Cultural appropriation is something different, by "forcing" the contents in a minority language we would actually be at risk of implementing a form of "cultural colonialism" which is the opposite of a cultural appropriation.
NOTE: I refer to "the Western" in both cultural and "Wikipedian" sense: I mean cultures with a strong presence on the web plus developed and flourishing Wikipedia communities.
Helping minority languages with funds/workforce is not bad in my opinion, but I think a bottom-up process must be followed, with the "bottom" being as closer as possible to relevant linguistic/cultural communities. A Wikipedia full of "what the Westerns think is important" in a minority non-Western language would definitely fail project scopes.
This kind of problem almost does not arise with minority language associated to Western cultures since they share the same cultural backgrounds: back to my previous example the cultural background of Sicilian is substantially equal to Italian one. Still, as I already wrote, wikis in minority languages should focus on a certain aspect of wiki scope: Wiki has roughly two main scopes: 1) sharing knowledge in a certain language 2) also preserving the cultural heritage associated with different languages. For languages mainly spoken as first language the "sharing knowledge" aspect is predominant, while the second should take precedence in languages whose speakers are native speakers of a "bigger" language.
Vito
2018-02-24 22:58 GMT+01:00 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com:
Seems like this is mostly about cultural ownership and appropriation. Not sure if it is possible to agree on this.
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 6:08 PM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'll reply to the most recent email just for laziness.
I'm doubtful for a series of reasons, most of were already expressed in a better way by others: *a remuneration in terms of quantity will weaken the quality of translations unless there's a strong mechanism of quality verification requiring a quantity of resources comparable to translations themselves; *articles are the result of a long process which reflects cultural
identity
of different communities, I'm not confident with transferring them to a different "weaker" cultures. My usage of "weaker" adjective only focuses about the strength of a cultural presence on the Internet; *articles to be translated are at high risk of reflecting the cultural identity (and biases) of the Western culture; *finally I think paid translators would hardly turn into stable Wikipedians.
IMHO some paid editing may be better exploited in order to digitalise
texts
of unrepresented cultures (wikisource) or preserving their vocabularies (wiktionary).
Also those languages which are secondary for all their speakers should be dealt with in a different fashion. I, for one, am a native speaker of specific variant of Sicilian, Sicilian is a secondary language to any of its speakers. Honestly, I'd find pointless to read the biography of Leonardo da Vinci in Sicilian while I can find thousands of books about
him
in Italian. Also I find this kind of translation creates a fake
"literary"
language totally detached from reality: there's no "encaustic painting"
in
Sicilian, still a Sicilian article about Leonardo will invent one.
As a general principle we should always collect, rather than create, knowledge.
Vito
2018-02-24 16:30 GMT+01:00 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com:
My reply can be read as a bit more harsh than intended, it was merely a statement about my present experience about translators in general.
The problem with lack of contributors (and translators) in a
specialized
area is that there is a small community, and within this community some kind of selection is made. Each time a selection is repeated the
remaining
group shrinks. Specialize the selection sufficiently many times and
there
will be no contributors (or translators) left. It is simply a game of probabilities. Thus, to make such a project work it must have a sufficiently broad scope for the articles. Articles about public health services will probably work even for a pretty small language group, but specialized medical articles might create a problem. But then you find a retired orthopedic surgeon like Subas Chandra Rout…
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 4:04 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com
wrote:
I agree with John that it is very difficult to turn a translator
into a
new
editor. I also agree with Jean-Philippe that it is key to have
involvement
of the local projects and preferable if they lead the efforts. Of the languages we worked in only one explicitly requested not to be
involved /
have translations from TWB.
James
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 7:59 AM, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
You can turn it around; give added credits for translations from
small
language projects and into the larger ones, that is a lot more
interesting
than strictly translating from the larger language projects.
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 3:55 PM, Jean-Philippe Béland < jpbeland@wikimedia.ca
wrote:
I think the request for such projects should come from the
concerned
language projects, same for the list of articles. If not, in my
simple
opinion, it is a form of coloniasm again.
Jean-Philippe Béland Vice President, Wikimedia Canada
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 9:40 AM John Erling Blad <
jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
> Should have added that the remaining points are somewhat less
interesting
> in this context. Preloading a set of articles is a bad idea,
the
> translators should be able to chose for themselves. Articles
should
also
be > pretty broad, not very narrow technical or medical, ie vertical
articles,
> as the number of editors that can handle those will be pretty
small.
> > In particular: Do not believe you can turn a teanslator into a
new
editor! > You can although turn an existing editor into a translator. > > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 3:34 PM, John Erling Blad <
jeblad@gmail.com>
> wrote: > > > 1) You must start with high quality content and thus all
articles
are
> >> extensively improved before being proposed for translation. > > > > > > Note that to much pressure on "quality" can easily kill the
project.
> > > > 3) The "Content Translation" tool developed by the WMF made
efforts
more > >> efficient than handing around word documents. Would love to
see
that
> tool > >> improved further such as having it support specific lists of
articles
> that > >> are deemed ready for translation by certain groups. Would
also
love
the > >> tool to have tracking metrics for these types of projects. > > > > > > Didn't mention ContentTranslation, but it should be pretty
obvious.
> > > > 4) We used volunteer translators mostly associated with our
partner
> >> Translators Without Borders. One issue we found was that
languages
in
> >> which > >> their are lots of translators such as French, Spanish, and
Italian
there > >> is > >> often already at least some content on many of the topics in
question.
> The > >> issue than becomes integration which needs an expert
Wikipedia.
And
for > >> languages in which we have little content there are often
few
avaliable > >> volunteers. > > > > > > I used projects below 65k articles as an example, as the
chance
of
> > competing articles are pretty low. > > > > 5) With respect to "paying per word" the problem is this
would
require
> >> significant checks and balances to make sure people are
taking
the
work > >> seriously and not simple using Google translate for the 70
or
so
> languages > >> in which it claims to work. We often had translations
undergo
a
second
> >> review and the volunteers at TWB have to pass certain tests
to
be
> >> accepted. > > > > > > I'n my original email I wrote "verified good translators". It
is
as
> > simple as "Has the editor contributed other articles at the
project?"
> > > > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 2:26 PM, James Heilman <
jmh649@gmail.com
wrote: > > > >> We learned a few things during the medical translation
project
which
> >> started back in 2011: > >> > >> 1) You must start with high quality content and thus all
articles
are
> >> extensively improved before being proposed for translation. > >> > >> 2) A lot of languages want "less" content than is present on
EN
WP.
Thus > >> we > >> moved to just improving and suggesting for translation the
leads
of
the > >> English articles. > >> > >> 3) The "Content Translation" tool developed by the WMF made
efforts
more > >> efficient than handing around word documents. Would love to
see
that
> tool > >> improved further such as having it support specific lists of
articles
> that > >> are deemed ready for translation by certain groups. Would
also
love
the > >> tool to have tracking metrics for these types of projects. > >> > >> 4) We used volunteer translators mostly associated with our
partner
> >> Translators Without Borders. One issue we found was that
languages
in
> >> which > >> their are lots of translators such as French, Spanish, and
Italian
there > >> is > >> often already at least some content on many of the topics in
question.
> The > >> issue than becomes integration which needs an expert
Wikipedia.
And
for > >> languages in which we have little content there are often
few
avaliable > >> volunteers. > >> > >> 5) With respect to "paying per word" the problem is this
would
require
> >> significant checks and balances to make sure people are
taking
the
work > >> seriously and not simple using Google translate for the 70
or
so
> languages > >> in which it claims to work. We often had translations
undergo
a
second
> >> review and the volunteers at TWB have to pass certain tests
to
be
> >> accepted. > >> > >> 6) I hired a coordinator for the translation project for a
couple
of
> >> years. > >> The translators at TWB did not want to become Wikipedians or
learn
how
> to > >> use our systems. The coordinator created account like
TransSW001
(one
> for > >> each volunteer) and preloaded the article to be translated
into
Content > >> Translation. They than gave the volunteer translator the
user
name
and
> >> password to the account. > >> > >> 7) Were are we at now? There are currently just over 1,000
leads
of
> >> articles that have been improved and are ready for
translation.
This
> >> includes articles on the 440 medications that are on the WHO
Essential
> >> List. We have worked a bit in some 100 languages. The
efforts
have
> >> resulted > >> in more than 5 million works translated and integrated into
different
> >> Wikipedias. The coordinator has unfortunately moved on to
his
real
job
> of > >> teaching high school students. > >> > >> 8) The project continues but at a slower pace than before.
The
> Wikipedian > >> and retired orthopedic surgeon Subas Chandra Rout has
basically
single
> >> handedly translated nearly all 1,000 leads into Odia a
language
spoken
> by > >> 40 million people in Eastern India. The amazing thing is
that
for
many
> of > >> these topics this is the first and only information online
about
it.
> >> Google > >> translate does not even claim to work in this language. Our partnerships > >> with WMTW and medical school in Taipai continue to translate
into
> Chinese. > >> There the students translate and than their translations are
reviewed
by > >> their profs before being posted. They translate in groups
using
hackpad > to > >> make it more social. > >> > >> I am currently working to re invigorate the project :-) > >> James > >> > >> On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:51 AM, John Erling Blad <
jeblad@gmail.com
> >> wrote: > >> > >> > This discussion is going to be fun! =D > >> > > >> > A little more than seventy Wikipedia-projects has more
than
65k
> >> articles, > >> > the remaining two hundred or so are pretty small. > >> > > >> > What if a base set of articles were opened for paid
translators?
There > >> are > >> > several lists of such base sets. We have both the thousand
articles
> from > >> > "List of articles every Wikipedia should have"[1] and and
the
ten
> >> thousand > >> > articles from the expanded list[2]. > >> > > >> > Lets say verified good translators was paid about $0.01
per
word
> (about > >> $1 > >> > for a 1k-article) for translating one of those articles
into
another
> >> > language, with perhaps a higher pay for contributors in
high-cost
> >> > countries. The pay would also have to be higher for
languages
that
> lacks > >> > good translation tools. > >> > > >> > I believe this would be an _enabling_ activity for the
communities,
as > >> > without a base set of articles it won't be possible to
build a
> >> community at > >> > all. By not paying for new articles, and only translating > >> well-referenced > >> > articles, some of the disputes in the communities could be
avoided.
> >> Perhaps > >> > we should also identify good source articles, that would
be
a
help.
> >> > Translated articles should be above some minimum size, but
they
does
> not > >> > have to be full translations of the source article. > >> > > >> > A real problem is that our existing lists of good articles
other
> >> projects > >> > should have is pretty much biased towards Western World,
so
they
need > a > >> lot > >> > of adjustments. Perhaps such a project would identify our
inherit
> bias? > >> > > >> > [1] > >> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_ > >> > Wikipedia_should_have > >> > [2] > >> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_ > >> > Wikipedia_should_have/Expanded > >> > _______________________________________________ > >> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > >> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >> > wiki/Wikimedia-l > >> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/ mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l > , > >> > mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject= unsubscribe > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> James Heilman > >> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik > >> i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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