[Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:58 AM, Marcus Buck <me at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> Chad hett schreven:
>> However, we do have a policy (for better or worse) that currently states
>> that:
>> "The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a
>> viable
>> community and audience." [1]
>>
>> I've yet to see any information indicating that SignWriting is a primary
>> mode
>> of communication for large groups of people, much less their native method
>> of communication.
>>
>> -Chad
>>
> That sentence refers to the language. The language has to have a
> sufficient number of oral speakers (or signers). It doesn't say anything
> about the the number of people actually able to read and write in that
> language.

I disagree. It talks about a sufficient number _to form a viable
community and audience_. Only people who write are part of the
community. Only people who read are part of the audience.

> And this configuration does make sense, in my opinion. If we
> have a hypothetical language with one million oral speakers, but only a
> handful of people able to write, it will still be useful to create a
> written encyclopedia. Cause if you start to teach the one million
> analphabets how to read, they immediately have written content
> available. If there is no written content available, there is no
> incentive to learn to read. It's a chicken or egg dilemma. Why are there
> so few books in Breton? Cause there are so few people able to read
> Breton. Why are there so few people able to read Breton? Cause there is
> so few content available. (among other reasons) It's a self-energizing
> effect. The more content there is, the more interest there will be.

That may be a laudable task, but it is not our task. Our task is to
make content and information available, not to help a language in
getting used.

Reading this thread, I see that:
* creating a sign language wikipedia is going to have technical problems
* even after it is created, the majority of signers of the language
will not be able to read it or contribute, and default to 'normal'
written language instead
* there are several methods of writing sign language, and it is not
yet clear which one(s) is (are) going to be used on the long term

Seeing all this, it looks to me that sign languages on the wikis are a
lot of work to create a very likely failure.

The ideal situation would be to have an automatic conversion from
written sign language to an animation of someone making the signs.
However, that doesn't sound like something we'll see in the near
future. So for now I am very doubtful about a sign language wiki that
the majority of signers is not able to read.


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com