
On 1/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years, languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of linguistic pride getting involved?
In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language. Personaly I don't have a problem with this.
Hoi, The refusal of the Montenegrin was not a mess. Furthermore this matter is not closed with the denial of this project.
I sincerely hope that your vision of the future will never happen. To me is is a horrible view of the future. One single language with many cultures doomed as a result. No thanks. NB where to go on a holiday, every thing is the same ... BRRRR
Thanks, GerardM
On 1/25/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The refusal of the Montenegrin was not a mess. Furthermore this matter is not closed with the denial of this project.
It wasn't exactly tidy either.
I sincerely hope that your vision of the future will never happen. To me is is a horrible view of the future. One single language with many cultures doomed as a result. No thanks. NB where to go on a holiday, every thing is the same ... BRRRR
Mexico and Argentina both speak Spanish. There are significant cultural differences.
So the idea that you need a unique language to have a unique culture is false. In the past where only a few communicated between states language differences were of little importance. Now communication is becoming more widespread and languages are becoming an increasingly significant barrier.
Mexico and Argentina both speak Spanish. There are significant cultural differences.
So the idea that you need a unique language to have a unique culture is false. In the past where only a few communicated between states language differences were of little importance. Now communication is becoming more widespread and languages are becoming an increasingly significant barrier.
—although it seems reasonable to ask how the dynamics will change once real-time machine translation becomes usable and portable—
Yann Forget wrote:
I just came back from a 3 weeks trip to India, where I got the opportunity for doing research for Wikimedia on two subjects:
- Recruiting new volunteers for Indian languages projects, mainly Hindi
and Gujarati languages.
My tentative to recruit new volunteers directly was not very successful, so it leads me to look for new ways of promotion. However I had a nice wikimeet with three Wikimedians in Ahmedadad. All three are computer students and only edit the English Wikipedia. Hopefully direct contact will enable us to work better together on a promotion campaign.
- Contacting organisations and people who have some data which may be
suitable for Wikimedia projects, mainly Commons and Wikisource.
I was able to get some documents on Gandhi not available outside India: a copy of the "Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" (100 volumes!) and multimedia CDROMs. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Collected_Works_of_Mahatma_Gandhi
Sounds like your time was well spent. Good effort!
Ec
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