Content translation group

Initiatives >

The content translation group is the current name for a new initiative to co-ordinate the propagation of information between the various language versions of articles on Wikipedia. Please check out the relevant section of the developing translation guidelines and edit or add to those elements.

Why this is needed

As Wikipedians, we are always on the lookout for more sources of information to use in creating and improving Wikipedia articles. While the main source will always be the knowledge of people who are interested in subject at hand, we have many other informational "gold-mines" that we access. One resource however, which has not been tapped in a co-ordinated manner, is the information in foreign language Wikipedias which is not available on the native language Wikipedia. This is a great reservoir of content, which, thanks to the work of other Wikipedians, is much more likely to avoid the problems of Copyviolation, PoV, verifiability and notability. There is one drawback, of course, the fact that this information is in another language. Therefore, I propose a central effort to build a team of all multi-lingual Wikipedians, and volunteers who would be willing to help with co-ordination or copy-editing of the imported information.

And we can say the same thing on other Wikimedia projects too. A language version Wiktionary can share its article with other Wiktionary, a good book in a certain Wikibooks translated will enrich other Wikibooks projects, quotations on a certain Wikiquote can copy to the other Wikiquote. Interlanguage links can open the door to such multilingual resource on our projects, and translation can enhance the potential of our project.

Third, to keep up the entire of our project, we need to make a bunch of translations: upload form, banner, press release, newsletter, budget of the Wikimedia Foundation and so on. To give the Foundation governance more visibility to the international audience, we need your help for translation.

Mission

Currently we focus on Wikipedia and its supportive activities on meta.

To begin an organised effort to translate existing Wikimedia project content into as many other language versions as possible
To organise a process whereby people can find such content, translate it, and edit it so that it is suitable for inclusion into the native language Wikimedia project's articles, using the most of our limited resources.
To attempt, whenever and as far as possible, to have all new information which is added to one Wikimedia project spread across them all, so that people of all languages can benefit from the increase in knowledge.

What will be required

Multilinguists

This is of course a given. We need a way to find all those who are comfortable reading another language to translate it, if only comprehensibly, into their own language. How could we go about finding these people? One way if to start a WikiProject Translation chapter on all Wikipedias and recruit internally. Another possiblitiy is using the database to find frequent editors of multiple Wikipedias, though this will be a smaller set than the people who speak more than one language.

See also: Translation and Meta:Babel templates.

A process to locate, import, translate. edit, and assimilate the content.
Volunteers to help with all parts of the above which do not require a particular knowledge of another language, including co-ordination. For example, you can update translation requests on meta or on your local Wikipedia.

Machine translation

I think that this could be set up as a viable way to replace the initial non-grammatical translation by multi-lingual wikipedians if there is a large disparity between multi-lingual volunteers and mono-lingual volunteers. The caveat here is that machine translation only works between languages of a similar root or grammar, romance languages in particular, and even then it is often only semi-intelligible. However, with the copyediting abilities of wikipedians, we should have no problem turning a machine translation into article-worthy information.

Difference in article structure

Article naming and division on different Wikipedias is very likely to be different too. Although articles on small subjects, where most of the pertinent information can be included in the main article, will present less of a problem, large and complex subjects may well be subdivided completely differently in the various language wikis. This is a natural result of the Community process and should not be subverted for the cause of this Project, but it may cause problems finding or deciding the location of transfered information.

Interested parties

...I am not sure the following is appropriate here, but I represent a number of interested parties who are very glad to see the Wiki focus on translation, which is key to helping make modern knowledge and information available to everyone. I am especially interested to learn about any translation initiative or content involving the translation from English to Arabic of classic/standard/seminal texts on good governance and democracy. An organization with which I am associated is developing an initiative in this area. The plan is to start by digitizing public domain, already translated works, which would be made available on a dual languge website in free downloadable, searchable form with accompanying Cliff Notes type summaries and discussion plans. Once the technical framework is set, our hope is to expand original languages and also also to include translations into English of relevant Arabic authors. Clearly what Wikipedia already has underway in the area of translating articles and Wikibooks(????--I'm new to this) is relevant and we need to draw on it as well as feed it. Is there anyone I could talk to or are there examples of what has already been done in Wiki in the area of Good Governance and Democracy, e.g. easiest way to get list of Author entries such as John Locke already translated into Arabic, which could be worked as a component to link with another translation project and vice versa? Or will we need to just research this ourselves? Since the Center with which I am working is more of a "content" place, we also have need of technical assistance and advice on best available technology for scanning books and making them available through a dedicated portal,which would be a virtual library on good governance and demcracy. Anything we do or are able to accomplish should clearly be worked into the Wiki system for Arabic as well. Or perhaps Wikibooks already has the technology and we should start pushing our content into it. Please advise and tell me more. Stephanie

I'm ready to translate to and from Danish - just call :-) --Lhademmor 09:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll also be happy to edit, translate, etc anything from English into Spanish... Reccomatica, 1633 h, 08th October 2006 (GMT)

I was just thinking... wouldn't it be a great idea to propose to schools of translation and interpreting to add exercises of translation of Wikipedia articles that need to be translated? This initiative would motivate the learners and the articles would be, in the end, checked by the professors. Well professors, it's an idea. I would have liked to take part in a similar initiative when I was a learner... Reccomatica, 1639 h, 08th October 2006 (GMT)

Count me in on Nepal Bhasa. I would like to suggest the project to take transliteration into consideration as well. Most of the South Asian languages are inter-comprehensible to certain extent. However, the different scrpits used in these languages make the written translation harder. So, use of a central core in IPA (most probably) which can be transliterated according to one's necessity should also be worked on. Thank you.--Eukesh 21:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Todo: Add more, organise...

I am ready to translate some pages of wikipedia. I have 27 years experience in translation from many languages to Persian/Farsi and from persian to other languages as well. my expertise is vast: Art/Literary,Science, Technology, Engineering, Medical, Legal, Social Sciences and Humainities.

Please contact me via bahramsaleh@yahoo.com

I'm ready to translate from English or German to Chinese(bothe traditional and simplified).--Yi Hsun Lee (talk) 06:14, 7 November 2016 (UTC) 2016/11/07[reply]