Talk:Communications subcommittees/Trans
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[edit] Transcom Priority Level 4
.I agree with the w:Anglosphere and the w:Francophonie covering the most geopolitically and that separating their levels would cause too much trouble. I also agree that next should be w:Hispanosphere. I further agree that the w:Sinosphere and the w:Russosphere (w:CIS ~+ w:Russian diaspora) should round out the next step as the rest of the UN languages and that Japanese is notable enough to just slip in although lower transcom level language comprehension (especially English) is higher in the w:Nipposphere (Japan + w:Japanese diaspora) than, say, in the Russosphere; and Arabic is noticeably absent despite its position in the six official UN languages, the size of the w:Arab world and the w:Arab diaspora, and the importance of the w:Arab League and its influence on the w:OIC and w:OPEC.
.I do not however see w:German-speaking Europe as analogous with the w:Lusofonia at all. Yes, the German population online now is huge, but Portuguese is one of four official languages of the w:African Union, along with Arabic, English, and French. It is also co-dominant with Spanish in South American discourse besides being an official w:EU language like German. German-speakers in particular have some of the highest English comprehension levels in the world. It feels like we are raising it artificially high to cope with German's enormous Net presence, but that is a measure weighted heavily by the German w:Sprachraum's affluence.
.Ultimately, because of the considerable effort German-speakers have exerted and continue to exert at Wikipedia, their priority should surpass that simply based on global population figures, but clear caveats should indicate that this position is subject to change as other realms expand on the Net. Furthermore, if we inflate German's importance beyond its forecast geopolitical potential to match its current web presence, it seems only right to increase Arabic's priority beyond its present Internet population to match its future one, as well as its geopolitical reach, because our goal is to bring the sum of all human knowledge to all of humanity. Our actions at Wikimedia are so profound that they, like the search engine giants, can increase web-literacy among sprachraums with huge growth potential simply by being more inclusive of them. Would it be so bad if we simply moved Arabic from 5 to 4? :)--Thecurran 02:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with much of what you posted above. I would like to see Ar and Hi moved to 4, and Zh moved to 2. Despite your comments, De should similaly be moved to 3. While people are often proficient in more than one language, there is an extremely strong preference to edit, pontificate, discuss policy and plan for the future in one's native tongue -- and you see a far greater number of contributions here by native english speakers than native german speakers, proportional to their editing communities. Considering the total amount of interesting Wikimedia work done in German by de:wikimedians, this is a loss. -- sj | translate | + 23:59, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Weekly review of translation priorities?
Similar to the original translation of the week, it would be nice to have something like a weekly review of translation status - where we are, what are the current priority translations, what else is out there to translate. It's hard to tell from the Babylon main page what's available other than the prioritized translations -- some of which are clearly not such a priority anymore (board election notice).
The page discussing this regular review might prominently highlight the priority levels of languages; something that might also change over time and should be more visible in the sphere of translators. I would like to move towards an environment where we are all conscious of having multiple top-level language priorities, and multiple source languages for announcements and new media [something which already happens at the chapters level but doesn't always make it to Meta, for instance].
[edit] Board resolution translations
At the moment, I would like to see new Board resolutions translated into the pri 1 and 2 languages. Currently there is only one such resolution (the appointment of Matt Halprin) - it should be a simple enough place to start. It was suggested at the last open meeting that this was not an important resolution: I beg to differ. It is quite important, when evaluating how a foundation works (say, to decide whether or not to trust it) to see its official statements, even when they convey only a few facts. -- sj · translate · + 17:18, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
