Hoi, Getting content to the Internet is very much a chicken and egg problem. There is nothing and consequently nothing is added. If we want to get more content in a language in a format that can help, Wikidata is a good bet. One of the strategies is to have volunteers work on content that has a big effect. One other strategy is by using lexical data and add this to Wikidata. A lexical approach is possible when the copyright holders of the data understand that their data gains value when it is actually used. By linking significantly into Wikidata several things are achieved: - information will become available thanks to automated disamibiguation and Reasonator - images can be found because of links to Commons categories - links to Wikipedia articles in other languages become available It is relatively easy to add lexical data to wikidata. Many academic projects already link to several external sources and Wikidata is increasingly connected to such sources as well. It takes the ambition to do something for a language to make a difference. By the way big and small languages will benefit from this kind of approach including English. Thanks, GerardM On 31 December 2013 15:27, A. Mani <a.mani.cms(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

I know there are several Indian dictionaries and encyclopaedias for several languages that are available under a free license or where the copyright holder is seeking more exposure for its data / the language it has data for. My point is that particularly translation dictionaries provide an excellent basis for establishing a link to Wikidata and consequently such efforts will bring the benefits I describe.

I totally agree that there are translation dictionaries for many languages. However, putting such content to work IS a big issue.Typically such dictionaries are only available as a dead wood publication. People either have one or don't and the only thing they are good for is finding the corresponding word in the other language anyway.

My point is that such content be put to work.

Yes, I totally agree that there are issues to use many languages on the Internet. However, the WMF has in its tooling the ability to bring you webfonts and input methods for many/most languages. When we get to work with publishers / enthusiasts for specific languages we CAN add these to the existing languages. As the WMF toolkit can be used on Chrome and Firefox browsers, it means that this toolkit is very much avaiclaanble for more languages.

So yes, there are more problems but for many if not most languages content is king if we want to bring more languages to the Internet. And, yes we can when we put our lexical content to it.

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: languages. That is a fair and an extremely pertinent point. However, dictionaries (if we are using the same meaning for the word!) are by themselves merely lists of words. A lack of a freely available dictionary or, a list of translated terms is not a complete blocker to content. A lack of a strong spell checker might be. But, I wouldn't put such emphasis on an organized list like a dictionary. And, my take is that what is required is more focused and stronger investment over repeated cycles into automated translation systems, especially perhaps Statistical-MT. with Webfonts and, Input methods are aids - they seed first round of content generation and, continue to impact generation of content over a period. For example, ULS has made it possible for content creators of websites to stop worrying about having to limit themselves to a couple of languages. But, what's beyond ULS? Surely there is something that needs to be improved. Where's the plan for the "WMF Toolkit"? An analogy would be chalk and, blackboard. However, writing materials are not limited *only to* chalk and blackboard or, quills and parchment. There is a need to push sustained and well thought out efforts into creation of content that is relevant, available and, especially well curated. Unfortunately, WMF has not done much discussion in public about content translation pieces except for a thread of ideas initiated by Erik. And, I have not read any plan of action that talks about how to even think about doing this and, making it available. Then again, the content of the world is not limited to Wikipedia. Content is being created/written everywhere (even this discussion is content perhaps worth having in multiple languages) content can I am not disagreeing with your position. I am merely citing that there needs to be augmentation to the basic plumbing of languages that is already existing and, there needs to be some thought about what the next step of efforts would be. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan> _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

My point is very much that we can do things NOW. There is no need to point to things that you would like when there is so much that CAN be done. The WMF IS working on translation functionality. That may help under some circumstances but it is unlikely to help the languages that do not have a Wikipedia yet. It is not likely to help the majority of those 285 languages either.

Functionality that is probably available for many languages is transliteration This is where for instance a name is to be made available in another script. When such routines are available, we can transliterate the names of the humans in Wikidata and other types of data where we can safely assume that the transliteration is valid as a label for a languages...

What we need to decide upon is what we can do now. India has so many people that there must be at least one person who can hear this message and understand that we can build relevant information in most if not all languages of India. When we advertise the existence of relevant information in a language, more people will have a look and some will take an interest.. This is how you get to the tipping point where some people start using their language in a digital way. Using lexical data to add to Wikidata is one way, one step.. it starts with the realisation that we can make a difference now.

Which open data project and, how would such integration help create content?