[Foundation-l] Language proposal policy

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When you speak English at your level, there is no issue. When people do not
comprehend what is being written, they will not be able to make full
advantage of the existing functionality. You may state that for some readers
not all of the functionality needs to be localised; this is recognised in
the requirement of localisation for a first project in a language. This only
leaves the editors out to fend for themselves. It is for this reason that we
require full localisation for subsequent projects. We hope that the multi
lingual people of a project share our belief and continue to work on the
localisation when their project is approved. When they do, their whole
language community benefits.

Localisation is one of the few things we can do to to make life easier for
the people who speak only one language. We should not assume that a valuable
editor is multi lingual. For every living language there are people who
benefit a lot when we provide our user interface in their language.

Language localisation on the project itself in its MediaWiki namespace
represents a waste of effort. It is much easier and much more effective to
localise in the specialised environment as provided at
http://translatewiki.net.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 12:43 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What we do is done to make information available. Our main objective is
> not
> > the creation of content, but the publication of content to readers. It is
> a
> > well established fact that localisation is one of the best methods of
> making
> > our content more accessible to our readers.
>
> Is it well established? And even if it is, surely to make the content
> available to the readers only a small section of the interface is
> needed.
>
> > Andre, you and I are fortunate that both the English, the German, the
> Dutch
> > and the French Wikipedias have a continued great localisation. These are
> the
> > languages that a typical Dutch person will read. Consequently ou do not
> know
> > the problem of limited localisation because you do not experience it.
>
> You forget that I am a LONG time Wikipedian. When I came, there was no
> Dutch Wikipedia. When I went to the Dutch Wikipedia, there was no
> localisation. Did I find that unpleasant? Yes. Did I find that a huge
> problem? No. When the Dutch Wikipedia went to the MediaWiki software
> (now called phase 3), we spent quite some time translating all the
> message that then existed first. Afterward, I thought that it was too
> much. When the Frisian Wikipedia started, I advised them that they
> should definitely translate the namespace names, and apart from that
> just what they thought most important. Anything that had not been
> translated could be translated later if they needed it. And that is
> what I said BEFORE there was a Mediawiki: namespace or a Betawiki.
> Every new translation had to be submitted to a developer. But still, I
> felt that people could translate when they felt the need for it. And
> that's what I still do.
>
> > When you say that it is a bother for editors that they have to localise,
> I
> > will agree. However, all this work is necessary to make the content they
> > create more accessible to the readers. It is the readers and getting more
> > readers that everything centres around.
>
> No person will read one page less on a wiki if the block log isn't
> localised or if bureaucrats have to read the messages about changing
> account names in English. Make translation possibilities available,
> like the MediaWiki namespace and Betawiki do. What needs to be
> translated will be translated. What doesn't need to be translated,
> will take longer, maybe never. If the users themselves don't think
> incomplete interface translation is a problem, why would we come in
> and force them to change their mind?
>
>
> --
> André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
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