[Foundation-l] A heads up

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The most important part of the multi lingual problem is not in the
description but is in finding a picture of a subject. It means that we have
to have a functional and searchable termbase. The key to enabling the use of
Commons is help in finding pictures on a subject. This does not need much
translation effort because you need to add the word Pferd only once.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2009/7/16 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com>

> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Gerard
> Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > OK, there are *many* pictures of a marc'h on Commons... Now pretend that
> you
> > cannot find what this is in English. Try to find it on Commons.
>
> Noone disputes that this is a problem. And if we had an unlimited
> number of volunteers fluent in all languages adding descriptions to
> images, it would easily be fixed. But if that were the case, we
> wouldn't have this discussion in the first place.
>
> Image descriptions are, first and foremost, limited by the languages a
> user (who is willing to write these descriptions) speaks. Of all these
> languages, the user will (if he has time and ability to write one or
> two descriptions) chose maybe his native one, and the one that will be
> useful for most people - English. (And yes, more people speak Chinese,
> but few Commons editors do).
>
> Once again, ugly reality triumphs over wishful thinking. At least
> until we can get some 10K Indonesian-speaking editors.
>
> Magnus
>
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