Hi all,
I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala Wikipedia
As you can see, the interface is not just in Lingala, but rather there is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each message, followed by a translation into French.
Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would grudgingly accept the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who were responsible, however:
Most of it is the work of http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo .
Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a basic command of Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-0" -- cannot understand Lingala.
Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but there is more:
There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki, HOWEVER nearly all of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only a sentence translated.
Some of the longest:
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually entirely in English, not French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili -- only page title translated, entire article is in French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto -- in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B -- entirely in French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa -- entirely in English http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)
Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default interface language.
The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning. I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those few which were 100% Lingala.
I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to a monolingual Lingala speaker.
I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.
The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that:
1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the other two where they are either fully translated, or not; 2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're substubs; 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the administrators stated that it's important that French is in the interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to speak pretty good Lingala.
Mark