[Wikimedia-l] PRISM, government surveillance, and Wikimedia: Request for community feedback

[Tomasz W. Kozlowski]

Geoff Brigham wrote:

> WMF is getting professional translations in German, French, Spanish, and
> Japanese, and will post by Tuesday.

I know that the RfC on PRISM has already been closed, but I have only 
remembered this today: what happened with the professional translations 
of <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PRISM>? As far as I can see, the 
German, French and Spanish translations have all been created (and then 
reviewed) by volunteers, and the Japanese version isn't finished to this 
day.

I'm asking this question now because I noticed that Garfield (Byrd) has 
spoken about the translation of the Annual Plan into other languages in 
the current issue of the English Wikipedia Singpost, saying: "I am 
hoping that some key parts of the annual plan can be translated and the 
Foundation is prepared to commit resources to this task."

I understand that it is the prerogative of the Foundation to decide how 
they want to spend their budget, but seeing how (seemingly) badly the 
translation of the relative short announcement on PRISM has been 
managed, I'm not really convinced that getting professional translations 
of the Annual Plan is that good an idea.

Our caring and motivated translation community has proven many times in 
the past that they can provide good quality translations of even the 
most important content; after long years of waiting, we now can use 
wonderful software (the Translate extension) that makes the job smooth 
and easy, so I'd just like us to give the volunteers a try before 
spending huge amounts of money on translating stuff.

           Tomasz