Hi Gerard,
Wikimedia does use two letter ISO 639 codes and when they do not exist they do use the three letter codes. There are missing ISO codes. There are also the SIL codes but personally I think mixing these three codes makes a mess. Preferably ISO adds missing codes for languages.
I completely agree to this.
For cooperation to work best, things like XML can be considered. GEMET uses it, they have people knowledgable regarding thesauri XML open content.
XML is one of the best solutions as the standard for CAT (computer aided translation) software is tmx for memories and tbx for glossaries - and this is nothing else than "definite" xml codes.
When you have an application that can import and export XML data, you can work off line locally and export the data at the end of the day. The start might be the Italian Open Office list and add definitions in Italian export it and share it with the world. An even better start might be words in another wikipedia with an Italian translation; the translations TO Italian are then already known.
Hmmm ... data needs to be multilanguage, doesn't it? Or at least must be identified by language tags. To edit bilingual data we could use OmegaT (that adds language tags to the tmx 1.1 file) - then we could use the tmx-file to import data. When new terms are added to a list using the old tmx file they will be automatically given as translated so the translator just needs to translate the missing part that is stored in a new translation memory file in tmx format. OmegaT is java based, therefore platform independent and Open Source ... the created files of single "words" on the other hand could then be used as glossary files. Maybe we could try this out with the translations of the ISO languages-table.
The most important thing is to prevent double work and the continued checking of the stuff that is available. Start with producing definitions for all the Languages. Many translations are available on the nl:wiktionary. The articles can be copied to it:wiktionary just add content to some templates. They do need checking as well... :)
I'll do that right now - I just created a table with the codes and now insert the missing English names.
Ciao, Sabine