Education/News/May 2022/Tyap Editors Host Maiden Wiktionary In-person Training Workshop

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Tyap Editors Host Maiden Wiktionary In-person Training Workshop

Author: Kambai Akau
Summary: The idea of submitting an application to kickstart the development of the Tyap Wiktionary came after the successful completion of the second in-person training workshop by the proposed Tyap Wikimedians User Group members, led by me, tagged "A Hatch-Tyap-Wikipedia In-person Training Event 2 (Kaduna Special Edition)" hosted. This was to build a Tyap Wiktionary translation community partly from scratch and from those who participated in the Tyap Wikipedia events.
Banner for the workshop event (ENGLISH)
Social Media channels or hashtags: #tyapwiktionary #TyapWMUG

When the Tyap Wiktionary test project was started in Wikimedia Incubator (Wt/kcg), I notified my two colleagues (Zwandien Bobai and Steve Kally), and later the Tyap Language Development Board, TLDB (Tyap: Sot Byii̱k A̱lyem Tyap, SBA̱T) headship. While I tried finding the best way of designing the template for word translation entries in the incubator for Tyap and made a few word entries thereat, I tried linking up with the TLDB to see how we can synergize and ensure that the words we are to enter into the wiktionary rhyme with what is present or would be present in the dictionary being developed by the TLDB.

For those who may not know about the language: Tyap is an underdeveloped language in terms of literature and standardization, with no standard dictionary published yet in the language; thereby, making the task of editing or developing the language further quite tasking as a pioneering job gets to be challenging in many ways.

One of the major challenges encountered before the event was getting a possible translation for the word "Wiktionary" in Tyap. After contacting the TLDB to get us a word we could use to translate it, suggestions like "A̱gban swang a̱lyiat nTyap mi̱ Wuki" (lit. Tyap dictionary in Wiki), "Wuki mi̱ nTyap" (lit. Wiki in Tyap), and "Wukintyap" (lit. Tyap Wiki) were suggested for us to pick one. I gave a suggestion, "Wukiswánga̱lyiat" (lit. Words wiki) to the TLDB, but it didn't quite suit them, stating that the word "Wuki" (i.e. Wiki) would not be suitable at the fore position. My suggestion was not accepted in the end, and so decided to go with "Wukintyap", which I mentioned to Amir Aharoni, who has helped selflessly to the Tyap editing community, hoping to make a logo for the Tyap Wiktionary. Just as I thought, he confirmed that the terminology is too generic, and "A̱gban swang a̱lyiat nTyap mi̱ Wuki" is too long for a brand name. He, however, advised we take our time to find a suitable term to use. However, for tentative usage, I made a logo for the Tyap Wiktionary for the sake of the banner to be used during the in-person training workshop. Meanwhile, the search for a suitable word for a Tyap translation of the word "Wiktionary" is still on.

I forwarded an application for a rapid grant to fund the maiden in-person event series tagged "A Tyap Wiktionary Enrichment In-person Training Workshop", which was successfully held on 23-24 April and 30 April-01 May 2022, although, not without encountering a few challenges. Please see the Project page.

We utilized the Wukipedia nTyap (formerly Wikipidya Tyap) group more actively, on Telegram for our publicity and coordination.

Unlike in the Tyap Wikipedia training events wherein some participating editors got their IP addresses blocked, with some never able to edit till the end or almost the end; in this very event, we didn't have such an issue from start to closing. We added at least five more editors fresh to editing on Wikimedia projects, in the course of this workshop. Our project report is here. We intend to hold a follow-up workshop towards the third quarter of the year to heighten the momentum, with the hope of obtaining a Wiktionary subdomain within the year and more quickly than the Tyap Wikipedia whose subdomain we got less than a week ago. All thanks to those who contributed to making it happen.

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