Lawrence,
There are tools out there that would make it easier for people to work
in a Wiki environment. Wikiwyg (http://www.wikiwyg.net/) is one of
them. This would allow people  to edit Wikipedia the same way you
would be working on a Word document. But the other thing is if you can
type, then you can add content to Wikipedia. You dont have to
necessarily worry about doing everything by yourself (such as adding
links, images, categories, etc., which requires one to learn how to
use wiki syntax) because there are other participants. This is the
power of collaboration. With time, you will learn the necessary
skills. At this point, if you have content and know how to type, you
are a potential Wikipedian...


--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, adewole lawrence
<loadewole@...> wrote:
>
> GeraldM, you are great. This is definitely what we
> want for African Languages. We need contributors from
> Africa and as of now, we are being marginalized. I
> think there is need to carry us along. Whichever way
> we look at it, we have more more scholars on African
> languages in Africa than in the diaspora. We have
> material to put on the Wikipedia (especially those
> ones got from the traditional people) but we don't
> know how to go about putting them there. We are not
> happy.
> Lawrence
>
> --- GerardM <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Wikimania was a conference that I expect to be of
> > great importance for
> > stimulating the African interest in MediaWiki and
> > Wikipedia content. I was
> > excited that both Kasper Souren and Martin Benjamin
> > gave a presentation.  I
> > was thrilled to meet Paa Kwesi Imbeah at Wikimania,
> > who was informed that
> > the work on InstantCommons can start.
> >
> > As a result of the Wikimania, a yahoo group was
> > started, afrophonewikis, and
> > it has already a lifely and interesting group of
> > people interesting in
> > making. Topics range from using machine translation
> > to the number of women
> > being literate in the indigenous languages. The
> > overriding theme is: how do
> > we get people interested in creating content in the
> > languages of Africa that
> > is of interest to the people of Africa in African
> > Wikipedias.
> >
> > The first hurdle to take is by making MediaWiki easy
> > to use. There are
> > several technical things that can be done; the user
> > interface can be
> > localised, the user instructions can be translated
> > and we could experiment
> > with the WYSIWYG. On a community level, we can have
> > provide help by
> > demonstrating MediaWiki and Wikipedia in a workshop
> > format, we can create
> > technically great articles with examples of how you
> > can do things, thing
> > that are there to be copied. We can help with the
> > conversion of closely
> > related languages.
> >
> > Practically, we have started in cooperation with the
> > IICD, a Dutch NGO
> > active in Africa, with a project plan to localise
> > MediaWiki and stimulate
> > the use of MediaWiki in Ghana. On the kasaharow wiki
> > we have started writing
> > in a wiki format a project plan on doing all that.
> > This plan is a plan that
> > is to be truly for the people involved in this
> > project. So when you write
> > their, be sure that you want to put your effort
> > where your mouth is.
> >
> > The kasahorow people are working on dictionaries for
> > the languages of Ghana,
> > one of their aims is to use it for machine
> > translation. With the current
> > interst in machine translation (the Cherokee project
> > - apertium) it would be
> > really great if these efforts come together and the
> > content created in one
> > language can become available in another as well.
> > Using tools like OmegaT is
> > one other option in easing the translations from one
> > language to another.
> >
> > IICD and many other NGO's have a wealth of
> > information often specific to
> > "their" topics that they would love to make
> > available, certainly if this
> > results in providing their content with more
> > eyeballs. They are quite ready
> > to make it available as either Wikibooks or
> > Wikipedia content. The current
> > phase of the projectplan is very much one of
> > brainstorming.
> >
> > There are many opportunities to open up Africa to
> > the way of the wiki.
> > Important is that the aim is to make it work in
> > Africa for Africans. Some of
> > our preconceptions about wikis will prove to be
> > culturally biased. It will
> > be exciting, relevant and important to observe how
> > we will morph in a more
> > international organisation.
> >
> > For me, the localisation of MediaWiki will help make
> > WiktionaryZ useful. I
> > have discussed in the past cooperating with
> > kasahorow in sharing our content
> > and technology. When we can do this in Ghana, we can
> > do it in Nigeria and in
> > India and.... Spending time on this will have big
> > benefits. The key factor
> > for success is and will always be that the people
> > that use it feel that it
> > is THEIR Wikipedia, THEIR WiktionaryZ and THEIR
> > MediaWiki.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >      GerardM
> >
> > Some links:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/
> >
>
http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2006/08/technology-wikipedia-in-local.html
> > http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki
> > http://WiktionaryZ.org
> >
>
>
> Lawrence Olufemi Adewole
> Department of African Languages and Literatures
> Obafemi Awolowo University
> Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
> cellphone: 0803-471-4476
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>

A lot of interesting information, activities, and ideas here - thanks
to all. At some point I'm thinking that we'll want to discuss
strategies for using this forum to optimal advantage. But for now I
think it is very useful to get ideas out there and in the process get
to know each other a bit.

There are always folks who like to send out questions, info, etc., and
others who prefer to observe and rarely post anything. All that is
fine, but if people who haven't posted would like to introduce
themselves, and let us know if and what they've been doing on
Wikipedias, that would be great.

For my part I posted back at the beginning. (For anyone unfamiliar
with Yahoogroups, you can access the archives of messages or search
them via the group homepage.)

I would like  to bring up a couple of other ideas. We've heard about
the potential of machine translation & translation memory, and that
it's not there yet for African languages. This is a hugely interesting
topic but one that could take us off on distant tangents. I would
mention though that a professor emerita at Albion College in Michigan,
Martha O'Kennon, has put together some simple translators for several
languages (including Xhosa and Pulaar) using Prologue (she is also in
contact with projects for Akan and Yoruba). This is admittedly a ways
from what we could apply to African language Wikipedias, but in my
mind raises other issues relating to how to offer training in MT to
the coming generation of African computer experts (of whom some can
hopefully specialize in MT).

Another cutting-edge technology worth thinking about practically is
speech-to-text (STT) for African languages. This opens up huge
possibilities, and not just for Wikipedia. But focusing on Wikipedia,
you could, thinking longterm, focus on audio content with the idea
that eventially this can be accompanied by text.

Actually there is a "WikiVoices" initiative (hopefully we'll here
about), but I'm not sure if it's focused on audio for current
Wikipedias. But what if audio Wikipedia content, recorded digitally
and uploaded, could fill out a Wikipedia for a minority language that
might not get much if any written content until some years?

All of these are not natural alternatives for languages with long
written traditions and high basic literacy rates (& computer literacy
rates).

Another idea, harder to implement in the Wikipedia environment, might
be comics - illustrated content. Before writing this I did a quick
Google search to see if anyone had discussed "WikiComics" before, but
came up with a dead Wikipedia page at
http://www.wikiindex.com/index.php?title=WikiComics&oldid=23115 .
Comics can be a very effective way of reaching and teaching people who
are not that literate.

At first it might seem too far fetched - how could people draw for
Wikipedia, and even if technically it could be facilitated how many
among us can draw well enough? But maybe the concept could be worked
another way. What about using free license drawings of basic subjects
in nature, science, technology, etc. into which people could insert
the appropriate words and phrases. So you end up with a kind of
WikiDuden that could in principle be filled out for a lot of languages
relatively quickly - yielding a resource more accessible to people of
any level (but at least some level) of literacy. Illustration-based
content has the added advantage of being something you can print at a
cybercafé or community telecenter and take out to schools or adult
education classes anyplace. And back on Wikipedia/Media sites it can
be linked to existing or eventual text articles, lexical entries, etc.

Anyway there are a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of practical
realities to be accounted for.

I look forward to reading more of what you all have to say.

Don

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

Hoi,
For your information, I have asked Erik to add the Akan, the Ewe and
Hausa (Arabic script) and Hausa (Latin script) to WiktionaryZ. I also
asked for some others so we have bitten the bullet and now have Arab
(standard) with the ISO-639-3 code arb. This means that you can now add
vocabulary on http://wiktionaryz.org after you have created your
mandatory Babel templates and after you have read the article on the
"DefinedMeaning". When you have jumped through these hoops, I will be so
easy to give you edit rights..

When a key language is missing for you.. I can get you a new language.
First get yourself edit rights and then promise to do the 207 Swadesh
word translation list for the new language.. :)

I have done the first wikification to the project proposal. In it many
organisations were mentioned. I have created stubs so that people can
have a clue who is who and what is what. I can and will do some more of
what we can do. Included may be a proposal to get someone to manage
students doing their term projects of universities and have some support
at the other end to expedite things that need organising. The idea is
when people can do a project on Wiki content and/or technology they will
acquire the open way of working. They would be working on open content
and open source and this is likely to be a relevant skill set. What I
can get organised is on the Wiki end. It will only make sense if it gets
organised at the University end as well.. Could you please comment on
this ... :)

Thanks,
      GerardM


adewole lawrence wrote:
>
> GeraldM, you are great. This is definitely what we
> want for African Languages. We need contributors from
> Africa and as of now, we are being marginalized. I
> think there is need to carry us along. Whichever way
> we look at it, we have more more scholars on African
> languages in Africa than in the diaspora. We have
> material to put on the Wikipedia (especially those
> ones got from the traditional people) but we don't
> know how to go about putting them there. We are not
> happy.
> Lawrence
>
> --- GerardM <gerard.meijssen@...
> <mailto:gerard.meijssen%40gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Wikimania was a conference that I expect to be of
> > great importance for
> > stimulating the African interest in MediaWiki and
> > Wikipedia content. I was
> > excited that both Kasper Souren and Martin Benjamin
> > gave a presentation. I
> > was thrilled to meet Paa Kwesi Imbeah at Wikimania,
> > who was informed that
> > the work on InstantCommons can start.
> >
> > As a result of the Wikimania, a yahoo group was
> > started, afrophonewikis, and
> > it has already a lifely and interesting group of
> > people interesting in
> > making. Topics range from using machine translation
> > to the number of women
> > being literate in the indigenous languages. The
> > overriding theme is: how do
> > we get people interested in creating content in the
> > languages of Africa that
> > is of interest to the people of Africa in African
> > Wikipedias.
> >
> > The first hurdle to take is by making MediaWiki easy
> > to use. There are
> > several technical things that can be done; the user
> > interface can be
> > localised, the user instructions can be translated
> > and we could experiment
> > with the WYSIWYG. On a community level, we can have
> > provide help by
> > demonstrating MediaWiki and Wikipedia in a workshop
> > format, we can create
> > technically great articles with examples of how you
> > can do things, thing
> > that are there to be copied. We can help with the
> > conversion of closely
> > related languages.
> >
> > Practically, we have started in cooperation with the
> > IICD, a Dutch NGO
> > active in Africa, with a project plan to localise
> > MediaWiki and stimulate
> > the use of MediaWiki in Ghana. On the kasaharow wiki
> > we have started writing
> > in a wiki format a project plan on doing all that.
> > This plan is a plan that
> > is to be truly for the people involved in this
> > project. So when you write
> > their, be sure that you want to put your effort
> > where your mouth is.
> >
> > The kasahorow people are working on dictionaries for
> > the languages of Ghana,
> > one of their aims is to use it for machine
> > translation. With the current
> > interst in machine translation (the Cherokee project
> > - apertium) it would be
> > really great if these efforts come together and the
> > content created in one
> > language can become available in another as well.
> > Using tools like OmegaT is
> > one other option in easing the translations from one
> > language to another.
> >
> > IICD and many other NGO's have a wealth of
> > information often specific to
> > "their" topics that they would love to make
> > available, certainly if this
> > results in providing their content with more
> > eyeballs. They are quite ready
> > to make it available as either Wikibooks or
> > Wikipedia content. The current
> > phase of the projectplan is very much one of
> > brainstorming.
> >
> > There are many opportunities to open up Africa to
> > the way of the wiki.
> > Important is that the aim is to make it work in
> > Africa for Africans. Some of
> > our preconceptions about wikis will prove to be
> > culturally biased. It will
> > be exciting, relevant and important to observe how
> > we will morph in a more
> > international organisation.
> >
> > For me, the localisation of MediaWiki will help make
> > WiktionaryZ useful. I
> > have discussed in the past cooperating with
> > kasahorow in sharing our content
> > and technology. When we can do this in Ghana, we can
> > do it in Nigeria and in
> > India and.... Spending time on this will have big
> > benefits. The key factor
> > for success is and will always be that the people
> > that use it feel that it
> > is THEIR Wikipedia, THEIR WiktionaryZ and THEIR
> > MediaWiki.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> > Some links:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/>
> >
>
http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2006/08/technology-wikipedia-in-local.html
>
<http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2006/08/technology-wikipedia-in-local.htm\
l>
> > http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki <http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki>
> > http://WiktionaryZ.org <http://WiktionaryZ.org>
> >
>
> Lawrence Olufemi Adewole
> Department of African Languages and Literatures
> Obafemi Awolowo University
> Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
> cellphone: 0803-471-4476
>

GeraldM, you are great. This is definitely what we
want for African Languages. We need contributors from
Africa and as of now, we are being marginalized. I
think there is need to carry us along. Whichever way
we look at it, we have more more scholars on African
languages in Africa than in the diaspora. We have
material to put on the Wikipedia (especially those
ones got from the traditional people) but we don't
know how to go about putting them there. We are not
happy.
Lawrence

--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:

> Hoi,
> Wikimania was a conference that I expect to be of
> great importance for
> stimulating the African interest in MediaWiki and
> Wikipedia content. I was
> excited that both Kasper Souren and Martin Benjamin
> gave a presentation.  I
> was thrilled to meet Paa Kwesi Imbeah at Wikimania,
> who was informed that
> the work on InstantCommons can start.
>
> As a result of the Wikimania, a yahoo group was
> started, afrophonewikis, and
> it has already a lifely and interesting group of
> people interesting in
> making. Topics range from using machine translation
> to the number of women
> being literate in the indigenous languages. The
> overriding theme is: how do
> we get people interested in creating content in the
> languages of Africa that
> is of interest to the people of Africa in African
> Wikipedias.
>
> The first hurdle to take is by making MediaWiki easy
> to use. There are
> several technical things that can be done; the user
> interface can be
> localised, the user instructions can be translated
> and we could experiment
> with the WYSIWYG. On a community level, we can have
> provide help by
> demonstrating MediaWiki and Wikipedia in a workshop
> format, we can create
> technically great articles with examples of how you
> can do things, thing
> that are there to be copied. We can help with the
> conversion of closely
> related languages.
>
> Practically, we have started in cooperation with the
> IICD, a Dutch NGO
> active in Africa, with a project plan to localise
> MediaWiki and stimulate
> the use of MediaWiki in Ghana. On the kasaharow wiki
> we have started writing
> in a wiki format a project plan on doing all that.
> This plan is a plan that
> is to be truly for the people involved in this
> project. So when you write
> their, be sure that you want to put your effort
> where your mouth is.
>
> The kasahorow people are working on dictionaries for
> the languages of Ghana,
> one of their aims is to use it for machine
> translation. With the current
> interst in machine translation (the Cherokee project
> - apertium) it would be
> really great if these efforts come together and the
> content created in one
> language can become available in another as well.
> Using tools like OmegaT is
> one other option in easing the translations from one
> language to another.
>
> IICD and many other NGO's have a wealth of
> information often specific to
> "their" topics that they would love to make
> available, certainly if this
> results in providing their content with more
> eyeballs. They are quite ready
> to make it available as either Wikibooks or
> Wikipedia content. The current
> phase of the projectplan is very much one of
> brainstorming.
>
> There are many opportunities to open up Africa to
> the way of the wiki.
> Important is that the aim is to make it work in
> Africa for Africans. Some of
> our preconceptions about wikis will prove to be
> culturally biased. It will
> be exciting, relevant and important to observe how
> we will morph in a more
> international organisation.
>
> For me, the localisation of MediaWiki will help make
> WiktionaryZ useful. I
> have discussed in the past cooperating with
> kasahorow in sharing our content
> and technology. When we can do this in Ghana, we can
> do it in Nigeria and in
> India and.... Spending time on this will have big
> benefits. The key factor
> for success is and will always be that the people
> that use it feel that it
> is THEIR Wikipedia, THEIR WiktionaryZ and THEIR
> MediaWiki.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> Some links:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/
>
http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2006/08/technology-wikipedia-in-local.html
> http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki
> http://WiktionaryZ.org
>


Lawrence Olufemi Adewole
Department of African Languages and Literatures
Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
cellphone: 0803-471-4476

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Hello everyone, and thanks Martin for summarizing some of my observations.

Here are a few more details in answer to questions that have been posed.

Regarding my observations on the feasibility of the Romanized vs.
Arabized systems for on-line materials: although it seems to me that
Arabized Wolof is by far more widely known, commonly known Arabized
variants are not highly systematic and do not rigorously distinguish
phonemes as the official Romanized version does.  Vowel markings are
fewer than Wolof vowels, and several consonants are assimilated into the
same letter (for example, "ń" and "c" [pronounced somewhat like "ch"]
are both written with a letter kha' with three dots above and are only
distinguishable by context).  This is why a conversion from Romanized to
Arabized Wolof is lossy and irreversible, unless one were to adopt a
system that incorporated these distinctions.

So, as Martin suggested, I think it would be ideal to author on-line
materials in Romanized Wolof and to make the same materials available in
Arabized Wolof through a filter that could be mapped to a URL pattern
and implemented in PHP, Perl, etc.  The conversion would be relatively
simple, as Roman characters can be mapped rather unproblematically to
their Arabic equivalents, and most characters found in Arabized Wolof
are represented in Unicode (although some may not be found in the fonts
actually in wide use).  Additionally, perhaps users could author
materials in Arabized Wolof, and another filter could find the closest
match in the Romanized system so it could share the same up-stream
Romanized database (for example, if one wrote "gUr," the system would
guess that one meant "góor," or "man," and if one wrote C/ŃUm, it would
guess one meant "ńoom," not "cuum"), although such a system would be
fallible, somewhat like Google translation, and would have to be
subsequently proofread.  With some more sophisticated programming, one
could adopt a more rigorous, phonemic Arabized system (these exist but
are not widely known) and use an AJAX interface that would suggest
possible completions for people unfamiliar with the system.

In answer to questions regarding the prevalence of Wolof literacy in
Senegal, although I believe that most Wolof speakers can pick out the
words of a Wolof text written with Arabic characters, functional
literacy in either Arabized or Romanized Wolof is rare, and even
professional Wolof teachers and scholars disagree significantly on
orthography and terminology.  The proportion of the general public in
urban areas who are comfortable reading and writing in Wolof is
astonishingly low, and among expatriates and others who spend a lot of
time on the Internet I think it is far lower still.  Many people value
Wolof as a language but very few see it as a written language, much less
a language of the Internet.  In Dakar, a complete Wolof sentence without
any French intermingled is a curiosity.

Despite widespread Wolof reading abilities, especially in rural areas,
it is no surprise to me that every Wolof Wikipedia article I looked at
contains no information beyond the title.   I have never known someone
in Senegal not literate in French or Arabic to attempt to use a
computer, and I don't think many Wolof-only readers would dare consider
using a computer even if it were physically available.  I have seen chat
rooms where users (many of them expatriates) mix Franco-Wolof with
French and English, but the orthography is haphazard and rarely forms
complete Wolof sentences.  The vast majority of computer-literate
Senegalese would probably see wiki in Wolof as a quaint and perhaps
pointless pastime, assuming that the probability that your entry will be
read, much less serve a useful purpose (as opposed to simply amusing) is
very slim.  Making a Wolof wiki truly useful will require both a higher
proportion of people literate in Wolof and widespread physical and
psychological access to computers among Wolof-literate.  The latter
would require an interface that people unfamiliar with French or Arabic
would find intuitive and approachable and tools that don't take for
granted familiarity with a highly standardized orthographic system.  In
other words, I think a precondition to a successful Wolof Wikipedia is a
technical infrastructure that allows Wolof-literate to use computers
comfortably without having to know some other language as well as well
as a critical mass of Wolof-literate people to author and use on-line
resources.

Regarding the situation of national languages and Arabic in public
schools: according to interviews I had with officials from the
"Inspection des écoles" (somewhat like the Department of Education) in
Kaolack, during the 2003-2004 school year, the Senegalese government
began a bilingual Franco-Arabic program in a handful of pilot schools
(within the confines of existing public schools) where students receive
equal hours of instruction each week in Arabic or a national language
and French.  (Before this, there were many publicly funded but privately
run Franco-Arabic schools.)  A big impetus for the Arabic school was
that in some regions (especially Bawol, the Jurbel region around Tuubaa)
many parents mistrust French schools and only allow their children only
to study in Quranic schools.  In many of these areas, store-fronts and
road signs are typically written in Arabized Wolof.  The government is
therefore trying to co-opt more popularly accepted Arabic education and
move it into official, national schools.  The national language literacy
movement is piggy-backing on these developments.  So far, these schools
are very limited in reach, and each year they add a cohort (meaning that
by now, they presumably have the first three years of elementary
school).  The stated goal of the officials I spoke with was not to
spread literacy of national languages and Arabic but to broaden the
appeal of public schools so that everyone would end up learning French.

By far the largest part of formal literacy training in Wolof and other
national languages happens not in public schools but in private
(although often funded by government and international institutions)
literacy programs.  All the formal literacy programs I have known use
the Romanized system.   Nearly all the teachers and students in these
programs (I would say well over 90%) are women, although the project
directors are often men.  But a number of Quranic and Arabic teachers
are mixing Wolof literacy in with their instruction, some using the
Romanized system and others using some variant of an Arabized (A`jami)
system.  In Kaolack, where I do much of my research, one Quran teacher
has published a primer with a new system of writing Wolof using Arabic
characters, and some Quranic schools use this book but the system is not
widely known.

The vast majority of those who can read Arabized Wolof learned it not
through a formal literacy program but through studying the Quran.
Because of the near universality of Quranic education in most parts of
Senegal, even without any explicit Wolof education, the vast majority of
Senegalese are at least somewhat familiar with Arabized Wolof.
Especially outside of Dakar, I have encountered far more familiarity
with Arabized Wolof than with Romanized Woof.  When I distributed
literature in Romanized Wolof explaining my research, many people,
whether rural or urban, did not even recognize it as Wolof.  Those who
did still had a very hard time reading it.  When I have given people
Arabized Wolof to read, a far larger proportion has been able to read
it, especially in rural areas.  Yet although most of them can figure out
a text, they can't necessarily write one, and there is no widely
recognized, standardized Arabic system for writing Wolof.  One major
problem is that true literacy entails not just being able to pick out
words on a page but reading and writing with ease and being able to
process what one reads--skills taught in French schools but not in
Quranic schools.

Although the government officially promotes Romanized Wolof, it tacitly
recognizes that while Romanized Wolof is for teaching people, Arabized
Wolof is for reaching people.  For example, the packaging on
government-distributed agricultural supplies (fertilizers, pesticides,
etc.) includes both French and Arabized Wolof instructions, which
farmers I worked with had no problem reading.  Even the colonial French
government tacitly recognized the widespread use of Arabized Wolof:
their bank notes were printed on the front in French ("5 Francs") and on
the back in both Arabic an Arabized Wolof ("1 dërëm," the equivalent of
5 francs--in case you were wondering where the Wolof got their
convoluted way of counting money, this suggests they got it from the
French, and similar systems of counting in 5s are widespread in former
French colonies from North Africa to Southeast Asia).

Unfortunately, my observations are based on qualitative experience, and
I can't answer the questions about statistics. The literacy statistics
provided by Senegalese censuses are extremely misleading because they
assume zero or one language of literacy per person (so someone literate
in French is automatically not counted as literate in Arabic, Wolof, or
English), and also because literacy is defined as an active ability to
write, and therefore the many people who can read but not write are not
counted.

This was probably a much longer answer than you hoped for, but I hope it
has clarified some of the questions that have been raised, and as for
the rest of the questions, I'll have to answer them another time.

Joe

--
Joseph Hill
Department of Anthropology
Yale University
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jbh34/

Hi Martin. Welcome Joe and others who have recently joined. Here are a
few quick comments. I look forward to Joe's and others' feedback...

--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, Martin Benjamin
<martin.benjamin@...> wrote:
>
...
[MB]> 1) Many educated Senegalese are not literate in Wolof, although
they
> speak it.  Literacy is primarily in French and Arabic.

[DO] This is of course a legacy of the French-only educational system.
That actually is changing, so I understand, to a bilingual system
using first languages in the first years of school.

Not sure to what extent adult literacy in "national languages," as
they call the indigenous languages there, is taking place.

A related topic (but off topic for this list I think) is
"pluriliteracy" - literacy in more than one language - and whether
that is promoted, or even measured in surveys (generally I think it is
not). (THere is a list called "Multilingual_Literacy" on this subject.)

What are the % of the various education/literacy demographics (if Joe
or anyone knows?). Perhaps these kinds of statistics might help
strategizing expansion of Wikipedias, but at least they would help in
clarifying what these different trends and profiles mean in a
discussion like this.

[MB]> 2) A very high proportion of those who are literate in Wolof are
> female.  However, many of the women who have computer skills and access
> to cybercafes are among the highly educated who prefer to read and
write
> in international languages.

[DO] It would be interesting to know the figures. Very high is >50%?
Is this a result of the approach of Wolof literacy? The kind of people
attracted to it?

IOW, it's of interest to know the demographics of who is literate in
Wolof and not French. (And the script, per #3)

Of interest in a broader (beyond this list) discussion of language and
development is the fact that generally women are more reliant on their
first languages and local lingua francas than men are (due to less
formal schooling). There was a good discussion of this and other
factors in Africa by Clinton Robinson a few years ago.

[MB] > 3) Wolof has two different orthographies, based on Latin and
Arabic
> writing.  The Arabic orthography is more common for reading and
writing,
> but the Latin alphabet is more common for computer localizations.

[DO] This is a complicated situation. Fallou Ngom, who is based now at
Western Washington University, has been doing some research on the
Arabic (often called "Ajami" for African languages, or "Wolofal" in
the case of Wolof) script usage. But apparently apart from him and a
handful of others, there is little research or info on actual practice.

The Latin transcription has been adopted as "official" by the
government there, as in most of the region (same story with Pular in
Guinea, for instance, and Hausa in Nigeria & Niger). What I am not
clear on is which script is used in literacy training. I imagine that
the Latin transcription will be used in schools.

[MB]>It
> would be possible to develop a straightforward algorithm to convert
from
> Latin to Arabic, but harder to go the other way.  Therefore, a Wolof
> Wikipedia might need some sort of conversion mechanism, in which
> articles are written in the Latin alphabet and then converted to the
> Arabic orthography.  Or, some sort of system based on the OmegaT work
> that Sabine was talking about would need to be implemented, so that
> articles would need to be written in either alphabet and then ran an
> automatic conversion from a separate database.

[DO] Good points. This is one of the advantages of the new
technologies. In principle a technofix lets you have it both ways. A
long time ago I saw that in a Chinese wordprocessor - they have
traditional and simplified characters and early on, before Windows,
there was a toggle feature letting you view text in one or the other.
That was easy as it is a 1 to 1 correspondence. Converting between
alphabets is more complicated but just a question of working through
the complications.

One important issue is that while there is a standard Latin
orthography for Wolof, the Wolofal orthography is not standardized in
a way that gives you the predicable text environment you need. There
may also be some extended Arabic character needs not provided for yet
in Unicode. Standardizing Arabic (

Anyway there is I think a real need and potential for development and
application of such conversion utilities and many Wikipedias can
benefit (and not just in Ajami/Latin cases, there is also N'ko for
Manding, Ethiopic/Latin for Oromo, and Tifinagh/Arabic/Latin for
Amazight, and eventually probably Mandombe/Latin in central Africa
[are you ready?]).

[MB]> A Wolof Wikipedia would therefore be of most use to the people in
> Senegal who currently have the least access to editing (or using) it,
> particularly women, girls, and the rural poor.   . . .

[DO]This may be an oversimplification, though I see where you're
coming from. Do you see this as having implications for the kinds of
articles and approach to focus on now?

There are two other demographics worth considering: (1) the children
in schools where Wolof is the language of instruction or a subject of
study and where computers are introduced, and (2) Wolof-speakers
abroad, among whom there may be parents interested in passing the
language on, and younger people interested in Wolof as a "heritage
language."

There is also yet another demographic not to overlook within Sengal
(and Gambia) - the next generation. Part of the point of putting a
Wikipedia together in a language now, as we know, is its long-term
utility. Babies born today in Senegal and Gambia will either have
access to an information-rich Wikipedia in Wolof (or other languages
of the area) when they are going to school, or they will not. And what
about the children of a Wolof-speaking woman who has the chance to
benefit from the Wolof Wikipedia now? Are we possibly hinting at a
nascent cyber-literate culture in even a small way? (I admit I'm
reaching a bit here, but not too far)

[MB]>          . . .                       It may take a lot of
> effort to find people who have the necessary combination of Wolof
> literacy, computer access, and an interest in promoting the language by
> producing encyclopedia materials.

[DO] You are right. But on the other hand, the short term strategy
might benefit from remembering the Wolof-speakers abroad. And also
Wolof language classes, esp. at universities. There are not a lot of
such classes, but the point is a few people here and there with the
access and skills (and in the case of people studying Wolof, an
instructor willing to use this medium as part of the course approach)
can make a difference.

One question I have is how many people does it really take to get a
Wikipedia edition up to a certain level? And over what time? It sounds
like Kasper and Sabine did a lot pretty much singlehandedly for two
minority European languages. There have been several people working on
the Swahili Wikipedia for a while - how many and how long to get to
1000 articles?

[MB]> Right now the Wolof Wikipedia claims to have 226 articles, but
most of
> those are the stubbiest of stubs.  For example:
> http://wo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegal
>
> Here's the complete list of articles in the Wolof Wikipedia.  Click on
> any of the articles on this page to get a sense of the challenge ahead:
> http://wo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages

[DO] It might seem discouraging but in reality, it is kind of in the
Wikipedia spirit as I understand it to get things started with stub
articles. It's a different case than for some languages where there is
virtually nothing, not even stubby stubs ...

Anyway that's more than I intended to write at this sitting. Hope it
is of some use/interest.

Don

I just had a conversation with Joe Hill, an anthropologist who works in
Senegal, and he had a few interesting observations about issues that
exist for Wolof language projects, and may carry over to other African
languages.  Joe has just joined the list, so perhaps he'll elaborate
more, but I'll summarize the main points:

1) Many educated Senegalese are not literate in Wolof, although they
speak it.  Literacy is primarily in French and Arabic.

2) A very high proportion of those who are literate in Wolof are
female.  However, many of the women who have computer skills and access
to cybercafes are among the highly educated who prefer to read and write
in international languages.

3) Wolof has two different orthographies, based on Latin and Arabic
writing.  The Arabic orthography is more common for reading and writing,
but the Latin alphabet is more common for computer localizations.  It
would be possible to develop a straightforward algorithm to convert from
Latin to Arabic, but harder to go the other way.  Therefore, a Wolof
Wikipedia might need some sort of conversion mechanism, in which
articles are written in the Latin alphabet and then converted to the
Arabic orthography.  Or, some sort of system based on the OmegaT work
that Sabine was talking about would need to be implemented, so that
articles would need to be written in either alphabet and then ran an
automatic conversion from a separate database.

A Wolof Wikipedia would therefore be of most use to the people in
Senegal who currently have the least access to editing (or using) it,
particularly women, girls, and the rural poor.  It may take a lot of
effort to find people who have the necessary combination of Wolof
literacy, computer access, and an interest in promoting the language by
producing encyclopedia materials.

Right now the Wolof Wikipedia claims to have 226 articles, but most of
those are the stubbiest of stubs.  For example:
http://wo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegal

Here's the complete list of articles in the Wolof Wikipedia.  Click on
any of the articles on this page to get a sense of the challenge ahead:
http://wo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages

--Martin

> I quite frankly don't think machine translation will be available for
> African languages any time soon, at least not at a usable level. We
> lack data, knowledge and people to make that happen. What we need is
> some kind of good interface for computer assisted collaborative
> translation.
>
Hi Dennis, hi all,

well, these days it seems as if quite a bunch of new contacts comes
along and with that many new possibilities.

As to machine translation: yesterday I got in touch with Mikel Forcada -
my contact to Apertium
(http://apertium.sourceforge.net/ ) a software designed to do machine
translation between similar languages. Well I looked at it by chance and
immediately thought about the Neapolitan wikipedia and how helpful this
could be. Then I thought about African languages - I already told him
about this in a mail yesterday - and Apertium would make sense to be
used to translate between similar African languages. This implies that a
corpus of terminology with conjugations, declensions etc. is built.
Besides that, of course grammar rules for the structural work is
necessary. As for the information I have, for general texts a corpus of
approx. 10.000 words is needed and of course: the more one uses the tool
and adapts it, the better it gets.

These 10.000 words could be collected at WiktionaryZ
(http://wiktionaryz.org). I just asked Mikel if they have a basic
wordlist we could start work on (because that is anyway something we
will need ). Of course also parts of speech are important and in its
actual release we do not have them, but they are planned for the future.

This was just to give you a glance on this subject, if needed we can dig
deeper - sometimes it could take some time to answer since for Apertum I
don't know the answers myself (or just some of them).

When it comes to Computer Assisted Translation things are different: I
would suggest you to have a look at OmegaT
http:/en.wikipedia.org/Wiki/OmegaT. OmegaT is a CAT-Tool that helps you
with your translations in such a way that you can exchange translation
memories and glossaries (in future it will be connected to WiktionaryZ
to retrieve terminology for the glossary from there). This means you
don't have tow work online (which can be a huge issue or better have
quite hight costs in Africa if I understood well) and nevertheless you
can exchange your data and speed translation work in that way. Once you
start to have various translation memories and you search how a term was
used previously from within OmegaT it will search your translation
memories and show you. Also this is described very roughly here, but I
think ti gives a first glance at wat the software does.

I have been using OmegaT for quite a long time now - and I am quite sure
that you will like it. I know that Paa Kwesi is already working with it
(great!!!!) and I hope you will do the same. Please don't hesitate to
ask questions.

Best wishes,

Sabine

*****
Sabine Cretella
Translations IT-DE, EN-DE
Evangelist for WiktionaryZ
s.cretella@...
skype: sabinecretella
phone +39-340-1809828
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
  http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com

Hi Lawrence. You raise an excellent point. We do need to keep in mind
that there are a lot of novice users of Wikipedia - who may be very
expert in the languages and other subjects they specialize in, but
need clarification on how to access, use, edit, in Wikipedia, let
alone more complicated tasks like ferreting out the userpages of
previous contributors.

We will need to address that, but for the moment what Martin and I
were talking about is finding Wikipedia users who are already on the
other extreme - experienced in using and contributing to Wikipedia.
It's important to have them in the discussion early on, and in the
long run they can help in explaining how to use Wikipedia.

There is a Wikipedia page with links to pages explaining how to use
Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents , but I'm not
sure how helpful they are to newcomers and computer novices. Perhaps
if you like you can look at it and see if it makes any sense. Of
course if you are paying connect time or cybercafé fees to browse then
that might not be a very fair proposal.

In any event, we do need to keep this set of issues on the agenda -
how to help new users? - since they are essential for building the
African language Wikipedia space...

Don


--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, adewole lawrence
<loadewole@...> wrote:
>
> I am worried that it is really not going to be easy
> for African languages scholars in Africa to take part
> in contributing to Wikipedia. This is not because they
> are not interested but because instructions often
> given are at times not understood by them (an example
> is the one below). My colleagues and I are interested
> in contributing but we definitely do not know how to
> go about it.
> Lawrence
>
> --- Martin Benjamin <martin.benjamin@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Don and I have been having an off-list chat about
> > how to alert active
> > African language Wikipedians to the AfrophoneWikis
> > list, since we really
> > need to solicit the voices of people who are already
> > engaged in the
> > process.  Among other strategies (posting to country
> > or
> > language-specific lists, writing to specific people
> > on our contact
> > lists), we landed on the notion of inviting people
> > via their Wikipedia
> > User Talk pages.
> >
...

--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, "Kasper Souren"
<kasper.souren@...> wrote:
>
> On 8/10/06, Martin Benjamin <martin.benjamin@...> wrote:
> > Ethan Zuckerman has written an interesting blogpost on multi-lingual
> > Wikipedias, particularly regarding African languages, available here:
> > http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=934
> >
> > (If you want to comment on his article, you might want to cross-post
> > your comments both to the original blog, and also to the
AfrophoneWikis
> > yahoo group).
>
> Thanks Martin, for pointing us to this article. Here's are my comments:
>
> Regarding your last question, in my opinion there is no doubt about
> it: We are writing many encyclopedias, and translating when wanted.
>
> When machine translations will one day be both good and free enough we
> can start the other, different project. Call it Ultimate Wikipedia or
> WikipediaZ, which will be about the creation of one encyclopedia in a
> meta language, that can automatically be translated into other
> languages.
>
> For now, I hope that the Swahili Wikipedia can maintain the current
> growth rate, and will also be an impetus for the other Afrophone
> Wikipedias.

Hi,

I quite frankly don't think machine translation will be available for
African languages any time soon, at least not at a usable level. We
lack data, knowledge and people to make that happen. What we need is
some kind of good interface for computer assisted collaborative
translation.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

I am worried that it is really not going to be easy
for African languages scholars in Africa to take part
in contributing to Wikipedia. This is not because they
are not interested but because instructions often
given are at times not understood by them (an example
is the one below). My colleagues and I are interested
in contributing but we definitely do not know how to
go about it.
Lawrence

--- Martin Benjamin <martin.benjamin@...>
wrote:

> Don and I have been having an off-list chat about
> how to alert active
> African language Wikipedians to the AfrophoneWikis
> list, since we really
> need to solicit the voices of people who are already
> engaged in the
> process.  Among other strategies (posting to country
> or
> language-specific lists, writing to specific people
> on our contact
> lists), we landed on the notion of inviting people
> via their Wikipedia
> User Talk pages.
>
> This is a somewhat time consuming process, so
> perhaps each member of
> this list could take upon themselves the task of
> going through one or
> two African language Wikipedias and performing the
> following steps.
> (This has been completed for Swahili.):
>
> 1) Visit http://wapurl.co.uk/?UL1J0LL to find a list
> of direct links to
> all known African language Wikipedias
>
> 2) Enter the Wikipedia for a language.
>
> 3) You'll have to change some settings so that you
> can see all changes
> from the past 30 days.  The easiest way is to go
> directly to the URL at
> the top of your browser. The URL will begin with
> http://bm.wikipedia.org/ , where "bm" will be
> replaced with some other
> two letter code, depending on the language.  Now,
> here's the tricky
> part... delete everything after "wikipedia.org/" and
> instead paste the
> following code directly after the slash:
>
>
w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidemyself=1&days=30&limit=5000&hidemino\
r=1&hideanons=1&hidebots=1
>
> 4) Click on the editor names or user page links
> (shown after the
> timestamp for a given change), and edit the User
> Talk page for a user.
> Paste in an invitation, something like this:
>
> Please join
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis to
> discuss
> issues related to African language Wikipedias
>
> 5) Click to save your changes
>
> 6) Back-arrow your way to the recent changes page,
> and find the next
> user.  For most African language Wikipedias, this
> won't be a very long
> process, unfortunately.
>
> If each person currently on this list takes on 2
> languages, we can
> complete the task extremely quickly.  Or perhaps a
> list member knows how
> to use a bot to automate the process of finding
> registered users for
> each language?
>
> --Martin
>


Lawrence Olufemi Adewole
Department of African Languages and Literatures
Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
cellphone: 0803-471-4476

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

This is a very practical strategy! Thanks.


--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, Martin Benjamin
<martin.benjamin@...> wrote:
>
> Don and I have been having an off-list chat about how to alert active
> African language Wikipedians to the AfrophoneWikis list, since we
really
> need to solicit the voices of people who are already engaged in the
> process.  Among other strategies (posting to country or
> language-specific lists, writing to specific people on our contact
> lists), we landed on the notion of inviting people via their Wikipedia
> User Talk pages.
>
> This is a somewhat time consuming process, so perhaps each member of
> this list could take upon themselves the task of going through one or
> two African language Wikipedias and performing the following steps.
> (This has been completed for Swahili.):
>
> 1) Visit http://wapurl.co.uk/?UL1J0LL to find a list of direct links to
> all known African language Wikipedias
>
> 2) Enter the Wikipedia for a language.
>
> 3) You'll have to change some settings so that you can see all changes
> from the past 30 days.  The easiest way is to go directly to the URL at
> the top of your browser. The URL will begin with
> http://bm.wikipedia.org/ , where "bm" will be replaced with some other
> two letter code, depending on the language.  Now, here's the tricky
> part... delete everything after "wikipedia.org/" and instead paste the
> following code directly after the slash:
>
>
w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidemyself=1&days=30&limit=5000&hidemino\
r=1&hideanons=1&hidebots=1
>
> 4) Click on the editor names or user page links (shown after the
> timestamp for a given change), and edit the User Talk page for a user.
> Paste in an invitation, something like this:
>
> Please join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis to discuss
> issues related to African language Wikipedias
>
> 5) Click to save your changes
>
> 6) Back-arrow your way to the recent changes page, and find the next
> user.  For most African language Wikipedias, this won't be a very long
> process, unfortunately.
>
> If each person currently on this list takes on 2 languages, we can
> complete the task extremely quickly.  Or perhaps a list member knows
how
> to use a bot to automate the process of finding registered users for
> each language?
>
> --Martin
>

Don and I have been having an off-list chat about how to alert active
African language Wikipedians to the AfrophoneWikis list, since we really
need to solicit the voices of people who are already engaged in the
process.  Among other strategies (posting to country or
language-specific lists, writing to specific people on our contact
lists), we landed on the notion of inviting people via their Wikipedia
User Talk pages.

This is a somewhat time consuming process, so perhaps each member of
this list could take upon themselves the task of going through one or
two African language Wikipedias and performing the following steps.
(This has been completed for Swahili.):

1) Visit http://wapurl.co.uk/?UL1J0LL to find a list of direct links to
all known African language Wikipedias

2) Enter the Wikipedia for a language.

3) You'll have to change some settings so that you can see all changes
from the past 30 days.  The easiest way is to go directly to the URL at
the top of your browser. The URL will begin with
http://bm.wikipedia.org/ , where "bm" will be replaced with some other
two letter code, depending on the language.  Now, here's the tricky
part... delete everything after "wikipedia.org/" and instead paste the
following code directly after the slash:

w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidemyself=1&days=30&limit=5000&hidemino\
r=1&hideanons=1&hidebots=1

4) Click on the editor names or user page links (shown after the
timestamp for a given change), and edit the User Talk page for a user.
Paste in an invitation, something like this:

Please join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis to discuss
issues related to African language Wikipedias

5) Click to save your changes

6) Back-arrow your way to the recent changes page, and find the next
user.  For most African language Wikipedias, this won't be a very long
process, unfortunately.

If each person currently on this list takes on 2 languages, we can
complete the task extremely quickly.  Or perhaps a list member knows how
to use a bot to automate the process of finding registered users for
each language?

--Martin

Gerard, Lawrence, all, Greetings and thanks for the input. Let me
mention before responding quickly to this thread, that I've put up
some links to Wikipedia and other sites of possible use/interest on
the group homepage ("Links" section).

The topics raised by the postings so far seem to me to be examples of
the kinds of subjects that we'll consider here when we get going.
Among them:
* Communication with minority language efforts on other continents is
definitely useful, offering experience and perspective.
* Understanding the challenges of developing African language editions
of Wikipedia - challenges in some ways unique to the linguistic,
economic, educational, policy, connectivity/access, and socio-cultural
environments of the continent - is essential.

The issue of how to encourage contributions seems to require stepping
back a bit from the model we have gotten used to in the West / North.
But maybe before the mechanics of how to compensate people who live on
thin margins and don't have the disposable income to pay cybercafé
time for composing Wikipedia content, the issues of how to get people
interested - and who.

One "demographic" often overlooked in discussions of localization is
expatriate Africans. In the short term, and in order to build
foundations for "Afrophone" Wikipedias, this may be a key group. It
probably already is in many cases.

Within Africa, where the main action will naturally and necesarily be,
maybe the model of the individual user composing and editing is not
the only or even the best. I'll go out on a limb here with an example
from radio in Niger. There's a kind of informal youth association or
club called "fada" (I believe it's originally Hausa) that is quite
common. Somehow fadas have in some cases become, or gotten active as,
radio listening groups. Might the concept of interacting with media as
groups rather than exclusively as individuals, might be an approach
harmonious with social institutions elsewhere? Could Wiki-clubs or
"Wiki-fadas" be something that could organize interaction with
Wikipedia (and the internet) in diverse languages, provide incentives
in terms of access to computers, learning of skills, etc.?

Again these are just ideas, not to be imposed, of course, but to
stimulate thinking. I believe we'll have more to say re the
development of this list this week...

Don

--- In afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com, GerardM <gerard.meijssen@...>
wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> There are many ways in which you can make it atractive to help with Wiki
> content. One way of doing this is by subsidizing access to
computers. This
> can be done in several ways; you can pay for accesstime that is spent on
> specific servers ie Wikimedia and other content that is sponsored.
With this
> info Freely available, people can either "consume" or "produce" content.
> When people have added a certain amount of content, they can be given a
> "credit" that allows them to check their own e-mail account... This
would
> only be available to signed in people for the e-mail address that is
> associated with the user profile.. By clustering PC's in this way you
> provide a place where people can walk the talk.
>
> One way of making Wikimedia content available with a better
performance, is
> by organising cache servers in Africa with ISPs. This will reduce
the cost
> (peering agreements) a lot. It will provide a better performance to the
> "readers" and when the peering agreements have slots where traffic
cost is
> low, we could push changes to Africa without a user request.
>
> I have to point out, this is how I think it might work. Finding
money for
> such schemes is feasible. It must however be done in such way that
people
> think they are THEIR wiki computers and that the projects are THEIR
> projects. This sense of "ownership" is extremely important. Without
this, I
> would not be as motivated as I am.
>
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> On 8/12/06, adewole lawrence <loadewole@...> wrote:
> >
> >   I quite agree that most people in Africa spend their
> > time on survival that a little sum of money will
> > enable them to create time for writing content for
> > Wikipedias. We should realise that most African go to
> > Cybercafe to check mails and they do pay for the
> > service. For them to be contributing to the content of
> > Wikipedias, they should be paid some money.
> > Lawrence
> >
> >
> > --- Kasper Souren <kasper.souren@... <kasper.souren%40gmail.com>>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > > I would very much like to connect this group to
> > > the "regional, rare and
> > > > minority langauges" - we have many things in
> > > common.
> > >
> > > Interesting. In December 2004 I started working on
> > > the Limburgish
> > > Wikipedia. Limburgish is a regional language spoken
> > > in Dutch and
> > > Belgian Limburg, by 500.000 people or so. Since it
> > > is still commonly
> > > spoken amongst the younger generation, it seems the
> > > Dutch regional
> > > language with most chances for "survival". Once I
> > > heard that I would
> > > go to Mali (to work for Geekcorps, which was founded
> > > by Ethan
> > > Zuckerman actually :) I started looking about the
> > > situation of
> > > Wikipedia for the languages of Mali. My experience
> > > with getting the
> > > Limburgish Wikipedia started was very useful for
> > > starting the Bambara
> > > Wikipedia.
> > >
...

OmegaT, WiktionaryZ, Betawiki ... some questions that need an answer ...

I quite agree that most people in Africa spend their
time on survival that a little sum of money will
enable them to create time for writing content for
Wikipedias. We should realise that most African go to
Cybercafe to check mails and they do pay for the
service. For them to be contributing to the content of
Wikipedias, they should be paid some money.
Lawrence

--- Kasper Souren <kasper.souren@...> wrote:

> > I would very much like to connect this group to
> the "regional, rare and
> > minority langauges" - we have many things in
> common.
>
> Interesting. In December 2004 I started working on
> the Limburgish
> Wikipedia. Limburgish is a regional language spoken
> in Dutch and
> Belgian Limburg, by 500.000 people or so. Since it
> is still commonly
> spoken amongst the younger generation, it seems the
> Dutch regional
> language with most chances for "survival". Once I
> heard that I would
> go to Mali (to work for Geekcorps, which was founded
> by Ethan
> Zuckerman actually :) I started looking about the
> situation of
> Wikipedia for the languages of Mali. My experience
> with getting the
> Limburgish Wikipedia started was very useful for
> starting the Bambara
> Wikipedia.
>
> It is also interesting to note that I had set myself
> the goal to get
> the Limburgish Wikipedia to 1000 articles, and once
> it got there,
> after only 8 months or so I sort of stopped
> contributing. Besides me
> there were 2 other active contributors. Today it has
>  more than 2300
> articles and is growing steadily.
>
> The idea is that once a Wikipedia reaches a 1000
> articles it will
> probably attract that many people (and media
> attention) that it will
> be able to grow on its own. We have to see if this
> will prove to be
> true for the Swahili Wikipedia, but looking at the
> statistics I am
> fairly confident about this.
>
> That´s the reason to do pay people to write content
> for some
> Wikipedias. Not for regional languages in Europe
> though. As Martin
> pointed out during Wikimania, Africans (and also
> people in many other
> countries, such as Peru or Russia) spend all their
> time on survival,
> of themselves and of their often large families. It
> would be insane
> for them to spend 0.50$ on internet time which
> doesn´t help them in
> their survival.
>
> I just noticed that people answered some questions I
> asked active
> contributors of the Swahili Wikipedia. Probably
> interesting to read:
> *
>
http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matt_Crypto#Congratutalions.2C_and_some_q\
uestions
> * http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ChriKo
> *
> http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oliver_Stegen
> * http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Guaka
>
> a k'an be,
> Kasper
>


Lawrence Olufemi Adewole
Department of African Languages and Literatures
Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
cellphone: 0803-471-4476

__________________________________________________
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> I would very much like to connect this group to the "regional, rare and
> minority langauges" - we have many things in common.

Interesting. In December 2004 I started working on the Limburgish
Wikipedia. Limburgish is a regional language spoken in Dutch and
Belgian Limburg, by 500.000 people or so. Since it is still commonly
spoken amongst the younger generation, it seems the Dutch regional
language with most chances for "survival". Once I heard that I would
go to Mali (to work for Geekcorps, which was founded by Ethan
Zuckerman actually :) I started looking about the situation of
Wikipedia for the languages of Mali. My experience with getting the
Limburgish Wikipedia started was very useful for starting the Bambara
Wikipedia.

It is also interesting to note that I had set myself the goal to get
the Limburgish Wikipedia to 1000 articles, and once it got there,
after only 8 months or so I sort of stopped contributing. Besides me
there were 2 other active contributors. Today it has  more than 2300
articles and is growing steadily.

The idea is that once a Wikipedia reaches a 1000 articles it will
probably attract that many people (and media attention) that it will
be able to grow on its own. We have to see if this will prove to be
true for the Swahili Wikipedia, but looking at the statistics I am
fairly confident about this.

That´s the reason to do pay people to write content for some
Wikipedias. Not for regional languages in Europe though. As Martin
pointed out during Wikimania, Africans (and also people in many other
countries, such as Peru or Russia) spend all their time on survival,
of themselves and of their often large families. It would be insane
for them to spend 0.50$ on internet time which doesn´t help them in
their survival.

I just noticed that people answered some questions I asked active
contributors of the Swahili Wikipedia. Probably interesting to read:
*
http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matt_Crypto#Congratutalions.2C_and_some_q\
uestions
* http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ChriKo
* http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oliver_Stegen
* http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Guaka

a k'an be,
Kasper

Thank you Martin for pointing us to this blog - he's a person we should
work togehter with (is he a member of this group? I hope so ...
otherwise we should invite him).

Well, I left a note on his blog - and I pointed my readers there (and
hope they will go and read) - there's much information in just one
article  and I only had a glance at the others. I'll read them when my
time permits it.

Anyway: now that I am writing here you might wonder why a German who
built up the Neapolitan Wikipedia is in a discussion group about African
langauges and Wikipedias ...

While writing I thouhgt it would make sense to put this on the blog -
the more people read about this group and about regional languages or
small wikipedias the better are our changes to go ahead quite fast.
Therefore my words to you and all interested people can be read here:
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2006/08/african-languages-how-are-they.html

I would very much like to connect this group to the "regional, rare and
minority langauges" - we have many things in common.

Wishing you all a great evening!

Sabine

*****
Sabine Cretella
Translations IT-DE, EN-DE
Evangelist for Wiktionaryz
s.cretella@...
skype: sabinecretella
phone +39-340-1809828
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com


Martin Benjamin schrieb:
> Ethan Zuckerman has written an interesting blogpost on multi-lingual
> Wikipedias, particularly regarding African languages, available here:
> http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=934
>
> (If you want to comment on his article, you might want to cross-post
> your comments both to the original blog, and also to the AfrophoneWikis
> yahoo group).
>
> --Martin
>
>

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
  http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com

On 8/10/06, Martin Benjamin <martin.benjamin@...> wrote:
> Ethan Zuckerman has written an interesting blogpost on multi-lingual
> Wikipedias, particularly regarding African languages, available here:
> http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=934
>
> (If you want to comment on his article, you might want to cross-post
> your comments both to the original blog, and also to the AfrophoneWikis
> yahoo group).

Thanks Martin, for pointing us to this article. Here's are my comments:

Regarding your last question, in my opinion there is no doubt about
it: We are writing many encyclopedias, and translating when wanted.

When machine translations will one day be both good and free enough we
can start the other, different project. Call it Ultimate Wikipedia or
WikipediaZ, which will be about the creation of one encyclopedia in a
meta language, that can automatically be translated into other
languages.

For now, I hope that the Swahili Wikipedia can maintain the current
growth rate, and will also be an impetus for the other Afrophone
Wikipedias.


Kasper

Ethan Zuckerman has written an interesting blogpost on multi-lingual
Wikipedias, particularly regarding African languages, available here:
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=934

(If you want to comment on his article, you might want to cross-post
your comments both to the original blog, and also to the AfrophoneWikis
yahoo group).

--Martin

At this early stage in the formation of the AfrophoneWikis group, it is
important that we build our core membership.  Once we have assembled the
basic network of interested people, we can start the discussion in
earnest - perhaps next week?

To that end, can you think of other people who should be alerted about
this group?  The people we most want to bring in at this moment are
either (a) interested in Wikipedias in Africa or (b) interested in
African languages, or (c) both.

Please think of anyone you know of who meets that description, and
either send me or Don their contact information, or let them know that
they can sign on at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/

--Martin

Hoi,
I am GerardM in many of the Wikimedia projects. But more importantly I
am involved in http://wiktionaryz.org . WiktionaryZ is a project where
we want to include both lexicological, terminological and onthological
information.. We want all words in all languages. Not only that, we
want to have it available in as many languages as possible.

On the tenth I will be talking to two NGO's that have expressed
interest in localising MediaWiki in African and Asian languages..

Thanks,
     Gerard

This is a quick note of introduction and welcome. This list was set up
as a result of some discussions before/during/after Wikimania 2006
about how to facilitate planning and dialogue on the subject of
encouraging and supporting the growth in number, content and quality
of Wikipedias in African languages.

The actual setting up of the group was done by Martin Benjamin while
he and I were in an online chat on this and related subjects.

The rationale is summarized at
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_African_Language_Wikipedias


I've added some Wikimania links in a folder of the "Links" section of
the group's page.

By way if introduction I work on Bisharat and currently also the
PanAfrican Localisation project. My background is rural development
with African studies (and some African language work). My interest in
multilingual (and African language) ICT is related to supporting
"ICT4D" (information & communication for development) efforts. My
interest in Wikipedia is related to that but also awareness of the
fundamental importance of knowledge, ways of knowing, and education to
all aspects of development.

Anyway, welcome and I look forward to some interesting and productive
dialogue here.

Don

Don Osborn, Ph.D.         dzo@...
*Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative
*Bisharat! Initiative langues - technologie - développement
http://www.bisharat.net

*PanAfrican Localisation Project
*Projet panafricain sur la localisation
http://www.bisharat.net/PanAfrLoc (new domain coming)