[Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

Hi all,

I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala Wikipedia 

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/

As you can see, the interface is not just in Lingala, but rather there
is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each message, followed by a
translation into French.

Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would grudgingly accept
the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who were responsible,
however:

Most of it is the work of http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo .

Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a basic command of
Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-0" --
cannot understand Lingala.

Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but there is more:

There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki, HOWEVER nearly all
of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only a sentence
translated.

Some of the longest:

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually entirely in English, not French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili --
only page title translated, entire article is in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto --
in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B --
entirely in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa
-- entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)

Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be
accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default
interface language.

The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning.
I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those
few which were 100% Lingala.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will
somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be
the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and
most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to
a monolingual Lingala speaker.

I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
something should be done.

The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of
English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that:

1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the
other two where they are either fully translated, or not;
2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where
most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're
substubs;
2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
administrators stated that it's important that French is in the
interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in
mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to
speak pretty good Lingala.

Mark