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@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