Hi Siebrand,
I appreciate your efforts in this space and have always received your support on Bugzilla for Tamil Wiki related issues. I will try to spread the word. But, for 2-3 months, I'm in the middle of several things and hence, can't commit much time. Will try to locate others who may be better positioned.
Thanks, Sundar "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
________________________________ From: Arun Ram arunram25@gmail.com To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, October 8, 2009 10:17:31 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India, home to the largest spoken languages in the world: A localisation opportunity
Hi Siebrand,
Thanks for reaching out.
I am keen to help in anyway I can in my spare time towards this (connecting people), though my time is a bit constrained with few other commitments.
Happy to try and connect you with people, who may have skills to help in some of these languages.
I agree it is important to spread the word and focus on getting more and more localization done for languages spoken in India.
There are a few others who would be keen to assist. I can connect you to them as well.
Regards Arun
Bangalore, India www.arunram.net | www.twitter.com/arunram
On Wedf t, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Siebrand Mazeland s.mazeland@xs4all.nl wrote:
Dear Wikimedians from India.
For those who do not know me, I am a staff member of
http://translatewiki.net, a project where most of the translation of
MediaWiki is done. MediaWiki is the software used by all wikis of the Wikimedia Foundation. There is more to translatewiki, but I hope you may discover that later.
I have made an analysis of the localization of MediaWiki and its extensions with regards to use by the Wikimedia Foundation. I have done this with a scope of the 50 languages with the most speakers in the world[1]. As India is an enormous country, with a long history, it is no surprise that many languages are spoken by a lot of people.
For India the following languages make the top 50 of most spoken languages in the world: Hindi (3), Bengali (10), Gujarati (34), Kannada (33), Malayalam (39), Marathi (17), Nepali (43), Oriya (42), Punjabi (15), Sindhi (37), Tamil (28), Telugu (20), and Urdu (29). Some of these languages have a fair level of localization (Telugu and Hindi are doing OK, but not excellent), but many others have very poor localization (Oriya and Urdu are doing particularly bad)[1].
As I do not speak or read any languages that are not in a Latin, Greek or Cyrillic script, and live in the Netherlands, it is hard for me to crowd source translators for these languages. I am in dire need of structural help in that area. Having Wikimedia India formed is something I recognize as an enormous opportunity for getting the localization level of languages spoken in India to a higher level. It will enable more users to experience and enjoy the freedoms that we as Wikimedians try to create and provide.
Please help me help in getting India's languages gain more ground and availability in the Wikimedia universe. Ideally I would like some kind of an ambassador from your community to spread the word and focus on getting more and more localization done for languages spoken in India. If you are interested in contributing as a translator, please visit translatewiki.net. If you are interested in investing time on a higher level, please contact me on-wiki, on this list, or by private e-mail so we can work something out. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Siebrand Mazeland
translatewiki.net staff
[1]
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:MediaWiki_localisation_in_the_50_most_
spoken_languages [2] http://www.mediawiki.org
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