[Wikimedia-l] A proposal towards a multilingual Wikipedia

Wed Aug 7 08:21:58 UTC 2013

I thought so myself, but then I did a bit of research to figure out the
state of natural language generation. I could not find easily a current
state of the art, but I found this list of examples on the KPML website
that is linked from the proposal, they are from 1998:

<
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/langpro/kpml/genbank/R3b12-English/Docu/ENGLISH-reuters-mismatches-19981209/index.html
>
<
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/langpro/kpml/genbank/R3b12-English/Docu/ENGLISH-nigel-exerciseset-mismatches-19981209/index.html
>

There are examples like:
"Analysts say that the private position is far more sensible, because it
leads to much needed capital for European computer and semiconductor
companies, while giving them a toehold in the lucrative Japanese domestic
market."

"Because of its importance, any reaction of the sixty people whose
televisions are attached to the system is monitored closely."

Since they managed it 15 years ago, I believe we can do it too. At least
try and fail.
Even if the complexity of our sentences does not raise that high, it seems
to me that there is plenty of content that would be beneficial to make
available.

Cheers,
Denny

2013/8/7 Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada <emijrp at gmail.com>

> This may work very fine for little stubs about repetitive stuff, like the
> introductions of cities (location, population, foundation date, country,
> etc). But, how will that work for the rest of sections of Berlin (history,
> geography, politics...)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
>
>
> 2013/8/7 Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrandecic at wikimedia.de>
>
> > I have been thinking about this for a while, and now finally managed to
> > write it down as a proposal. Details are on meta on the following link,
> > below is the intro to the proposal:
> >
> > <
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia
> > >
> >
> > I tried to anticipate some possible questions and provide answers on the
> > page. Besides that, I obviously hope that Wikimania could provide a place
> > to start this conversation. And yes, I am aware that the proposal would
> > lead to a very restrictive solution, but imagine what good it already
> could
> > achieve! And since it is not meant to replace anything, but enrich our
> > current projects... well, read for yourself.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Denny
> >
> >
> > Wikipedia provides knowledge in more than 200 languages. Whereas a small
> > number of languages are fortunate enough to have a large Wikipedia, many
> of
> > the language editions are far away from providing a comprehensive
> > encyclopedia by any measure. There are several approaches towards closing
> > this gap, mostly focusing on increasing the number of contributors to the
> > small language editions or to improve the provision of automatic or
> > semi-automatic translations of articles. Both are viable. In the
> following
> > we present a proposal for a different approach, which is based on the
> idea
> > of multilingual Wikipedia.
> >
> > Imagine a small extension to the template system, where a template call
> > like *{{F12}}* would not be expanded by a call to the template
> > Template:F12, but rather to Template:F12/en, i.e. the template name with
> > the selected language code of the reader of the page. A template call
> such
> > as *{{F12:Q64|Q5519|Q183}}* can be expanded by Template:F12/en into
> > *“Berlin
> > is the capital of Germany.”* and by Template:F12/de into *“Berlin ist die
> > Hauptstadt Deutschlands.”* (in the example, the template parameters
> Q5119,
> > Q64 and Q183 refer to the Wikidata items for capital, Berlin and Germany
> > respectively, which the templates query for the label in the respective
> > language). Sentence by sentence could be created in order to provide for
> a
> > simple article.
> >
> > That wiki would consist of *content*, i.e. the article pages, possibly
> just
> > a simple series of template calls, and *frames*, i.e. the templates that
> > lexicalize the parameters of a given template call into a sentence (Note
> > that “sentence” here should not be considered literally. It could be a
> > table, an image, anything). The implementation of the frames can be done
> in
> > normal wiki template syntax, in Lua, in a novel mechanism, or a mix of
> > these. This would be up to the communities creating them.
> >
> > Read the rest here:
> > <
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Project director Wikidata
> > Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
> > Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
> >
> > Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
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> unter
> > der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
> > Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
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-- 
Project director Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.