Hoi,
Yannf has added a category "language" to the categories that hold the
words in a language. This gives you one list with all lists of words in
a particular language. To make it really nice, he is adding links from
one list of words in a language to the same list on a different
wiktionary. This makes it possible to compare content between the
different wiktionaries.
A category displays how many entries there are on a list; I have used
this on the "nl:Hoofdpagina", the main page, to indicate how many
languages we may have words in.
Thanks,
GerardM
On the 13th of november, the steamboat of "Sinterklaas" arrives in
Alkmaar. People in the Netherlands and particularly the kids of the
Netherlands welcome the "Sint" from his summer residence of Madrid
Spain. With his boat loaded with presents for the kids who have been
good, the kids await the nameday of the Sint and on "pakjesavond" the
evening of the 5th of december the Sint will, on his white horse and his
black helpers who are all called "Piet", bring the presents to the
waiting kids..
Sinterklaas who is actually from Mira Turkey and lies burried in Bari
Italy, is the predessesor of the Santaclaus who everybody knows comes
Finland and brings the presents on Christmas on his sledge with reindeer
.....
This year, we have started a nice Christmas project. The Italian
wiktionary who will be centre stage for this,
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21 is a
page where you find "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!" in many
languages and some have pronounciations. There is already a sizable
collection but, it is not complete, it is not always correct and as
importantly, we want to HEAR how it sounds in all these languages !!
The best place to store all these .ogg soundfiles is in our Commons
project. For the use of pronounciations, the wiktionary project has come
up with a naming convention: first the ISO 639 code and then the word or
phrase e.g. "image:it-Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!.ogg" is the one
for Italian.
One way in which wiktionaries can join in is by also hosting all these
merry wishes in their wiktionary with sounds and everything. Another way
is by including other seasonal wishes as well. The wikipedia's can join
in by having article on "Celebrating Christmas" and inform us how
Christmas is celebrated in various communities, the rituals and
traditions, the festivities. In Wikibooks we could do something with
Christmas stories or songs from all over the world. One way in which we
all can join this project is by enjoying it and have a great happy
Christmas and a wonderfull new year.
Thanks,
Sabine Cretella
Gerard Meijssen
Some days ago Gerard and I talked about "what would happen if we start a
subproject with just one sentence to be translated/checked in as many
languages as possible". Really I don't remember how we started to talk
about "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year", but I myself did something
similar last year on my private wiki, just with "Merry Christmas" and I
am now adding the translations step by step to the Italian wiktionary.
You can have a look at this here:
http://wiki.wesolveitnet.com/wakka.php?wakka=MerryChristmas
and Gerard had a list of "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year" in many
languages
For now the pages are present on the Italien wiktionary here:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categoria:Terminologia_natalizia
(as you can note: from one sentence we are already on "some pages")
Babbo Natale = Santa Claus
Buon Natale = Merry Christmas
Bon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo! = Merry Christmas and a happy New Year
Cristo = Christ
Natale = Christmas
albero di Natale = Christmas tree
presepe = crib
caldendaro d'avvento = advent calendar
calendario di Natale = advent calendar
avvento = advent
In the meantime I started to contact single people to ask for help
checking the translations that are already there. I am writing single
messages to people of that specific language - people who normally
contribute to wikipedia (checking out how they work on wikipedia and how
likely they should contribute). Two out of ten answered/checked/amended
things. The same percentage is valid for translators I contacted directly.
At this stage it is useless to transfer these long lists of translations
to other wiktionaries - they need proffreading first. Only after
proofreading we can really start to work on this theme everywhere. This
means that now I am concentrating on contacting people who could help me
writing myself some kind of logbook of what I did, who I contacted and
who answered. (and this means at least one e-mail for every single
language).
What would be quite urgent for proof reading "jobs" and for special
requests for single translations is a list of people we can ask for
certain language combinations.
Example:
English-Dutch: Gerard
English-German: myself
English-Italian: myself, my former business partner
German-Italian: myself, my former business partner
Italian-German: myself, my former business partner
English-Turkish: Funda
English-Bulgarian: Stanislav
English-Azerbaijani: Metin
(of course including e-mail addresses)
If we had a list like this made of only wikipedians/wiktionarists we
could send them a short mail without long explanations inserting the
link together with the language combination to check - they go there and
just do it and answer with "OK" as soon as it is done - so we don't need
to check if it has been done and if we did not receive an answer within
X hours/days we can send the same request to another person of the list.
In addition to those people who know how to work with wikis we should
think about a second list of people, outside wiktionary - they can then
try to insert things (and ask for help on how to do this) and this would
lead to new users and contributors or they just can send amendments to
be made by mail to the person who made the request (sometimes it would
be hard for someone to make amendments if the request e.g. is
English-Hindi and the amendment should be made on the Italian
wiktionary). Even this, over the time will result in more people
contributing as sooner or later these people will ask how to work
directly as we give value to them and their expertise.
But: these people should at least have the possibilty to show that they
are contributors for wiktionary - maybe adding them to a list online. I
am trying to do this for the Christmas project here:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Utente:SabineCretella/Ringraziamenti
And if possible I would like to add a link to their homepage if you
agree - since they contribute (of course only if they would like to add
the link themselves).
Anyway I will create the list for myself if we don't want to do this
"for all" as I see it as the only reliable way to ask for help if we
create small subprojects. People can only contribute if they know where
their help is needed.
Of course there will be always those who come online, check the last
changes and add some parts, add new words etc. - and they are of course
more than welcome. But sometimes there is the need to contact single
persons to have checked things out and I find it a better way to ask
single persons instead of bothering many many people who potentially are
not interested through a mailing list.
So now my request: who on this list would be available for
checks/requests for single words in which language combination(s)? I
need your help for the Christmas terms and a second subproject I already
prepared offline some time ago (I'll start adding this later on - all
this depends on other work to be done).
btw.: I just created a separate e-mail address for wiktionary - I am
going to use that one for term requests in order to have everything that
concerns terminology in one subfolder: wiktionary(a)wesolveitnet.com - it
will be available in approx two hours.
I know that basically what I wrote here is quite a lot of work (I am
doing it right now) but there's no alternative for now - we don't have a
database - we have wikis.
Comments, help, ideas are highly welcome.
Ciao, Sabine
--
Sabine Cretella
s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it
Phone: +39-340-18098278
Skype: callto://sabinecretella
Meetingplace for translators
www.wesolveitnet.com
Hoi,
There are many languages that are not in the ISO 639 codes. There were
suggestions of using the ethnologue codes for these. As there is also a
ISO 639-4 code, I think it would suggest that we use this one in stead
for use within wiktionary.
ISO-639-4 is currently in the RFC state (request for comment).
Thanks,
GerardM
Hoi,
Sabine told me that the -sound- template was not well named as it is not
a header. She is absolutely right it should be {{sound}}. I am in the
process of fixing this.
Thanks,
Gerard