I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace the term "African languages" with "languages in developing regions." Speakers of Pashto, Tajik, and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong Wikipedia just as much as the speakers of Swahili.
Danny
Yes... we need to help out these Wikipedias. I suggested on the Wikipedia mailing list one time something that would allow people who don't use the Internet to mail in articles for Wikipedia. The proposal generally specified for improvements of the English Wikipedia, but I think we should focus more on having "wiki ambassadors" in these regions to help collect articles and upload them to their respective Wikipedia.
On 8/27/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace the term "African languages" with "languages in developing regions." Speakers of Pashto, Tajik, and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong Wikipedia just as much as the speakers of Swahili.
Danny
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace the term "African languages" with "languages in developing regions." Speakers of Pashto, Tajik, and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong Wikipedia just as much as the speakers of Swahili.
Danny
Hoi, For your information, I am on record that I need MediaWiki developers who speak a mothertongue that is part of different language families. I need this because http://wiktionaryz.org , intends to have all words of all languages and support all languages with a localised User Interface. As you may remember, the original goal of WZ is to be able to include all the information that is contained in the existing Wiktionary projects but have all the data in one database.
As you may know, and Danny certainly does, I am actively looking for partners to make this happen. Africa is different in many ways from Asia. It has problems of its own and one of the problems from an Internet pov is the isolation of the individual countries. Traffic from many African countries to other African countries go via Europe or America. The ISP's have to pay for receiving content from abroad the result is an abysmal price structure and poor service.
I have contacts both in Asia and in Africa and I am looking for the localisation of MediaWiki. It helps WiktionaryZ as it helps all the MediaWiki projects. There is nothing paternalistic in it; I do it for my own reasons. I hope to create a win-win situation by making sure that the benefits are evenly divided. When at this moment more attention is given to the unique problems of the African wiki, it has more to do that at this moment the focus is on African languages rather than on Asian languages. The Asian languages as a whole do much better than the African languages anyway.
My ambition is to localise MediaWiki for ALL languages from Ghana, Nigeria, India, Australia.. I know it is likely I will only achieve this for the major languages as a start, but it is good to be clear about ambitions. My ambition is to have all the languages of Australia and all the other languages as well. We already have portals for the Australian languages, it is unlikely that they will do well, then again most of the people who spoke many of these languages are gone. Australia is not a developing region without Internet infrastructure. Australians just seem not to have an interest for their indigenous languages.
It is imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not that simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African settings.
PS At WiktionaryZ we now support Serbian, Thai and Ido, all in all some 40 languages and we have almost 500 people who signed on to the project. I do not know how many Expressions or DefinedMeanings we have. :)
Thanks, GerardM
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace the term "African languages" with "languages in developing regions." Speakers of Pashto, Tajik, and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong Wikipedia just as much as the speakers of Swahili.
This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be incredibly useful.
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
Who is? I have not seen this.
The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world, simultaneously. I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
Who is? I have not seen this.
The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world, simultaneously. I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
--Jimbo
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Jimbo,
If I can help here, let me know. I could generate a machine assisted translation for them to start with to get them bootstrapped. I posted what I would need to get started with it. I know you would prefer people speak with their own voices, but that me be very hard in the case of some of these obscure languages where literacy is a big problem or language drift or small pockets of native speakers who are isolated like small islands in an ocean of english speakers. I suspect what has been happening to us with Native Languages is also occurring over their, and many of these groups may be in danger of loosing their languages already or experiencing language drift between communities.
I am available to assist here.
Jeff
Jimmy Wales wrote:
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
Who is? I have not seen this.
The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world, simultaneously. I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
I think the fear being expressed, or in any case the one I'll express, is that there are a bunch of Americans and Europeans saying that we ought to do such-and-such about African languages, or such-and-such to change African societies for the better---basically, paternalistic attitudes that the enlightened Westerners have arrived on their glorious steeds of Information to fix the problems of Africa. See also, [[en:white man's burden]].
A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we treat all other languages. Even though quite a few Westerners are interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
Who is? I have not seen this.
The same problems exist for languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66 articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20 million speakers and only 6 articles)?
I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world, simultaneously. I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
I think the fear being expressed, or in any case the one I'll express, is that there are a bunch of Americans and Europeans saying that we ought to do such-and-such about African languages, or such-and-such to change African societies for the better---basically, paternalistic attitudes that the enlightened Westerners have arrived on their glorious steeds of Information to fix the problems of Africa. See also, [[en:white man's burden]].
A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we treat all other languages. Even though quite a few Westerners are interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
-Mark
Nod. There are a couple of things we can do, I think, without being paternalistic. It is simply to "tell them". To tell them about our projects. To tell them about "free content". To tell them how they can participate and develop their own language project.
And to make suggestions about how they could push more (maybe by paying an editor in chief, maybe by organising a conference, maybe by having advertisment on Wikipedia in a local journal, maybe by visiting a school). But then, I think that's their business to do what is needed once they have the cards in hand (the platform).
ant
On 8/29/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Nod. There are a couple of things we can do, I think, without being paternalistic. It is simply to "tell them". To tell them about our projects. To tell them about "free content". To tell them how they can participate and develop their own language project.
True, if you have a chance to talk with them either online or offline.
And to make suggestions about how they could push more (maybe by paying an editor in chief, maybe by organising a conference, maybe by having advertisment on Wikipedia in a local journal, maybe by visiting a school). But then, I think that's their business to do what is needed once they have the cards in hand (the platform).
There is another kind of helping you can offer. Visit those wikis regurally. Patrol their RC, removing spams, invite anon editors to register (sadly perhaps not in their own language, but something is better than nothing in most cases), encourage registered editors to get more involved into projects: localize their interface, be familiar with some MediaWiki gimicks (e.g. Template etc), share the Wikimedia Project know-how (Meta:Request for permissions etc. Most of newbies have no clue on that at first time), suggest them some useful communication channels, just as like you talk to a newcomer on your home wiki. Or formerl test wiki on meta or now on Incubator. You can do those without being patarnalistic, you just have them shorten the time they need to be more involved just from the Wikilove for your co-editors.
Delirium wrote:
A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we treat all other languages. Even though quite a few Westerners are interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
Ok. But that's because there *is* a Chinese community, quite healthy and active.
It is a bit harder when, 5 years on, we seen little signs of life, and some good ideas about why we don't see signs of life. In such cases, I think it is not paternalistic to think about how we can proactively help to create a community there. A community, I hasten to add, of native speakers.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we treat all other languages. Even though quite a few Westerners are interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
Ok. But that's because there *is* a Chinese community, quite healthy and active.
It is a bit harder when, 5 years on, we seen little signs of life, and some good ideas about why we don't see signs of life. In such cases, I think it is not paternalistic to think about how we can proactively help to create a community there. A community, I hasten to add, of native speakers.
Yep.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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