To help in the discussion of the ASL/English wikipedia I have made a sample (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerc). The hand icon there is there to indicate the paragraph is signed. Click on the number one after it to go to the page with the signing that is housed off the Wikipedia site. The deaf adults and students who have seen this are ready to start building more as they see it as a very valuable and accessible tool for acquiring information.
While it is possible to use simple Wikipedia to build a sign augmented simple wikipedia there are several problems. One the word "simple" can have a negative connotation," simple" meaning "not smart" as in Simple Simon. That would infuriate many in the deaf community and doom the project. If videos were housed on each users individual server then a person who wants to change the video that does not have access to that particular server would be unable to do so thus defeating the goal of wiki.
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
To reiterate an earlier point. ASL is a natural language and deserves a Wikipedia like any other natural language. The users of ASL are bilingual in ASL and English to varying degrees (some totally fluent in both, most more fluent in only ASL) and the languages influence each in the deaf community. ASL has many signs borrowed from English orthography. There is no common ASL orthography. Attempts at using SignWriting and other orthographies have not caught on even after 20 years.
Making an ASL/English Wikipedia will provide the deaf community particularly students a powerful learning tool. An encyclopedia is a learning tool, not simply a collection of articles.
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
I've been using the internet for around 10 years, and I don't remember anything looking like Wikipedia...
Making an ASL/English Wikipedia will provide the deaf community particularly students a powerful learning tool. An encyclopedia is a learning tool, not simply a collection of articles.
Why does it need to be bi-lingual again, yet can't be hosted on the english wiki?
On 9/16/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
I've been using the internet for around 10 years, and I don't remember anything looking like Wikipedia...
oops. Should be "anything looking like Wikipedia back then".
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote: <snip>
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
I'm on dialup, you insensitive clod. If videos *are* used in a signed Wikipedia, there will never be paper copies, and you will make in inaccessable to everyone except those fortunate enough to be on high incomes in Europe or North America, most of whom can read well enough that they won't go to the bother of learning how to use whatever technology is required to produce signed articles. If this is the road you end up going down, you can take your project, stick it in a pipe, and smoke it.
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
Text was the baseline. Today's baseline is text and pictures, not Flash and streaming media. Go over the baseline and everyone loses.
How would you feel if the Foundation said "We're not going to have any content in anything other than Esperanto because we think that everyone should be capable of learning this language"?
Alphax wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
<snip>
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
I'm on dialup, you insensitive clod. If videos *are* used in a signed Wikipedia, there will never be paper copies, and you will make in inaccessable to everyone except those fortunate enough to be on high incomes in Europe or North America, most of whom can read well enough that they won't go to the bother of learning how to use whatever technology is required to produce signed articles. If this is the road you end up going down, you can take your project, stick it in a pipe, and smoke it.
First of all ASL is only used in North America. When there will be no "paper copies" there is no real loss given the current amount of paper copies. So I do not know what you have been smoking and that is a *need to know* in order to get a similar experience
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
Text was the baseline. Today's baseline is text and pictures, not Flash and streaming media. Go over the baseline and everyone loses.
How would you feel if the Foundation said "We're not going to have any content in anything other than Esperanto because we think that everyone should be capable of learning this language"?
Even when supporting signed languages is a bit tricky at this moment in time, it is not an excuse to not want to support signed languages. When we start supporting signed languages and it is currently a bit problematic, it does not mean that it will remain problematic over time.
Thanks, GerardM
First of all ASL is only used in North America. When there will be no "paper copies" there is no real loss given the current amount of paper copies. So I do not know what you have been smoking and that is a *need to know* in order to get a similar experience
This is incorrect. Quite a few websites say it's also used in African and Asian nations as well, and one of those sites is enwiki.
Mark
Mark Williamson wrote:
First of all ASL is only used in North America. When there will be no "paper copies" there is no real loss given the current amount of paper copies. So I do not know what you have been smoking and that is a *need to know* in order to get a similar experience
This is incorrect. Quite a few websites say it's also used in African and Asian nations as well, and one of those sites is enwiki.
Exactly. So how are these people going to be able to access an ASL Wikipedia, if it's sole content is huge video files? If there was a symbolic way of representing sign language that could be put on paper, it wouldn't be a problem.
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
ASL (like all sign languages) should be a text encyclopedia written in a generally accepted orthography for ASL; users who cannot read the orthography (illiterate users) may utilize tools to generate computer-generated signed videos from the text, the same way that an illiterate English-speaking person may use a speech synthesis tool to have an article in English read to him.
Kelly
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
ASL (like all sign languages) should be a text encyclopedia written in a generally accepted orthography for ASL; users who cannot read the orthography (illiterate users) may utilize tools to generate computer-generated signed videos from the text, the same way that an illiterate English-speaking person may use a speech synthesis tool to have an article in English read to him.
Kelly
Hoi, The question of cost is something that is something that should be seperate from this discussion. In the past I have informed the Wikimedia community that Kennisnet would be willing to undertake the streaming of content for Wikimedia. I did ask Jan-Bart if Kennisnet would be willing to host signed content. I have not had an answer yet.
Many organisations are willing to spend a considerable sum of money to help people like the deaf to have the resources that other people take for granted. The idea that because of the "cost of video" we would not be able to do these things is therefore premature. The conclusion that a signed language needs to have an orthography is not necessarily correct. Mark has informed us quite correctly that many deaf people do not know how to write their signed language in one of the representations of signed languages. Technically I am not sure that you can call them orthographies.
There is *no* generally accepted orthography for any of the signed languages. Even the computer generated videos are not generally accepted. Calling people who cannot read one of the "orthographies" illeterate is a bit of a stretch. Typically illitereate is used for the inability to understand the pervasive written language. Typically this would be written English in America. When you require people to write one of the "orthographies" in order to contribute to an ASL wikipedia, you will disqualify most of the people who can sign ASL. This means that what you want a Wikipedia to be (the ability of everyone to contribute) a dream. "I have a dream ...."
Thanks, GerardM
How is it that computer-generated videos are not generally accepted? Their level of proliferation is extremely low, for one, so it's not like they've had much of a chance.
Second of all, even though it may not be perfect, sign-synthesis technology is certainly at such a level where it should be comprehensible to anybody.
Perhaps rather than asking Kennisnet if they're willing to host content in signed languages, you should ask if they're willing to host over a terrabyte of data for every signed language in Wikipedia.
And the further issue that signed language boundaries and spoken language boundaries don't always coincide is a major one. What of ASL users in Mexico? Would it be user-friendly to make them use a bilingual English-ASL Wikipedia?
Mark
On 16/09/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
ASL (like all sign languages) should be a text encyclopedia written in a generally accepted orthography for ASL; users who cannot read the orthography (illiterate users) may utilize tools to generate computer-generated signed videos from the text, the same way that an illiterate English-speaking person may use a speech synthesis tool to have an article in English read to him.
Kelly
Hoi, The question of cost is something that is something that should be seperate from this discussion. In the past I have informed the Wikimedia community that Kennisnet would be willing to undertake the streaming of content for Wikimedia. I did ask Jan-Bart if Kennisnet would be willing to host signed content. I have not had an answer yet.
Many organisations are willing to spend a considerable sum of money to help people like the deaf to have the resources that other people take for granted. The idea that because of the "cost of video" we would not be able to do these things is therefore premature. The conclusion that a signed language needs to have an orthography is not necessarily correct. Mark has informed us quite correctly that many deaf people do not know how to write their signed language in one of the representations of signed languages. Technically I am not sure that you can call them orthographies.
There is *no* generally accepted orthography for any of the signed languages. Even the computer generated videos are not generally accepted. Calling people who cannot read one of the "orthographies" illeterate is a bit of a stretch. Typically illitereate is used for the inability to understand the pervasive written language. Typically this would be written English in America. When you require people to write one of the "orthographies" in order to contribute to an ASL wikipedia, you will disqualify most of the people who can sign ASL. This means that what you want a Wikipedia to be (the ability of everyone to contribute) a dream. "I have a dream ...."
Thanks, GerardM
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 9/16/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
There is *no* generally accepted orthography for any of the signed languages. Even the computer generated videos are not generally accepted.
Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language, to merit a Wikipedia of its own. If ASL signers are not willing to accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis software). It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community. Also, having to rerecord the video every time an edit is required basically means that the ASL Wikipedia won't be a true Wikipedia, just a translation of parts of the English Wikipedia.
Basically what I'm saying is that it's not unreasonable for us to expect the deaf community to "meet us halfway" on this issue.
Kelly
Kelly Martin wrote:
Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language, to merit a Wikipedia of its own. If ASL signers are not willing to accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis software).
Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...
It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a relatively small community (the blind).
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.
Timwi
1) Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute, 16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare. That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
2) It's my opinion that if Wikipedia were to be based more on spoken than on written materials, we should rely more on speech synthesis. Do some people have problems with speech synthesis? Yes. Is some software of better quality than other? Yes. Can some software be difficult to understand if you're not listening very carefully? Yes. But it's certainly better, I think, than having to re-record an article every time a revision is made.
3) What about unwritten spoken languages? Should they get their own Wikipedias, or should they just be uploaded as spoken translations of enwiki articles? It doesn't make sense to me to limit ASL to videos uploaded to enwiki.
Mark
On 16/09/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language, to merit a Wikipedia of its own. If ASL signers are not willing to accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis software).
Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...
It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a relatively small community (the blind).
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.
Timwi
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
- Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute, 16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare. That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
- It's my opinion that if Wikipedia were to be based more on spoken
than on written materials, we should rely more on speech synthesis. Do some people have problems with speech synthesis? Yes. Is some software of better quality than other? Yes. Can some software be difficult to understand if you're not listening very carefully? Yes. But it's certainly better, I think, than having to re-record an article every time a revision is made.
It is your opinion, yes. But why not have the deaf decide it for themselves. We can start a project that does not have the "ideal" infrastructure. We have done that before with Commons and we can do it again for signed languages. When you make the video for an article in multiple parts, eg a paragraph at a time, the article is modularised and only those paragraphs are replaced that need replacing. I think there are many ways of making it work more easy. I am not going to learn signing, but I will also not make the road to the realisation of a signed wiki unnecessary complicated by insisting on things I am not aware off or that are not for me to decide.
- What about unwritten spoken languages? Should they get their own
Wikipedias, or should they just be uploaded as spoken translations of enwiki articles? It doesn't make sense to me to limit ASL to videos uploaded to enwiki.
Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is that people ARE asking for ASL.
Mark
On 16/09/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language, to merit a Wikipedia of its own. If ASL signers are not willing to accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis software).
Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...
It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a relatively small community (the blind).
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.
Timwi
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
- Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute, 16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare. That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
There are also people with less than a gigabyte on their home computer, and dialup internet. And how you do you propose that people view these articles? Media policy is that all videos should be Ogg Theora, so first they will need software that can view the files, and if a one-paragraph article is 16MB, how big will a full-length article be?
Alphax wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
- Videos take up heaps more space than audio. A very short sample
article (the English version was only 4 or 5 sentences long, a total of 88 words compared to the average 348.6) turned into a 1.5 minute, 16MB video. Now, imagine a much longer article -- the average article on enwiki is 348.6 words long. Now, multiply that by 100000. Then, add to that the fact that there are over 100 signed languages in widespread use in the world today, and you get a perfect nightmare. That ends up with over 600TB of video... an astronomical amount of space, not to mention the bandwidth costs. Angela said that space and bandwidth aren't a concern -- I sincerely doubt that anybody has that much space to donate to such a project. And that's just the first hundred-thousand articles, at the level plwiki is today.
ark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
There are also people with less than a gigabyte on their home computer, and dialup internet. And how you do you propose that people view these articles? Media policy is that all videos should be Ogg Theora, so first they will need software that can view the files, and if a one-paragraph article is 16MB, how big will a full-length article be?
We can only do the things we can do. When people have computers that are not able to use particular data, then it is a shame. It is however not a reason not to start new projects. Over time there will be more people who can use this data. Thanks, GerardM
Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is that people ARE asking for ASL.
The problem is they're asking for ASL/English bilingual Wikipedia, which is a bad idea.
Mark there are people that have a terabyte in their home computer. Also you make it seem that all these articles will miraculously apear. I am sure that it will take a long time before we have 10.000 articles in ANY of the signed languages. To get there, we need people who are seriously committed to the project. So the problem is not what you make it seem.
And who are these people? The last time I checked, the high-end computers had 80 gigs. Maybe it's up to 100 or 200 now. But I sincerely doubt a terabyte.
As I noted previously, the Sicilian Wikipedia reached over 2000 quality articles within less than a year of existance. That was with one dedicated contributor. Now, according to the mysterious HJH, there are tons and tons of people who can't wait to start building this bilingual ASL + English Wikipedia. If this is the case, I'd not be surprised if it reached over 1000 articles within a few weeks or even a few days, and quickly surpass 10000 as well.
It is your opinion, yes. But why not have the deaf decide it for themselves. We can start a project that does not have the "ideal" infrastructure. We have done that before with Commons and we can do it again for signed languages. When you make the video for an article in multiple parts, eg a paragraph at a time, the article is modularised and only those paragraphs are replaced that need replacing. I think there are many ways of making it work more easy. I am not going to learn signing, but I will also not make the road to the realisation of a signed wiki unnecessary complicated by insisting on things I am not aware off or that are not for me to decide.
This is not the first time you have assumed things about me which you have no way of knowing.
Here you assume I'm hearing rather than deaf. What are you making this assumption based on? You've never even met me. So stop assuming I'm a hearing person.
And then, you say "insisting on things I am not aware of" -- what is it here that I'm in over my head on? I knew that ASL was used in places other than the US and Canada, when even Mr HJH didn't. I knew about sign-synthesis programs based on autonomous signed languages entry rather than machine translation, when he didn't.
Now, I agree that there are ways of making it easier. But sign synthesis is certainly one of them. It saves heaps of space and bandwidth, and you told me deaf people don't like it -- are you deaf or HoH?
I can live with sign or speech synthesis if it saves that much bandwidth. It's not nessecarily pleasant or perfect, but systems are being improved, and again, if it saves that much resources, I'm certainly willing to make the sacrifice.
You say earlier (in different wording of course) that people with lower-end computers can go screw themselves... well, then, why can't people not willing to tolerate sign synthesis just go screw themselves???
Well Mark, let us cross this bridge when we meet it. The difference is that people ARE asking for ASL.
Perhaps what you're not understanding here is that that was an analogy rather than a completely unrelated question that I asked for no reason. Why should ASL be tied to enwiki? It deserves an independent Wikipedia, despite your continued insistence to the contrary.
Mark
Mark Williamson wrote:
- What about unwritten spoken languages? Should
they get their own Wikipedias, or should they just be uploaded as spoken translations of enwiki articles? It doesn't make sense to me to limit ASL to videos uploaded to enwiki.
It's not a question if they should or not. It's simply impossible to create an encyclopedia on the internet based on the wiki system without writing and reading.
Arbeo
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Timwi wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language, to merit a Wikipedia of its own. If ASL signers are not willing to accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis software).
Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real human...
It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a relatively small community (the blind).
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.
When we decide to experiment and have a Wikipedia project in signed languages, it will be a seperate wiki. It does not have to slavely follow what a particular project has done because that would imply that a signed language is considered less important than the written language. The community of those that sign have a culture that is to a large extend seperate from the spoken culture.
When people decide to sign articles that exist in a current project, it means they either "finger" the text or they have to translate the text. With fingering the sign language is not done justice, with translating they should have the room to do a proper translation. A proper translation does imply that the text is not literally translated but that it is rephrased to make use of the best idiom giving the context of the text.
It is also expected and respectable to have new articles that do not exist in the written wikipedias. This only reflects the difference of the culture and the signifcance given to other subjects.
Thanks, GerardM
--- Timwi timwi@gmx.net schrieb:
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular revision.
This indeed seems to be the most sensible approach. In my opinion a project "Signed Wikipedia" (starting with ASL and adding more sign languages later if there is sufficient interest) is a much more promising option than trying to cobble together a hybrid ASL-English encyclopedia.
Arbeo
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Arbeo M wrote:
Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia.
This indeed seems to be the most sensible approach.
No, no, no!
If I were saying 'I think French translations of Wikipedia articles should be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia' everyone would be looking at me as if I were insane.
Frankly the gross ignorance about language bursting out of the seams of this thread is very, very disturbing.
Cheers,
N.
Gerard Meijssen napisa³u:
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 9/16/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
There is *no* generally accepted orthography for any of the signed languages. Even the computer generated videos are not generally accepted. Thanks, GerardM
Can't we support all ortographies and automatically convert between them, like with simplified/traditional Chinese?
Kelly Martin wrote:
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
If every enwiki editor opens a gmail account, we have 2.6 GB * 437,457 users = more than a million GB, or more than 1000 TB. Should be enough (-;
Gerrit.
Gerrit Holl wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
If every enwiki editor opens a gmail account, we have 2.6 GB * 437,457 users = more than a million GB, or more than 1000 TB. Should be enough (-;
I have approximately 250 invites across accounts. Who wants one?
On 9/16/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
You are kidding, right? You want a 16MB video attached to each article in enwiki? That would take up, what, about 10TB? Are you going to pay for that storage array? How about the added bandwidth?
It's likely that Ourmedia.org would be able to collaborate with us on this and provide bandwidth via the Internet Archive. There are various issues with a sign-language project, but storage and bandwidth need not be one of them.
Angela.
To help in the discussion of the ASL/English wikipedia I have made a sample (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerc). The hand icon there is there to indicate the paragraph is signed. Click on the number one after it to go to the page with the signing that is housed off the Wikipedia site. The deaf adults and students who have seen this are ready to start building more as they see it as a very valuable and accessible tool for acquiring information.
We all believe you already. That's not the issue here.
Videos could be stored on the Commons and linked to from the English text page but the video file size limit would need to be increased dramatically from 2MB. The sample video in the link above is about 1.5 minutes and is 16MB.
I hope you realise that 16MB is a lot of space just for one article. At that rate, just 1000 articles will vastly deplete server resources. The Sicilian Wikipedia reached over 2000 articles within less than a year of its creation. If we expect the same of an ASL Wikipedia using streaming video, the space and bandwidth requirements will be astronomical.
Making Wikipedia able to handle video will make it more up-to-date. Text and pictures were top-o -the-line in the '80's.
Wikipedia is already able to handle videos. Small videos. Like a video of hands clapping, or of fireworks. Not videos that are 1.5 minutes long.
To reiterate an earlier point. ASL is a natural language and deserves a Wikipedia like any other natural language. The users of ASL are bilingual in ASL and English to varying degrees (some totally fluent in both, most more fluent in only ASL) and the languages influence each in the deaf community. ASL has many signs borrowed from English orthography. There is no common ASL orthography. Attempts at using SignWriting and other orthographies have not caught on even after 20 years.
You're actually wrong here, surprisingly enough. There are plenty of ASL users from Mexico who know no English, also from other countries where ASL is used but English is not taught to most deaf people.
Mark
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org