New subject: Membership in and Wikimedia-related proposals for Advisory Commission on Strengthening Vitality of Tatar language

14 Jul 2020


      Dear colleagues,
This is to let you know that:
1. on July 6th I was named into the Advisory Commission to the Republic of Tatarstan President on the Matters of Preservation and Strengthening Tatar language vitality (Presidential decree in both Russian https://president.tatarstan.ru/legis/?law_id=303501 and Tatar https://president.tatarstan.ru/legis/?law_id=303521, state languages of the Republic) - a voluntary body consisting of regional executive and legislative government members, various recognized academicians, writers and community members, shown as Wikimedia Russia member.
2. ahead of the first in-person meeting (tomorrow, July 15th, on the premises of the Republic's Parliament), I prepared and shared in Russian https://w.wiki/Wn8 the following: (full text available in English below, copied to Commission secretary).
* (I) my personal current understanding of the appropriate survival niches for non-dominant languages in the digital era &
* (II) Wikimedia community best practices that can be applied by our worldwide stakeholders for strengthening their language position if their context is somewhat similar.
regards,
farhad
P.S. I do hope that respective undertaking might also be of benefit to other Russia and internationally based non-dominant language communities, as majority of Tatar's speakers reside outside of the Republic, where the language enjoys some public support.
P.P.S. Coincidentally, all this happened in the process of preparation towards Celtic Knot 2020 Online-only Wikimedia Language Conference https://w.wiki/HVv - our Russian Wikinews report was published today https://ru.wikinews.org/?curid=4658720
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Farhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/%C2%A0%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%BB.+79274158066%C2%A0/ skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan / Wikidata:Q34036417
I. Content niche analysis for non-dominant languages of the planet.
Country, cultural or language borders don't matter much in digital era. Irrespective of where one lives, a language which is neither national, regional auxiliary or international working language can only be preserve own importance for humans as a channel for consuming various digital content on personal hobbies:
* fishing and gardening, knitting and popular science, cartoons, football or haut couture fashion ...
* entertainment by various social, political and glamour activists and clowns from around the world
* choosing where to go for vacation or what to do on the weekend with friends or guests wherever you live (Moscow, New York, etc.)
Conscious public use of some non-dominant language to demonstrate belonging to some ethnocultural entity is only likely when the speaker is proud of one's specific identity (i.e. it is prestigious somewhere, is a basis for some positive discrimination).
II. Wikimedia community best practices and possible measures to strengthen Tatar (and other non-dominant language position) within the niche described in I.
Generating useful and exciting contemporary content in some specific language is key for preservation of its use in digital domains. But the possibility of reusing it easily and widely (without the obstacles of archaic copyright system) might be even more important, thus possible steps would be:
1. to extend CC-BY use to all Tatar content generated or published using Tatarstan's regional budget — tatarstan.ru adopted this in September 2018 (official news reprinting part of Russian Wikinews article at https://digital.tatarstan.ru/index.htm/news/1273420.htm )
2. to study possibilities of retrospective release of whatever is still "copyright locked" (all content in museums, books, magazines, schools, encyclopedias etc.) — 2018 case with Russia's first paper encyclopedia https://w.wiki/Wma , 2011 case with Kazakh Encyclopedia https://w.wiki/Wmp
3. to apply international experience of running contests and initiating projects around Wikimedia content creation or improvement (as part of Wikimedia Education, collaboration with various cultural institutions) — Basque and Welsh community experiences for secondary education https://w.wiki/Wmb would be particularly applicable (latter currently in English only, will dubb it into Russian soon), see first steps in Tatarstan at https://w.wiki/WDz
4. to use Wikidata offered opportunities to assure Tatarstan's e-gov services availability in all supported languages of the planet, and then help promoting such an approach to make all countries' and their regional e-gov services available in Tatar as well — no such examples just yet, but this knowledge base is in public domain (СС0 legal license), thus it can be not only edited, but also downloaded and then used autonomously in full or in part (keeping in mind for e-system security needs).
Note: Wikidata and Wikipedia support various alphabets. A number of Wikipedia language sections, including Kazakh, offer a choice of Arabic, Cyrillic or Latin script for content presentation (automatic transliteration).