Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Students as 'prosumers' of knowledge in the multlingual ecosystem of Wikimedia Projects. A translation-oriented approach

statusnot funded
Students as 'prosumers' of knowledge in the multlingual ecosystem of Wikimedia Projects. A translation-oriented approach
start and end datesJuly 2023 - July 2024
budget (USD)15000 USD
fiscal year2022-23
applicant(s)• Maristella Gatto

Overview edit

Applicant(s)

Maristella Gatto

Affiliation or grant type

Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro

Author(s)

Maristella Gatto

Wikimedia username(s)

Maristella Gatto: User:Maristella Gatto

Project title

Students as 'prosumers' of knowledge in the multlingual ecosystem of Wikimedia Projects. A translation-oriented approach

Research proposal edit

Description edit

Description of the proposed project, including aims and approach. Be sure to clearly state the problem, why it is important, why previous approaches (if any) have been insufficient, and your methods to address it.

The present project builds on successful experiences carried out at the University of Bari (Italy) under label "Transl/Editathon_at_Uniba". It aims both at enhancing the impact of Wikipedia-based activities at academic level and at providing an opportunity for a more focused investigation of such impact, especially from the perspective of theoretical and applied Translation Studies.

In recent years the multilingual ecosystem of Wikipedia has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners in the world of Translation Studies as a stimulating environment in which authentic translation tasks can be practiced to the benefit of knowledge dissemination in the real world (Calzada Perez 2019; Gatto 2020; forthcoming). Against this background this project will keep on addressing Wikipedia both as a source of real-life translation tasks, with the aim of enhancing the students' awareness of their own potential as prosumers of knowledge through translation, and a as perfect place for the development of a number of key transversal competences, as required in higher education today, including digital citizenship and ethic responisbility (Biesta 2013; Martinez-Carrasco 2018; Gatto 2022).

Furthermore, when seen from a Translation Studies perspective, the multilingual ecosystem of Wikipedia can be considered a fascinating ‘object’ which is worth being investigated in its own right. Indeed the immense potential of the ‘byproduct’ of Wikipedia-based teaching activities (consisting of a good number of Wikipedia-derived parallel texts) mostly runs the risk of remaining unexplored and being wasted. In particular, the identification of translation foci (Shuttleworth 2017), the creation of parallel entries via translation, and their potential for reuse in the compilation of parallel/comparable multilingual resources for trainee and professional translators, would deserve dedicated follow-up research-oriented activities, along with the study of the implications for translation pedagogy of the cooperative translation process which Wikipedia-based translation tasks entail.

Personnel edit

  • Prof. Gaetano Falco, Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Translation Studies, University of Bari, Italy
  • Dr Francesco Meledandri, Research Fellow, University of Bari, Italy

Budget edit

Approximate amount requested in USD.

15000 USD

Budget Description

Briefly describe what you expect to spend money on (specific budgets and details are not necessary at this time).

The budget will be spent in:

1) workshops to train students/colleagues (2000 USD);

2) salary for dedicated staff for coordinating the revision of translated articles for form/content (after peer review and assessment by domain experts) and for Wikimedia standards; collecting the data produced in the translation process; creating parallel corpora using the collected data (nearly 9000 USD);

3) final conference and other dissemination activities (4000 USD).

Impact edit

Address the impact and relevance to the Wikimedia projects, including the degree to which the research will address the 2030 Wikimedia Strategic Direction and/or support the work of Wikimedia user groups, affiliates, and developer communities. If your work relates to knowledge gaps, please directly relate it to the knowledge gaps taxonomy.

Our project impacts the Strategy "Provide for safety and inclusion" (specifically gender gap) as our student groups include moslty women and many members from the LGBT+ community.

We also hope to impact the Strategy "Identify Topics for Impact", because our activities will focus especially on biomedical articles by involving trainee translators and students from the Bari English Medical School and including a final assessment of the translated articles by the medical discourse community prior to publication.

We also plan to target Wikivoyage with the aim filling exisiting gaps, in Italian and other languages, in the coverage of our region and thus enhance the visibility of non-traditional destinations.

Dissemination edit

Plans for dissemination.

We are willing to share our experience with a wider audience as well as emerging research questions by:

  • organising seminars, workshops and conferences aimed to promote interaction between Wikimedia and the Linguistics/Translation Studies academic community;
  • by taking part in Conferences organised by other relevant communities (translation, linguistics, wikimedia);
  • by publishing the results of our research project in specialized journals or Creative Commons publications.

Past Contributions edit

Prior contributions to related academic and/or research projects and/or the Wikimedia and free culture communities. If you do not have prior experience, please explain your planned contributions.

A number of projects by the author have been funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Italia, and the University of Bari:

2017/2018 and 2018/2019 - Translatathon@Uniba

2020/2021 and 2022/2023 - A WikiVoyage to Puglia. Transl/Editathon@Uniba

2022 - Bloody Sunday

More info at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Coordinamento/Universit%C3%A0/UNIBA/Translatathon

The author has also published research articles and book chapters about Wikipedia/Wikivoyage (2012, 2016, 2020, 2022).

See:

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/AMonline/article/view/17886

http://www.padovauniversitypress.it/system/files/attachments_field/9788869381980.pdf

http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/linguelinguaggi/article/view/16158/14314


I agree to license the information I entered in this form excluding the pronouns, countries of residence, and email addresses under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. I understand that the decision to fund this Research Fund application, the application itself along with all the information entered by my in this form excluding the pronouns, country of residences, and email addresses of the personnel will be published on Wikimedia Foundation Funds pages on Meta-Wiki and will be made available to the public in perpetuity. To make the results of your research actionable and reusable by the Wikimedia volunteer communities, affiliates and Foundation, I agree that any output of my research will comply with the WMF Open Access Policy. I also confirm that I have read the privacy statement and agree to abide by the WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes