[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[CasteloBranco]

Tom,

The fundamental difference in our views is that you talk about 
translation, and i'm talking about another thing. The projects are not 
bare translations of another language version (let's say, the English 
version). Every project (en.wiki, pt.wiki, eo.wiki) has its own 
community, which is not a group of translators. They produce the 
articles that are interesting for them, and write in a style which is 
neutral for its community. Maybe the result wouldn't be the same for 
another project, and not because i say it, but simply because these 
things take place in parallel. What i said is that the result of a 
discussion on an article in a project doesn't apply for the other 
projects, so the same article can have a version deleted in a project 
and featured in another.  The choice itself of articles which are 
considered "encyclopedic" enough to be kept may vary a lot from 
community to community.

About using English as the "transfer language", well... the knowledge 
already exists in another language, the interviews are recorded in 
native languages. Why don't we use the original language as a source? Or 
shall we ask people to make those oral citations in English, just 
because it "is the predominantly spoken language of Wikimedia"? What if 
those people can't speak English? Should they learn it first, to have 
those oral citations published? It doesn't seem very reasonable.

I think this is a very interesting project, in order to improve quality 
*specially* for other projects than en.wiki, but also - why not? - in 
en.wiki. "Specially" because the subject of those citations are surely 
interesting for those people, but maybe not for another ones.  For now, 
this is hard because of the lack of written sources, but with the Oral 
Citations projects, this can more frequently happen.

One question: with the videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, will the 
transcriptions be made on the respectives Wikisources (in Zulu, Swahili, 
Malagasy, etc.) with translations to the other versions? Or should we 
use the Wikinews, once they are interviews?

Castelo

Em 27/07/2011 12:49, Thomas Morton escreveu:
>> How about Brazilian "caldo de sururu", which is missing on en.wiki (and
>> also
>> on pt.wiki)? It's surely a lack for pt.wiki, but maybe not for en.wiki,
>>
> Perhaps this is the fundamental difference in our views; because I consider
> that a lack on *any language Wikipedia* whether pt, en, de, fr etc....
>
>
>> On wikipedias, people doesn't look for other discussions (AfD) on the
>> same article in another language before deleting an article for lack of
>> notability. So you can expect that some valid unit of knowledge in one
>> language is not surely (or automatic) valid in another.
>>
> This is not so much a problem to be looked at from the perspective of "oh
> their just not interested in X cultural articles", but from the perspective
> of how to convince editors to accept a less Y-centric viewpoint and include
> articles of relevance to X culture. This idea needs directing at en.wiki
> certainly, and probably at other language Wiki's too (because they also tend
> to have centric-attitudes needing to be overcome).
>
>
>
>> And English is not that 'global lingua franca'.
>
> It is, though, the predominantly spoken language of *Wikimedia*, at the
> moment (and that is not likely to change soon). So as a transfer language it
> is often our best bet.
>
> The point I was trying to make is that to get the material translated into *as
> many languages* as possible it needs a path of least resistance - whereby
> you have the maximum amount of translators available to process material. If
> English is no good as a "common" language from which to work on that then,
> fine, lets consider other options!
>
> There is no ideal solution yet available where we can all use our own
> languages and still interact effectively - grumping about translation
> efforts in light of that doesn't seem very constructive...
>
> Tom
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