[Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:40 PM, Marcus Buck <me at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> Andre Engels hett schreven:
>>> nd 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.
> Are you sane? That's _exactly_ our task! Give access to information to
> people, who nobody else cares about.
> English Wikipedia is a great project, but almost all information in it
> can be found elsewhere on the internet. There are other online
> encyclopedias, databases, private and institutional websites, Google
> Books. English Wikipedia is just a more convenient way to access the
> information out there. It saves you time sorting out the good and bad
> information on the world wide web. That's it, a convenience tool. But a
> well-developed Yoruba Wikipedia or Gan Wikipedia or Sango Wikipedia or
> [add in here one of hundreds of other languages] could be the only
> easily accessible information resource at all. Nobody cares about giving
> information access to the five million Sango speakers or the hundreds of
> thousands signers. We should care! I doesn't cost us much. Well,
> actually it doesn't cost us anything.

You grossly misunderstood me. What I claimed was NOT that we should
not be making information available in 'smaller' languages. What I
want to claim is that we should do so to make the *information*
available, not to help the *language* develop. Wikipedia is there to
spread the information. We should have Wikipedia in Yoruba and Sango,
not because that helps develop the Yoruba and Sango _languages_ to get
more useful and have a higher status, but because it helps the Yoruba
and Sango _speakers_ to get the information they want.

And that's where I have my doubts about sign language, at least at
this point in time - even among those who have (say) ASL as their
first language, literacy in English or Spanish seems to be a lot
higher than that in sign language. A Yoruba or Sango speaker may be
able to use an English or French Wikipedia quite well to get
information, but would be helped even better if the same information
were available in their mother tongue. A signer on the other hand is
likely to have less difficulties understanding written English than
written sign language.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com