[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the Wikimedia Foundation

[Aphaia]

On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> The more I ponder this statement the more I dislike it. Forget
> dissemination -- what about knowledge collection? As if knowledge only
> exists in English, or major European languages. The "language barrier"
> goes both ways. To access some of the world's oldest and most classic
> texts, we should also advocate teaching everyone classical Chinese.
> How likely is that? The gift of accessing information in your native
> language should not be underestimated by those who are lucky enough to
> take it for granted.

Well said!
Once I was interviewed by Nick Hill, I stressed this point - that is
why I am involved into project: thinking in your native language is,
even if it seemed to be strange for the majority, *a genuine
privilege*. Most of languages on this planet have such advantages in
occasion to be initiated into the intellectual world. Besides some
languages which lack writing system, there are thousands of people
whose governments don't provide the educational opportunity in their
native languages. If you are educated only in your mother tongue, you
are highly privileged. And personally I think it is unfair: we human
being is equally invited to heir the wealth of human beings? But I
find no equal opportunity in this situation.

You may remember the thread "why Indian editors are not interested in
their native language projects". One of answers is here; in India as
same as other countries, middle and high education is provided mainly
in English. High educated people are familiar to think in English. And
English is even one of their government official language. It is not
their mother tongue though, but they can claim English is one of India
languages. But OTOH it is still no their mother language.

> The principle of multilinguality is what really gives Wikimedia
> *global* participation and therefore WMF a global voice and global
> influence. That is something amazing that I am not really aware of
> anyone else... anywhere... doing on the same scale. It deserves proper
> recognition -- I think the "in their own language" should be
> re-appended.


So principally I think we share a same stance, Brianna. On the other
hand I am a bit hesitant to add "in their own language" as the way
once proposed. Because of their current situations - most of those
language lack terminology to describe highly developed knowledge for
example - it wouldn't go straightly I am afraid. We need coinage
perhaps but ... well, is it really our tasks? To create enormous
vocabulary for resources we would like to provide? I am not sure and
at a corner of my brain a motto "avoid original researches" is
blinking ...

Another case is the case of bi/multilingual. We also see an example on
Indian language projects and Indian editors ... "Their own languages"
don't meant their native languages exclusively in that case.

I would therefore like to retain a mention to our favor to
multilingualism basically and in a modest way. Like "to help people
having knowledge in their (own?) languages as far as they want". For
example, an Ainu native who is basically educated in a Japanese
educational system, I suppose, would prefer to read something, eh, for
instance about financing, or in some cases about their own ethnic
culture, in Japanese, not in their language.  However, with such
complication, I still agree it will be far great to mention to
promotion of multilingualism in a certain way. I would appreciate
people/person who proposed it on Frankfurter retreat.


-- 
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *