[Translators-l] Translations (de, fr, es, ja, pt, ar) wanted for Wikimedia Foundation report Highlights, September 2011

[Amir E. Aharoni]

I'm really not talking about Hebrew or smaller languages. I understand
that it's not important to translate everything into all languages,
even though it would be nice.

It's about choosing the right major languages. Most speakers of Hebrew
know some English; a Hebrew-speaking person who doesn't know English
very well will still be able to read that report in English with a bit
of motivation. This cannot be said about Russian speakers and AFAIK,
about Chinese, too. The Indonesian situation is probably different,
but it's an important second language for many millions.


2011/10/15 Tilman Bayer <tbayer at wikimedia.org>:
> Hi Amir,
>
> of course translations into other languages such as Hebrew are very
> welcome too ;) But it seemed sensible to start small when it comes to
> actively inviting translations for these reports.
>
> The number of people who can read a language is indeed an important
> aspect, but not the only one. The size of the corresponding Wikimedia
> communities is relevant, too. And Portuguese and Arabic were included
> for now because of their relation to geographical areas that are
> listed as priorities in the foundation's 2010-15 strategic plan.
> Indeed the text which is to be translated mentions WMF activities that
> are of particular relevance to these two language communities.
>
> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> This is curious.
>>
>> Is the idea to translate it to as few languages as possible and to
>> make it readable to as many people as possible? It's a good idea from
>> the practical point of view, but is the languages list based on a
>> calculation or just on a guess?
>>
>> I don't have precise data either, but my guess would be that adding
>> Chinese, Russian and Indonesian would fulfill the idea better. But
>> again, basing it on data about the number of people who can *read*
>> these languages is the right thing to do.
>>
>>
>> 2011/10/15 Tilman Bayer <tbayer at wikimedia.org>:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> as many of you might be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation publishes
>>> regular monthly reports about its work
>>> (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Foundation_reports,
>>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_engineering_reports
>>> ). Translations of the entire reports do not seem feasible, but we
>>> would like to try this with an "Highlights" excerpt consisting of
>>> basic financial and traffic data, together with a combined selection
>>> from the most notable activities of both the general and the technical
>>> report about September.
>>>
>>> Please consider helping non-English-language Wikimedia communities to
>>> stay updated on the most important WMF activities and MediaWiki
>>> development work of the past month, by providing a translation into
>>> German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese or Arabic at
>>>
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011
>>>
>>> It would be great if it were possible to send a posting announcing
>>> completed translations on Wednesday (October 19).
>>>
>>> Many thanks!
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tilman Bayer
>>> Movement Communications
>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Translators-l mailing list
>>> Translators-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l
>>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Movement Communications
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
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