Wikitongues/Reports/2023

The Wikitongues User Group was recognized as a Wikimedia user group in May 10, 2018. This report outlines our accomplishments and activities between May 3rd, 2022 and May 2nd, 2023.

Overview

Wikitongues is a not-for-profit organization and volunteer community that educates the public about linguistic diversity and how to sustain it. In particular, we help people around the world create and archive documentation in their languages, especially video oral histories and distribute guides for getting involved with language preservation, revitalization, and sustainability.

Our user group was founded with two objectives:

1. Facilitate Wikitongues contribution to Wikimedia projects, especially in the form of language content on the Wikimedia Commons.
2. Promote linguistic diversity in the Wikimedia movement through language-centered events and campaigns.

Content

Wikitongues began contributing to the Wikimedia Commons on June 24th, 2016, about two years before our user group was recognized. As of this report, we have contributed 352 language videos to the Wikimedia Commons, representing 274 unique languages. A lifetime index of videos contributed to the Wikimedia Commons may be found here. Between May 3rd, 2022 and May 2nd, 2023, Wikitongues volunteers recorded 59 CC-by-SA 4.0 or CC0 videos, representing 34 unique languages. Many of these videos have been added to the Wikimedia Commons. The remaining ones require some audio editing and will continue to be added throughout this year.

Jewish Languages Project

Since 2022, we have filmed oral histories with a total of four endangered Jewish language varieties. We started off with Judeo-Iranian and interviewed two speakers of the varieties from the Iranian cities of Esfahan and Shiraz. Following those, we partnered with a language activist in Israel to film two oral histories with speakers of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, and specifically the varieties from Takab, Iran (Lishana Noshan) and Zakho, Iraq (Lishana Deni). In total, we have filmed over 100 minutes of authentic language content spread across these languages.

Besides filming, we have translated and transcribed a sizable number of videos to create captions and post these videos on both the Wikimedia Commons and YouTube. We have captioned a total of 11 videos spread across 9 endangered Jewish language varieties. These include varieties of Judeo-Iranian — from the Iranian cities of Borujerd, Kashan, Kerman, Nahavand, Esfahan, and Shiraz — as well as the Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties from Urmia, Iran (Lishan Didan) and Takab, Iran (Lishana Noshan). Finally, we captioned a video in Judeo-Arabic, specifically the variety from Baghdad, Iraq.

This project, funded through the Wikimedia Community Fund, will be completed this year. Next steps are finishing uploading documentation to the Commons and hosting four edit-a-thons, relating back to Jewish language representation within Wikimedia.

Events

To promote multilingualism on Wikipedia projects, we organize translate-a-thons and record-a-thons, the latter of which is an event format for contributing oral histories—representing oral and traditional knowledge—to Wikimedia projects.

Translate-a-thons

Wikitongues organized no translate-a-thons during this period.

Record-a-thons

Wikitongues organized no record-a-thons during this period.

Edit-a-thons

Wikitongues organized no edit-a-thons during this period; however, we will be hosting edit-a-thons in the second half of 2023.

Cross-Collaboration

Language Diversity Hub

Wikitongues staff continued taking part in the Language Diversity Hub steering committee. Jointly, we applied for a Movement Strategy grant, in order to fund a pilot cohort model for onboarding new language communities to Wikimedia. For that grant project, we chose 10 language documentation and revitalization projects, taking part in various Wikimedia projects. Five of the projects are specifically for the Incubator Hub. None of these languages are in the Incubator Hub yet, so during this project year, we will be able to follow each language communities journey from start to (hopefully) finish. Through this process, we (Wikitongues and the Language Diversity Hub) can document the challenges language groups face in getting their language Wikipedia edition launched.

This project will end in April 2024, so results and lessons learned will be shared in next year's user group report.

Finances

Wikitongues is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation registered in the U.S. state of New York since 2014. Our fiscal year runs from January to December. During our User Group's fifth year, which ran from May 3rd, 2022 to May 2nd, 2023, we hired a Wikimedian-in-Residence and launched a Wikimedia language revitalization track within our larger Language Revitalization Accelerator program.