Multilingualism: Difference between revisions

Template:MultLingvismo

Help Meta become more multilingual! Add content in your native language.

Meta: is supposed to be multilingual, but as of July 2004 it was 85% English (update: as of January 2005, an influx of new German pages, Japanese & French translations, and translator-work has improved this to perhaps 75%). Wikimedia, if it is to maintain a coherent image and policy-set across the world, and to benefit from the input of its many members (It is already the case that the majority of WM users do not natively speak/read english!), needs to ramp up its multilingual efforts.

Though a certain page tends to be monolingual, we can provide information to speakers of other languages, too.

Sidebar

You can add a sidebar of page summary, it describes the purpose of page, like this page. Please translate the text in the sidebar into the languages you know, and add links below into pages on multilingualism on the WPs you frequent. Encourage colleagues who don't write in English to contribute their thoughts/ideas on this page and its Talk: page in their own language.

We think important documents are better to have such summary sidebar multingual.

Abstract

You can add an abstract of page with Template:Abstract. Abstract is useful when the page treats a complicated issue and you want to give more information than one line description.

Translators

If you are proficient in more than one language, add yourself to the list of translators (and see also There is also an English Wikipedia available). You may also be interested in the discussion of the translation process.

• Other non-dev tasks for devs,
• How to see the latest developments in CVS
• General requests: see Talk:Developer committee, Wikitech-l, and #mediawiki.

Send out notes to all the language-groups you know! Get them to support their favorite languages by expanding the GFDL corpus of their written forms.

• A lang-invite form letter (thanks, node!)
• Wikipedia languages
• "there's an interview with Alan Cox where he talks about learning Welsh where he has a great quote about how if a language isn't on computers in fifty years, it won't exist" (w:en:Alan Cox was/is a sporadic WP contributor) - w:en:User:David Gerard
• The Rosetta Project has samples of almost 2,000 languages.

Articles, resources, etc. on indigenous langs

1. Indigenous Language.org, jar
2. Inuktitut keyboard, Inuktitut converter, Inuktitut transliterator, Inuktitut transcoder
3. Cherokee, http://www.legix.com/soc040224.cfm, Inuktitut keyboard layouts...
   (cf. Dannyisme, node, Etse, Ch Kaufman, ...)
4. Learn Yoruba!

Testing resources, etc. on indigenous langs

1. Indigenous Language.org, jar

• Language skill templates (Babel templates): you can indicate your linguistic skills on your user page.

• Interlanguage links on Meta and en:Wikipedia, Talk:Interwiki bot (updater of links)
• Summary of the various-language Wikipedias: Wikipedia language overviews (needs contribution!) | Complete list of wikimedia projects

• Multilingual coordination: Interlingual coordination(links) | en:Multiling Coordination (issues and list of WPs), Local Embassies for helping visitors get used to your local WP
• Multilingual style: Thoughts_on_Multilingualism (essay by Jmabel (ca. 12/2003) on naming objects, pages, people originally from other langs).
• Meta:Conventions for multilingualism

• Translation: ...into English - fab project (by Jmabel) to request/fill transl requests (also ...into German, ...into French, ja:Wikipedia:翻訳依頼, ...into Romanian, ...into Simplified Chinese, and ...into Traditional Chinese), and en:Pages needing translation - garbled pages on en: needing to be salvaged.
  • Tools: Lang recognition chart for identifying unfamiliar charactersets.
  • Translation Group in Wikiversity: Español | English

• Multilingualism