Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing - Wikimedia-l

30 Nov 2008

      Only if the information is not a pack of lies. Which on a smaller wiki it probably will be. And, as I pointed out 4 posts ago, it's more valuable for Mr Botswana in English anyway.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:07:24 +0100
From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
To: moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi,
You did not get my point. The point is that inform ation in a native language is valuable by objective standards.
Thanks,
      Gerard
2008/12/1 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Have you forgotten that these are WIKIS we are talking about? It's not just a matter of translation: the technology isn't there to do it automatically and we don't have the manpower do it manually. Even if the technology were there, it's a WIKI. Unlike your friend's translations, our content can drastically deteriorate and become useless overnight if nobody's watching it.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
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Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:58:54 +0100
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From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
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To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
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Hoi,
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EMC2 is a company who sells storage solutions to big companies. I was at a
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presentation of their documentation manager. He informed his audience that
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the people who buy their products invariably state that they prefer the
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English documentation. They always get the translations as well. The benefit
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to EMC2 is that they sell more products. The translation of their
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documentation adds pennies to the pound in costs, costs that are easily
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offset by the increased sales.
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The point is that people understand things better when they are addressed in
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their own language EVEN when they can read the language that is foreign to
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them.
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Thanks,
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    GerardM

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2008/11/30 geni geniice@gmail.com
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2008/11/30 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
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Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work
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of
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human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already
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had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better
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sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
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living
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in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
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material
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available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language!
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English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African
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countries move to English or French for education above a certain
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level.
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Even if
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it only contains 1000 articles,
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~102 articles currently.
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you can already learn a lot from it. You can
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improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the
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western world.
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What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for
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that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are
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large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that
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area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly
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questionable if we would even want to.
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This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean
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that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries
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may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them
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becoming POV forks.
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--
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geni
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