Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit

Comments from DSaroyan (WMF)

Hello Amrit Sufi, thanks for submitting this comprehensive grant application. It’s great to learn about your plans to work on a toolkit for oral language transcription. We have reviewed your proposal and have some questions and requests:

• Firstly, please set specific start and end dates for your grant project. We also recommend extending the grant period, so that you have enough time for follow-up activities, such as translation, outreach, reporting, etc.

• Although initial research, documentation, and toolkit translation will be done in September, you are requesting funds to pay the Research and Documentation Specialist for three months. Could you please explain this discrepancy?

• In which languages do you plan to translate the toolkit into? Who will take care of the translation work? Will you make any efforts to make it available in more languages?

• Your plan is to implement initial research and interviews before working on the toolkit. Could you please name some of the specialists, community members, and other individuals who will be interviewed?

• Are you in touch with native speakers and indigenous communities? Have they confirmed their willingness to participate in the project?

• Where do you plan to host the toolkit? If you don’t plan to host it on Wikimedia projects, what will be the license of the final product?

• After the toolkit is ready to use, how will you promote it and make sure that it is available for different Wikimedia communities and audiences?

• To confirm, will you pilot the toolkit when it’s developed? We would recommend including some kind of test usage to make sure that the final product is useful and effective.

• Could you please confirm that the compensation rates are aligned with the compensation rates in India?

• Why do you plan to pay training participants (Remuneration for training participants)? What will this expense cover?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your response @DSaroyan (WMF):, here are our answers to your queries:

• Firstly, please set specific start and end dates for your grant project. We also recommend extending the grant period, so that you have enough time for follow-up activities, such as translation, outreach, reporting, etc.

A: We initially planned to start from the 1st September 2021 until 30th November 2021. Based on your feedback, we think we can allocate 30 additional days for follow-up activities, making the end date 30th December.

• Although initial research, documentation, and toolkit translation will be done in September, you are requesting funds to pay the Research and Documentation Specialist for three months. Could you please explain this discrepancy?

A: While September 2021 is for initial research and toolkit translation, the Research and Documentation specialist would be directly working with the Community coordinator from October 2021 to document the feedback and learnings from the community members. The person will also be overseeing other aspects of the project such as logistics. Do you think it would be better to change the title to Project Manager, instead?

• In which languages do you plan to translate the toolkit into? Who will take care of the translation work? Will you make any efforts to make it available in more languages?

A: Initially, we plan to translate the toolkit into Hindi and Punjabi. While both of us are fluent in Punjabi and Hindi, we plan to outsource the translation work and then review the final output before sharing it with others. These two languages will help us navigate the majority of the communities in the North India region.

A part of the OpenSpeaks toolkit is available in Santali already, we will try reaching out to the community members who worked on those translations to work on the other parts of the toolkit as well.

• Your plan is to implement initial research and interviews before working on the toolkit. Could you please name some of the specialists, community members, and other individuals who will be interviewed?

A: We have had an online meetup with the Punjabi community where we introduced them to the whole idea and how they can help us to improve the toolkit and documentation. The community has shown their willingness to participate in the project. User:Gaurav Jhammat, is a Punjabi language expert and a Punjabi Literary scholar, and User:Benipal_hardarshan, a technical expert who tackles the technical parts of the community, are some of the interested Wikimedia community members.

• Are you in touch with native speakers and indigenous communities? Have they confirmed their willingness to participate in the project?

A: I, Amrit Sufi, am a speaker of an endangered language, Angika, myself. While working on the initial prototype, I have already established a relationship with a few speakers of the language, whom I documented and the prototype is already available on Wikisource.

• Where do you plan to host the toolkit? If you don’t plan to host it on Wikimedia projects, what will be the license of the final product?

A: A part of the toolkit, the OpenSpeaks toolkit, is already available on Wikiversity under CC BY-SA license. The final toolkit will be hosted on Meta-Wiki under the CC BY-SA license as well. Additionally, It might also be hosted on platforms other than the Wikimedia projects such Wikitongues.

• After the toolkit is ready to use, how will you promote it and make sure that it is available for different Wikimedia communities and audiences?

A: After the completion of the toolkit we will share it with the wikimedia communities via mailing lists and we also plan to hold an online meeting to introduce it to interested community members. Additionally, it will also be shared on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

• To confirm, will you pilot the toolkit when it’s developed? We would recommend including some kind of test usage to make sure that the final product is useful and effective.

A: Yes, we plan to pilot the toolkit with at-least 2 different language communities to ensure its usefulness and effectiveness after its completion.

• Could you please confirm that the compensation rates are aligned with the compensation rates in India?

A: The compensation rates mentioned here are calculated at 4.2 USD per hour which is calculated as a remuneration and not what it should be as salary. For comparison, here is another funded project from India which mentions 15 USD per hour for Community Coordinator and 17.5 USD per hour for the Project Manager.

• Why do you plan to pay training participants (Remuneration for training participants)? What will this expense cover?

A: We plan to provide Per-Diem to a few selected community members for their participation in the training at the end of which, they will provide us with detailed feedback to improve the toolkit. The rates will be far less than the international per diem standards, which were used to fund a few e-scholarships to Wikimedians in the past.

--Amrit Sufi (talk) 11:32, 26 August 2021 (UTC)