[Foundation-l] Translation Commitee's meeting report (2007/03)

[Florence Devouard]

Christophe Henner wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> On the 9th March 2007, at 8h00 UTC on #wikimedia-translation,
> wikimedians had a meeting about the translation in the Wikimedia
> projects
> and about the TransCom in particular. 13 people participated at the
> meeting, you can find the list of them on meta. [1] along with the
> log.
> 
> Many issues have been talked during this two hours, and in my opinion
> this kind of meeting is really productive. The issues were:
> *The Translation Request page reform.
> *The importance of translation among the projects communities
> *How to inform the community of related and relevant issues about WMF
> *Where to work?
> *Recruitment of new volunteers and local coordinator
> 
> I will summarize the meeting, but if you have any question about the
> meeting, the transcom or the translations, you're invited to join
> #wikimedia-translation
> channel on IRC (irc.freenode/net) and leave your question or to mail
> "translators-l [at] lists.wikimedia [dot] org".
> 
> 
> == The Translation Request page reform ==
> 
> On the last transcom meeting it has been raised problems with the
> Translation Request page, next to this aphaia started to make a new
> one. She has made a great
> job and showed during the meeting what will probably be the future TR.
> We talked about the organisation of the page, what to add, remove,
> etc... the
> page is still under construction and will be set up within the next weeks.
> 
> == The importance of translation among the projects communities ==
> We all agreed that the translation was important to get more local
> volunteers involved within the Wikimedia Foundation and the Chapters.
> We talked about
> how to get more people involved in the translations. There was many
> problems interdependent. First we are actually outnumbered and the
> translations of Press
> Statement take many days, when they're translated. So we need to have
> more translators, if we want more translators, we have to take time to
> communicate with
> the community. But we also need time to translate Press Statement.
> 
> == How to inform the community of related and relevant issues about WMF ==
> So we have, and still are, talked on how to get more people involved.
> We have listed what's
> actually existing: LSS and the Wikizine. Actually none is mastered by a
> committee, we discussed on how to get the transcom more involved.
> 
> During the meeting schiste putted a stress on a test make on the
> french Wikipedia. Two announcement pages has been set up, one for the
> foundation and the second for the local chapter.
> As those pages have been created really recently and it needs a lot of
> time , we will see in few weeks how to enhanced the use of this kind
> of page.
> 
> == Where to work? ==
> Actually the transcom does work on meta., and for translations it's
> enough. But an issue has been raised, can't the TransCom become the
> core committee between
> the different communities and the foundation. On a first time we can
> continue to translate the Press Statement, and the stuff from the
> foundations, I do believe this
> kind of translations needs to be easily reachable by the community.
> meta. is a mess, newcomers can't find anything. If we want to have
> more volunteers implicated in the foundation,
> we need to be attractive. To get people involved we need to provide a
> place where the community can find easily the main information, here
> comes the idea of a "translation wiki".
> It would be a wiki with important information, press statement,
> foundation announcement, chapters report,  etc... translated in many
> languages. A wiki of this kind would be a way to
> tempt people, and get them involved either in the foundation or their chapter

Hello,

Plenty of good stuff here. And in reading this specific part, I was 
wondering if you should not discuss this with Sandy as well so that it 
be part of the other reform she is working on for communication issues.

I do not know if it is a good idea to do a transwiki. It has positive 
and negative sides. On the positive, it will be probably much easier for 
you to organise. On the other hand, less visibility to recruit new 
volunteers. Dunno.

> == Recruitment of new volunteers and local coordinator ==
> As written above, this is a more than important issue. In the next
> weeks the Translation Committee will communicate with the local
> projects in order to find new members and to involve some people
> as local coordinator. The TransCom needs to have more volunteers to
> translate statements faster, and to provide more information to the
> communities.
> 
> 
> This is a quick summary of a meeting of two hours, we spoke of some
> other stuff, but there are the more important ones. I hope the
> transCom will soon have new
> members.
> 
> 
> All the best
> 
> [1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/Trans/meetings/2007-03

I am always amazed by the number of pages translated. Kudos for that.

ant