What i say here about Hebrew may be useful for many other languages, too.
I am translating the Editors survey into Hebrew. The survey is written as a long series of questions in the second person ("you"). In Hebrew the second person is very gender-dependent - the wording is significantly different for women. When translating MediaWiki messages, we more or less manage to avoid it and though it's not perfect and we should use {{GENDER}} more, it's not a disaster. In the survey, however, it would be very, very bad with all the personal questions about family life etc.
It's not just a matter of being politically correct and welcoming - the language simply doesn't natural.
Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i write two versions of the survey, for example "Hebrew-masculine" and "Hebrew-feminine" and let the reader switch it? The results can be combined later.
Thanks a lot for the understanding.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
Hi Amir, I understand your concern. As a woman, I would not be happy to answer questions that are addressed to a man. But it is near impossible to have two versions of the survey in Hebrew due to technical reasons. Is it possible to rewrite questions with options for both gender? For example, he/she. Thanks Mani
Mani Pande, PhD Head of Global Development Research Wikimedia Foundation Twitter: manipande Skype: manipande
On 3/22/11 4:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
What i say here about Hebrew may be useful for many other languages, too.
I am translating the Editors survey into Hebrew. The survey is written as a long series of questions in the second person ("you"). In Hebrew the second person is very gender-dependent - the wording is significantly different for women. When translating MediaWiki messages, we more or less manage to avoid it and though it's not perfect and we should use {{GENDER}} more, it's not a disaster. In the survey, however, it would be very, very bad with all the personal questions about family life etc.
It's not just a matter of being politically correct and welcoming - the language simply doesn't natural.
Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i write two versions of the survey, for example "Hebrew-masculine" and "Hebrew-feminine" and let the reader switch it? The results can be combined later.
Thanks a lot for the understanding.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I guess that if it's really impossible, we'll think about something, but i'm just curious: What are the technical reasons? Does LimeSurvey have a limited list of languages? Isn't it open source? Can't anyone just add another language to the list, saying "Hebrew-feminine"?
2011/3/22 Mani Pande mpande@wikimedia.org:
Hi Amir, I understand your concern. As a woman, I would not be happy to answer questions that are addressed to a man. But it is near impossible to have two versions of the survey in Hebrew due to technical reasons. Is it possible to rewrite questions with options for both gender? For example, he/she. Thanks Mani
Mani Pande, PhD Head of Global Development Research Wikimedia Foundation Twitter: manipande Skype: manipande
On 3/22/11 4:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
What i say here about Hebrew may be useful for many other languages, too.
I am translating the Editors survey into Hebrew. The survey is written as a long series of questions in the second person ("you"). In Hebrew the second person is very gender-dependent - the wording is significantly different for women. When translating MediaWiki messages, we more or less manage to avoid it and though it's not perfect and we should use {{GENDER}} more, it's not a disaster. In the survey, however, it would be very, very bad with all the personal questions about family life etc.
It's not just a matter of being politically correct and welcoming - the language simply doesn't natural.
Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i write two versions of the survey, for example "Hebrew-masculine" and "Hebrew-feminine" and let the reader switch it? The results can be combined later.
Thanks a lot for the understanding.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
I guess that if it's really impossible, we'll think about something, but i'm just curious: What are the technical reasons? Does LimeSurvey have a limited list of languages? Isn't it open source? Can't anyone just add another language to the list, saying "Hebrew-feminine"?
It's possible, but it's not something that we're involved in.
Their translation hub is here: http://www.limesurvey.org/en/contribute/translations-status. You may want to e-mail their community translations manager to see if they have any way to support that type of feature.
It's important to remember, though, that we don't really have any easy way of getting their gender from the wiki they're on. Even if this were enabled in LimeSurvey, it might not be easy to actually use. :-(
Mani Pande recently wrote:
But it is near impossible to have
two versions of the survey in Hebrew due to
technical reasons.
Mani Pande previously wrote:
As for Lime Survey, it is a great open source tool that is able to meet all our needs.
These statements seem incompatible.
Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would be a high priority.
Was a "post-game report" ever done following the UNU-Merit survey in 2008? I mean something like a list of dos and don'ts for the next survey.
MZMcBride
Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i write two versions of the survey, for example "Hebrew-masculine" and "Hebrew-feminine" and let the reader switch it? The results can be combined later.
Actually, this is technically possible in LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey has the ability to display a particular question based on the response to a previous question. So for instance, if question 1 was: Select your gender: * Male * Female
You could then display different versions of any of the other questions based on the result of that question.
Arthur
Actually, this is technically possible in LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey has the ability to display a particular question based on the response to a previous question.
For the curious, documentation on 'conditional' questions in LimeSurvey can be found here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Setting+conditions&structure=English+Instruct...
Incidentally, there's a 'Gender' question type available in LimeSurvey - documentation can be seen here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Question+type+-+Gender&structure=English+Inst...
Arthur
Arthur, thank you so much for this reply!
The Hebrew translation of the survey is practically complete. It would take us just a few minutes to create a version for women, who will, without doubt, appreciate it. (There are women among the translators, too.) If there's a chance that it will be used, we'll create it.
Is there anything else that we can do to make this work? Maybe we can help copying the answers to LimeSurvey? I have no experience with it, but i am willing to invest some time in learning from someone who has.
This is a chance to create a very positive precedent!
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
2011/3/23 Arthur Richards arichards@wikimedia.org:
Actually, this is technically possible in LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey has the ability to display a particular question based on the response to a previous question.
For the curious, documentation on 'conditional' questions in LimeSurvey can be found here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Setting+conditions&structure=English+Instruct...
Incidentally, there's a 'Gender' question type available in LimeSurvey - documentation can be seen here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Question+type+-+Gender&structure=English+Inst...
Arthur
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 3/24/11 6:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
8< Is there anything else that we can do to make this work? Maybe we can help copying the answers to LimeSurvey? I have no experience with it, but i am willing to invest some time in learning from someone who has.
Amir, I think this is a question for Mani. I know she already has a team of folks for getting questions into LimeSurvey, but not sure what the process will be like. I punt this to her :)
Arthur
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would be a high priority.
It wasn't "mislabeled", why would you think that it was? The nouns in many languages have genders, and the default for that case is almost always male. It's not very fair, but females are used to it. :-) It certainly wasn't "mislabeled".
Hoi, I have asked women from different communities about this, I have asked men from different communities about this. For some languages the compromise is not one of selecting either but using unnatural language. For some languages women indicate that not being addressed properly makes them less inclined to participate. In the Russian Wikipedia they use templates to show namespaces depending on the gender of the person involved. For quite a number of languages we are waiting for this software to be implemented in our live environment with ready localisations.
Mislabeled suggest a choice. As a result of our ongoing ability to implement gender in the strings it is only now possible to have gender specific name spaces. We do not have the functionality yet to have logs that are gender aware. We do not have a tool yet to localise / proof read only those messages with gender functionality.
Our internationalisation has improved considerably over time and we are better able to treat both men and women with the respect they are due. Thanks, GerardM
On 23 March 2011 20:14, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would
be a
high priority.
It wasn't "mislabeled", why would you think that it was? The nouns in many languages have genders, and the default for that case is almost always male. It's not very fair, but females are used to it. :-) It certainly wasn't "mislabeled".
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Casey Brown wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would be a high priority.
It wasn't "mislabeled", why would you think that it was? The nouns in many languages have genders, and the default for that case is almost always male. It's not very fair, but females are used to it. :-) It certainly wasn't "mislabeled".
I was mostly referring to this post by Sue.[1] I'm not sure what better term I could use to describe a situation in which female editors are labeled site-wide as male editors in languages in which there is a proper alternate form. Given that there are now efforts under way[2] to correct this, I think it further underscores that there was a mislabeling of editors.
MZMcBride
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2011-February/000171.html [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28052
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org