... And continuing with the previous theme of translation: Please announce the need for translating texts such as surveys, sitenotices, fundraising and long announcements (such as the recent Sue's letter) earlier. MUCH earlier.
For quite a lot of languages, even languages with millions of monolingual speakers in developed countries, there are very, very few people who bother to make the needed translations for Wikimedia projects. Sometimes there's only one such person! We all have day jobs and we do get tired every now and then.
How much earlier should it be? I did Sue's letter mostly by myself and it took me two full days. That's right: two full days. It was announced two days in advance, so i spent an entire weekend doing it. I'm a hopeless Internet geek, but i do like to take a walk in the park every now and then. As for the Editors survey, there are several people working on the Hebrew translation of that gargantuan page and we still haven't finished.
If you want to expose the text to the wide audience as closely as possible to the actual event (such as a fundraising or a survey), you may consider doing the translation in a closed site that is only open to translators, but it's not really desirable.
I'm sending this to foundation-l and not to translators-l, because people who write the original texts do not necessarily read translators-l.
Thanks again for understanding.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
How much earlier should it be? I did Sue's letter mostly by myself and it took me two full days. That's right: two full days. It was announced two days in advance, so i spent an entire weekend doing it. I'm a hopeless Internet geek, but i do like to take a walk in the park every now and then.
I definitely think that the letter was way too rushed, but that is not the norm. I can also understand the desire to try to be transparent and post notifications as soon as possible, so that's a different case. Keep in mind, though, that the banners weren't put up for the languages we were missing translations from until a few days later... so there was definitely more time than just "two days".
As for the Editors survey, there are several people working on the Hebrew translation of that gargantuan page and we still haven't finished.
I understand that it's a lot, and I really appreciate how hard you guys have been working on it (I've been watching your progress). However, I'm not sure it's really fair to say that there wasn't enough time. The workspace was originally created on March 1, more than three weeks before the due date. It's true that the translation request wasn't officially opened until March 10, but that still left two full weeks to translate.
It's also important to keep in mind that the majority of the translation requests are not needed immediately. Most of the pages, such as the ones on WikimediaFoundation.org can be done at your leisure.
For the other requests, we *are* cognizant of the fact that people have lives and even if a translation might only take two hours to do, it might be hard for you to find two hours in a row to actually do it right away. We do try to give as much time as possible.
2011/3/23 Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
I definitely think that the letter was way too rushed, but that is not the norm. I can also understand the desire to try to be transparent and post notifications as soon as possible, so that's a different case.
I'm not convinced that frontloading a waiting period and repeated calls for translation for something like the March 2011 update is the right way to go. It slows down processes, and without having an actual message out there providing context, it's not necessarily clear to translators why this or that translation project should be prioritized. In spite of no notice whatsoever, the letter was translated very quickly into quite a few languages, IMO in part _because_ anyone could see that it was a significant communication.
On the other hand, I realize that it sucks to have an English message pushed out to other languages, and it's frustrating for translators especially who know they could have provided a translation if they had been given advance notice. Perhaps we could make CentralNotice more flexible so that users can choose whether they want to receive English messages or not. Then, if you're on e.g. German Wikipedia, you could have a choice between receiving the English update when it comes out, or waiting for a translation. The English message would then also act as a notice for translators, and for internal community newsletters and noticeboards that want to pick up stuff as it happens.
Together with a more flexible subscribe/unsubscribe system for topics, this could help us to communicate more regularly and more quickly with our communities without annoying users who don't want to receive updates in a language they don't speak, or who don't want to receive any WMF messages at all.
Regardless of how we go about it, I do agree that we need documented protocols for this that WMF, chapters and others can follow, so as to not surprise or burden translators, whose work is amazing and much appreciated. :-)
- It's true that the translation request wasn't officially opened until
March 10, but that still left two full weeks to translate.*
Good for people who have nothing more to do. For people like us who have others things to do (like work and college), two weeks is not that much time - even less if you are translating that on your own.
Another good thing to do for futures requests is do it from Translatewiki (is easier translate there than in meta) _____ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/ (351) 925 171 484
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer.***
2011/3/23 Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
How much earlier should it be? I did Sue's letter mostly by myself and it took me two full days. That's right: two full days. It was announced two days in advance, so i spent an entire weekend doing it. I'm a hopeless Internet geek, but i do like to take a walk in the park every now and then.
I definitely think that the letter was way too rushed, but that is not the norm. I can also understand the desire to try to be transparent and post notifications as soon as possible, so that's a different case. Keep in mind, though, that the banners weren't put up for the languages we were missing translations from until a few days later... so there was definitely more time than just "two days".
As for the Editors survey, there are several people working on the Hebrew translation of that gargantuan page and we still haven't finished.
I understand that it's a lot, and I really appreciate how hard you guys have been working on it (I've been watching your progress). However, I'm not sure it's really fair to say that there wasn't enough time. The workspace was originally created on March 1, more than three weeks before the due date. It's true that the translation request wasn't officially opened until March 10, but that still left two full weeks to translate.
It's also important to keep in mind that the majority of the translation requests are not needed immediately. Most of the pages, such as the ones on WikimediaFoundation.org can be done at your leisure.
For the other requests, we *are* cognizant of the fact that people have lives and even if a translation might only take two hours to do, it might be hard for you to find two hours in a row to actually do it right away. We do try to give as much time as possible.
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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