[Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/3/5 Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com>:
> The fact that http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/Trans#Core_set_of_languages
> is now marked as "obsolete" disappoints me. It seems to mean that
> multilingualism has been rejected.

This is an interesting idea that should be revived.

Put mildly, Wikimedia really shouldn't be focused on English. There
are a lot of people who don't know English and don't plan to learn it;
to paraphrase Larry Wall, it is not occasionally forgotten, but
occasionally remembered.

A UN-like model, with several major languages, into which important
Foundation releases *must* be translated, is a realistic solution that
will enable more people to read them. This, however, also poses the
danger of perpetuating current linguistic conflicts. For example,
translating the WMF blog into Chinese will allow a lot of people who
know Chinese, but not English, read it, but it will yet again put
Chinese above the regional languages of China; the same can be said
about Russian, Spanish, French, Indonesian and other major languages.
Nevertheless, done properly, it's better than staying English-only.