Communications committee/Subcommittees/Translation/Reports/2007-02

Transcom report: from mid November 2006 till January 2007

General

Activity: Low (two members inactive)
Coordination of people
- Local coordinator recruiting. See #TCPL
- Encouragement for initiatives from the community: Translation teams
Coordination of requests
- Disclaimer, Foundation website and fundraising campaign.
Internal communication flaw: specially in December

Goal

2006/Q4 goal (set in the early November, see also Communications subcommittees/Trans/meetings)

In 2006/Q3 Transcom proposed a set of high-priority given languages for its coordination (see Communications subcommittees/Trans/core langs) as its work flame. In the below "high-priority languages" means this hypothetical set of languages, that is, (English), French, Spanish, Japanese Chinese and Russian.

WMF site
1. WMF site translation available in all core langs
  not fulfilled completely: main page and privacy policy are available in all high-priority languages (en, fr, es, ja, zh, ru), but no language but English covers all contents. Roughly 75% contents are available in French, 50%-60% in Japanese and Chinese even outdated sometimes, 30% or less in Russian language. In addition, other language information tends to be outdated (see Figure 1. Uptodate information pages are boldened).
  
  Among other languages, Dutch and Italian contents are available and relatively maintained. Other languages are tend to be left by their translators.
2. translate WMF website 100% into high-priority langs, 75% other langs
  not fulfilled, see the above.
Coordinators
1. get TCPLs in all core langs
  French coordinators are sought still now, the Chinese coordinator is inactive without communication.
2. have at least two TCPLs in each core lang
  not realized; only Russian language has two coordinators. Fortunately no one complains at this time for their heavy workload.

Figure 1:

Foundation site status as of 07/02/03

Page	En	Fr	Es	Ja	Zh	Ru	(Pt)	Update need
Home	07/01/23	06/12/13	outdated	07/01/10	outdated	07/01/31	a bit old	High
news	07/02/01	07/01/22	07/01/23	2006	2006	07/02/01	N/A	High
FAQ	07/01/15	outdated	outdated	synched	outdated	outdated	N/A	High
Board	07/01/16	N/A	06/01/10	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Middle
Projects	07/02/01	07/01/13	07/01/16	07/01/10	07/01/15	N/A	07/01/17	Middle
Press room	07/01/25	07/01/21	N/A	outdated	outdated	N/A	N/A	Middle?
Contact us	07/01/20	07/01/20	N/A	06/10/28	06/10/11	N/A	N/A	High?
Staff	07/02/01	07/01/22	07/12/12	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	High
Chapters	07/02/02	07/02/02	N/A	outdated	outdated	N/A	N/A	Middle
Donation	06/12/18	ok	ok	ok	ok	ok	ok	-
Privacy policy	06/06/21	ok	ok	ok	ok	ok	ok	-
WVIG	06/08/08	ok	ok	ok	N/A	N/A	N/A	?
GP	07/01/17	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	?
DPP	07/01/18	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	?

There are other pages on the website. Your additions will be appreciated.

In January Aphaia proposed to set goals both annual and quarterly to other transcom members but no further discussion was held as of February 2.

Translations released

Fundraising related
WMF website content - specially Board, FAQ (former "About Wikimedia"), Our projects, Current staff update
WMF website news
disclaimers for policy translations (For example, compare Wikimedia:Privacy policy and French and unofficial version).

TCPL

TCPL stands for "translation coordinator per languages". They are volunteers and not members of Transcom necessarily and aware of their informal status. However they are willing to work with Transcom and become bridges between local translators from the communities and people who are working on the Foundation layer.

Recruit TCPLs:
- Major languages: es, ja, ru, zh (actively recruited)
- Other languages: tr, cs, ar (voluntarily applying)
- Possible: nl
Local translation teams
- Dbl2010 (Spcom member) proposed to form a team of translators. Now Japanese, French and Turkish teams exist. Density of their activities vary.
Further challenges
- Chinese translators may need to be cared more. The current coordinator is inactive, there are translators around but they seem not to make a team. No coordination may be around there.
- French team exists but their activities are unseen. It would be nice (for us Transcom specially) to have a visible contact point to the French team.
- Further expansions: Besides "high-priority languages" there are other major languages. Those languages would be better to be more focused on in our future coordination activities.

Focus on topics : Fundraising

Overview

Fundraising was held from Dec 16, 2006 till Jan 15, 2007. Transcom was involved into coordination from Dec 14 or 13 till the end of January (for closure: "thank you note").

Transcom involvement into its coordination of translation was limited mainly from two reasons: 1) shortage of human resource and 2) shortage of time.

Communications between involved parties were taken on 1) foundation & meta wikis and on 2) mailinglists (crossposting to both wmfcc-l and fundcom-l) and 3) direct mail exchanges (specially between Tobacman and Aphaia). IRC wasn't used Translation also (workplace split and not always consistent to the existing name convention).

Human resources

Originally planned Jd would manage it, but due to his absence, Aphaia took care of, sharing works with Fundcom. specially Tobacman, Pathoschild and Daniel Mayer. In the office, Brad and Danny worked to seek translators mainly on IRC, too.

Thanks to local coordinators and individual translators, who acted promptly in response to ask through IRC, mailing lists and meta. I would mention some translations were done without explicit ask of help: even the sitenotice appeared on their local project was good enough prompt them to engage translations of relevant documents. Also it is my pleasure to report then we found some new people voluntarily involved as well familiar editors with long history. Some of those new people were invited to our (unofficial) translator network traceable through Trans- and Babel templates.

shortage of time

While drastic renewal of Fundraising page was suggested, it hadn't been uploaded very before the Fundraising drive. Due to its complexity translation was thought possible only on the Foundation wiki (later the limitation of workplace revealed not necessary, still with some difficulties though), and a rush of requests of accounts followed (as always). If we could start preparation some days earlier, things could have been managed much easier. And it can be applied to the whole funddrive term, not only its early stage.

Things requested to translate appeared during the whole funddrive very before the time they needed. Mostly one day before. It may have helped to have the community aware those need was in urgent but not helpful to find translators as many as possible. In addition some messages could only English Wikipedia and so on but their sources couldn't avail. It was a bad strategy to give translators only their appearances but not their source. I expect this kind of confusion is fixed in the next occasion.

Lack of coordination

The platform for fundraising translation was turned into redirect before its end, but it was not convenient for translation coordination, since there are another and final request: thank you note and some updated. In my opinion this kind of page are better to kept while the relevant content was being produced and it would have been nice for coordinators if it was okay to close it. I expect Fundcom people consider this point in the next occasion and we involved parties have better communications at that time.

Communications

Internal communications at Transcom has not been always good in this term, specially in December and January due to absence of some members. Also with the external people including Fundcom. Once it was decided Jd would coordinate the fundraising related translation, this information was not properly transmitted to the Fundcom and just before the campaign begins, one of them asked "Jd who?" - not only communications within the committee but also with other committees will be our challenge in this year.
In the early of November 2006 Transcom held a meeting online. Some proposals were made and commitments promised. However most of them were not realized. Also another meeting in January was proposed but it happened never. Membership of wikitrans mailinglist were broaden, but traffic didn't increased. Active discussions rather happened on a public mailinglist, translators-l.
With local coordinators - Mido (ar), Timichal & Zirland (cs, rather inactive) et al. habj is also interested in Swedish language coordination but hesitant, since she feels she would be available not always and described responsibility appeared too heavy for her eyes.
With translators - Angela H. (User:Aholtman) on dewp, habj on svwp. Discussions were brought insightful comments to on Talk:Translation coordinators per language, User talk:Aphaia etc. Also some mails were exchanged between Aphaia and some individual translators for detailed and mostly bored points.
Wikitrans was in a low traffic.
- Decentralized communications also matter here. ;p
No communications with zh coordinator (Lorenzarius; he may have been on a vacation?); However two Chinese editors, Hillgentleman and Alexsh helped translations greatly on meta. Either communications with fr coordinators / translators were generally poor, but there seems no great problem at least now; they were autonomously worked well (kudos to ~Pyb).
Though Fruggo (nl) showed interest to make a team for Dutch translators, no visible move was known at least on meta. Further contact will work well hopefully.
One of next challenges would be finding Pt coordinators as well De, Pl and It.
In the mid January on foundation-l Anthere and Aphaia suggested Transcom would need to expand. Aphaia later asked wikitrans subscribers (Transcom + local coordinators) to recommend anyone nice (including themselves). As of February 4 there was no reaction.
In the end of January, Sandra Ordonez, the new Communications Manager of Wikimedia Foundation and Aphaia exchanged mails, and agree to have further communications about translations.

Proposals, attempts and improvements

How to deal with outdated information: Habj made some proposal to handle "outdated materials" on translators-l. Some attempts was made but effect is still unknown.
Old translation request system has been merged into Zocky' s machine. Some request pages including "Frequently asked question" and "Our projects" were already switched to the newer scheme. After a half month of those changes, no complaint arose. Other platforms will therefore be switched to the newer method in some weeks.