[Foundation-l] Supporting languages is supporting people

[Mark Williamson]

...

On 28/10/2007, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> When you consider the localisation of messages, the messages can be divided
> in two. There are messages that are project specific and there are messages
> that have a global reach. When people localise messages, we do not ensure
> that the effort on the global messages has a global effect. The best place
> at this moment to localise messages is in the BetaWiki. A project that
> should be a Wikimedia Foundation project. Its functionality should exist in
> the Incubator and any localisation work done on MediaWiki that is global
> should be happening in this one central place.
>
> To make sure that localisation is efficient, the technology needs to be
> improved. It needs to have a priority. We cannot maintain the localisation
> for more than 250 languages and assume that it will be ok. It is not OK. A
> fifth of the languages that MediaWiki is said to support is not supported in
> MediaWiki. The percentages of localisation for many languages is dismal.
> This hurts the usability of MediaWiki. The reason for all this is that the
> localisation and the maintenance of the localisation does not get the
> attention that it requires.
>
> In my opinion the maintenance of MediaWiki and its localisations is a
> responsibility of the Wikimedia Foundation. There needs to be a plan to have
> the required resources available on a sustained basis. Consequently the WMF
> needs to acknowledge its responsibility because only then can we find, fund
> and implement the solutions that work.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> On 10/28/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 10/28/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Resources and investments also imply labour.
> > ...
> > > As long as the User Interface is
> > > not localised it is not yet ready to go life for the people to find
> > > information in their language.
> >
> > I don't understand what your argument is. You seem to be talking about
> > priorities in MediaWiki development, but then you talk about interface
> > localisation - which is a matter for the project participants who
> > speak the language and can actually translate the interface, not for
> > Foundation people.
> >
> > --
> > Stephen Bain
> > stephen.bain at gmail.com
> >
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> >
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