[Wikimedia ZA] Translation of content into South African languages

[Achal Prabhala]

I think that a healthy way to think about languages in South Africa is 
that outside of English and Afrikaans, which both have a robust 
publishing market, other South African languages present excellent 
opportunities for growth on the internet. Since 1994, South African 
languages are being taken seriously in all kinds of media, including 
publishing - and to the extent that the costs/barriers on the internet 
are lower, I would be (personally) very interested in supporting any 
efforts to grow what are currently fledgeling Wikipedias. To that 
extent, translation is something that editors from these communities 
could use - but it's up to them.

To motivate Indians to contribute to Indian language Wikipedias is also 
a major opportunity here, and there's no competition - English is one of 
our official languages too - and it's not an either/or situation. To the 
extent that it would be wonderful to have Pedi Wikipedia move out of 
incubation,  it's probably wiser to think of this from the perspective 
of Pedi users rather than it's peripheral benefit to, say, Afrikaans 
users. Though, to the extent that that relatively under-represented 
languages (in media at least) get to be big on Wikipedia, it's obvious 
that there are benefits to the South African Wikipedian community as a 
whole. (After all, articles in different languages from the same place, 
or country, can speak to each other too: there are ways in which 
different language Wikipedias can help each other for a more complete 
picture).

Speaking of Pedi: Ian, in reference to your earlier post: 
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaza/2010-August/000055.html 
- is it possible that Mohau Monaledi (are you on this list?) would be 
interested in talking to Dwayne?