Grants:PEG/KuboF - Esperanto kaj Libera Scio/WikiTrans training and work session 2013

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Not funded
This grant submission from a group in 2012-13 was not funded by the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Basic information[edit]

Grant details[edit]

Official project name
WikiTrans training and work session 2013
Project start date (include month, day, and year)
1 May 2013
Project completion date (include month, day, and year)
5 May 2013
Please describe this project in 1 - 2 sentences
Meeting of the main developer, side helpers and users of Wikipedia-focused machine translator WikiTrans. Training users, solving technical issues and preparing outreach plans.

Financial details[edit]

Currency requested
EUR
Amount requested in currency requested
EUR 1,300
Equivalent amount in US$ on the date of this submission
USD 1,664.65
List the exchange rate used to calculate the amount listed in USD
USD 1.2805 per EUR 1.0000 (quoted from openiazoch.zoznam.sk)
Project start date
1 May 2013

Grantee details[edit]

Are you an organization, an individual, or an individual submitting on behalf of a group?
GROUP
Wikimedia User Group Esperanto kaj Libera Scio
Project lead name
Michal Matúšov
Project lead username or email
User:KuboF (e-mail)
Project lead title (position), if any
volunteer

Goals and measures of success[edit]

Project goal[edit]

The basic goal of this project is to organize training and work meeting of the main developer, side helpers and users of WikiTrans.

WikiTrans (WT) is machine translator focused on Wikipedia. It is developed by the Danish language technology company GrammarSoft ApS, in cooperation with the University of Southern Denmark. In compare with another English-Esperanto machine translators its results are on high level. Current version enables translation of English Wikipedia into Esperanto; version for translating into Danish is in preparation.

Measures of success[edit]

Training part
Increasing of using of WikiTrans to create new articles or edit current ones. (we are conscious that no all users mark source of article)
Working part
Solving of pending technical issues of WikiTrans. Noticeable evolution of promoting of the project, creating of how-to guides and best practices.

Project scope and activities[edit]

Between 1st and 5th May 2013 will take place meeting of main developer (Eckhard Bick, publications), side helpers and users of WikiTrans in Partizánske, Slovakia in place provided by non-profit NGO Education@Internet (E@I). Eckhard will teach users to efficiently use WikiTrans to help with creating of new articles. Users KuboF and Blahma (both sysop and bot operator on eowiki) will teach how to work out templates issues during using WikiTrans. Technicians of the team will discuss technical problems of WikiTrans and prepare improvements (searching of links to other articles, infoboxes, templates with parameters, integration with Wikidata etc.). Plan for promoting of WikiTrans between contributors of Esperanto Wikipedia and between Esperanto speakers generally will be worked-out.

Budget breakdown[edit]

No Item Cost (EUR)
1 Eckhard Bick travel (main person) 300
2 Michal Matúšov (KuboF) travel (base team) 15
3 Marek Blahuš (Blahma) travel (base team) 25
4 learners travel ~960
Total 1,300

There is only estimated travel costs for learners as we have started information campaign not long ago.

Total project budget
cca 1,400 € (depend on amount of attendants)
Total amount requested
1,300 €
Are there additional sources of revenue that will fund any part of this project? List them here.
During this meeting will be lodging, local transport and breakfast provided on charge of E@I.
Running of WikiTrans was supported by Esperantic Studies Foundation yet, provided sources was needed to buy server racks.

Non-financial requirements[edit]

None.

Resources[edit]

Base team:

  • Eckhard Bick - main developer of WikiTrans, trainer
  • Marek Blahuš (Blahma) - sysop and bot operator on eowiki, trainer
  • Peter Baláž - coordinator of E@I, experienced about promoting of web projects
  • Michal Matúšov (KuboF) - sysop and bot operator on eowiki, templationist, trainer

Impact[edit]

Fit to strategy[edit]

As we know, translating is much simpler than creating a new content. WikiTrans now provides high-level machine translations but its usage on Esperanto Wikipedia is low - many users don't know how efficiently use it, many don't know about WikiTrans at all (but probably many users simple don't mark articles as WT-translated).

Although both Esperanto and Danish Wikipedias with their 170.000+ articles are not a small ones, many articles there are relatively short, undeveloped and/or unsourced, many actualities are out of date and thematic coverage is lower. Given the fact that even many original Wikipedia articles in smaller languages are partially translated from or at least inspired by existing articles in a larger language, automatic translation should help to facilitate the work of Wikipedia authors interested in closing the English-Esperanto and English-Danish article gap.

As a "political" part of the meeting will be prepared plans for outreach campaigns focused on both current Wikipedia contributors and Esperanto speakers non-contributors. Members of Esperanto kaj Libera Scio and E@I regularly attend Esperanto meetings/congresses/conferences and have lessons about free knowledge and Wikimedia projects so we have yet experiences on the field.

Benefits[edit]

If your project will benefit a specific online community, please list that here.
After the first phase will from the project profit Esperanto Wikipedia as we expect increase of translating, which provides new content in faster way. After improvement of English-Danish translating will Danish Wikipedia profit from all prepared system including best practices and how-to guide. Addition of more languages is possible.
Provide a brief statement (about 1 paragraph) about how your project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement. Does your project fit into a work area such as GLAM, Education, Organization Development, Editor Retention, or Outreach?
Basically the project falls into the field of education of editors as training is the main part. Secondary, outreach and recruiting of new editors is present too.
If successful, does your project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations? Please explain how in 1 - 2 sentences.
Such training is simple to replicate.
Developed on-wiki best practices and how-tos and part of outreach materials/plans can be used for ongoing Danish WikiTrans.
Please list any other benefits that this project will produce.
Bringing more trust and willingness to help among the contributors by making them to get to know each other.
Acceleration of solving of remaining technical issues on Esperanto Wikipedia (especially templates).