Grants:Project/Rapid/Uniba - Dipartimento LELIA/Translatathon Uniba/Dissemination/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Uniba - Dipartimento LELIA/Translatathon Uniba/Dissemination.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

I am really happy with the outcome of this very little project about dissemination activities concerning translation training with Wikipedia. The goal was to share our experience at the University of Bari with other colleagues teaching English linguistics and translation studies at Italian universities, which was fully met by taking part at the biannual conference of the Associazione Italiana di Anglistica (Italian Association for English Studies) and presenting a paper based on the project Translatathon@Uniba ("Out of the (sand)box. Developing translation competence through Wikipedia”, see p. 42 AIA Conference_Book of Abstracts The Conference (Padua, 5-7 September 2019) is extremely popular with English studies in Italy, and the audience includes many scholars with a specific interest in the didactics of translation. It was a good opportunity for me to share our extremely positive experience in teaching translation via Wikipedia and to discuss further developments for this project with colleagues and potential future partners.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Increase awareness of Wikimedia project by presenting at a conference	None of the attendees had ever heard about or considered using Wikipedia as part of their teaching activities, let alone translation training. They were enthusiast about our project and potentially interested in reproducing it at their universities	Wikipedia is generally looked at with mistrust in the academia. Showing to what extent its multilingual nature as a cooperative encyclopedia does not only offer stimulating activities for trainee translators but also meets other unexpressed needs by digital natives in general was really useful.
Expand the network of potential partners	Delegates from other universities have shown interest in a parternship for similar projects at the University of Naples and Turin. The University of Padova itself is a potential partner for follow-up projects in teaching translation with Wikipedia, having run a similar project. A first step in this potential cooperation is my participation on 20th September 2019 as an invited speaker in the conference "Wikipedia in Academia" ("Wikipedia in Academia - Invited Speakers").	The partnership with the University of Padua was easily reinforced as this University has been involved for a long time in a larger project with Wikipedia. With other universities the target of expanding the network has been met at the level of an expression of interest, so far, but we are confident that a sound project involving more universities interested in investigating the impact of Wikipedia on translation training at both theoretical and practical level can be launched in the middle-term.
20 attendees	There were slightly over 20 attendees listening to my talk.	It was a very large conference (with over 200 delegates) with many parallel sessions. Twenty was a good share.
3 potential partners	Delegates from many more than 3 Universities have shown interest in the project, but the Universities now potentially involved in a project are only 3 (as per the original target)	Some delegates, while interested in reproducing similar projects at their Universities, expressed concern that projects of this kind might involve technical skills not readily available in their Department.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Everything was brilliant, especially thanks to the extremely supportive team at Wikipedia.

What did not work so well?

There is nothing that did not work well. In fact it was a very simple project only targeting dissemination activities.

What would you do differently next time?

For a simple project like this there is no need to change anything in the future.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

The grant funds were all spent according to the budget.

Travel expenses (return train ticket Bari-Padua):

Bari Padova 84,50 euros Padova Bologna 23,90 euros Bologna – Bari 54,90 euros

Accommodation:

Hotel Europa 5-7 September 2019 (3 nights) – 301 euros

Total: 464,30 euros

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Yes, 35,70 euros

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

If allowed to do so I would use the remaining funds to partly reimburse my participation in the Conference social dinner (40 euro)

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?