Grants:Project/Rapid/Uniba - Dipartimento LELIA/Translatathon Uniba
uniba.it• direttore.leliauniba.it
Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.
Project Goal
editChoose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.
- Recruit new editors
Our Translation Editathon is inspired by the English Wikipedia tutorial w:en:Wikipedia:Translate us and by similar “Teaching translation through Wikipedia” projects, whose goal is to involve new volunteers to enhance the multingualism of Wikipedia. From the perspective of translation training at University level the project provides an invaluable opportunity for “useful, real-world translation experience for students”, which will in turn familiarize a number of newbies with Wikipedia editing skills that they might be willing to keep on using in the future, as active members of the Wikipedia community.
- Add or improve content
The project is aimed at both adding new content and improving existing content, with a special focus on Wikipedia articles concerning Sustainable Development. Students will be primarily involved in tasks based on the creation of new Italian pages translated from articles existing only in English, and in completing unfinished translations and stubs. The project will also aim at revising existing translations, in order to ensure that all intertextual links found in the English version of an article are reproduced in the Italian version, thus partly contributing the overall quality of the encyclopedia.
Project Plan
editActivities
editTell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?
- The Department of Literature, Languages, Arts (LeLiA) at the University of Bari is willing to host a series of training sessions and translation editathons over 8 months, between 9th April 2018 and 9th December 2018. The participants will all be postgraduate trainee translators attending our MA Programme in Specialized Translation at the University of Bari, Italy, working under close supervision by our teaching staff. The language pair involved is English to Italian, as this is the mother tongue of all trainee translators.
- Each session will include time to learn or revise editing basics, time to choose article(s) for translation, time for offline assignments, and a final round-up. Students will be also invited to complete relevant self-paced training, including existing training from Wikipedia.
We also plan to launch the event with a one-day seminar involving Wikipedia experts, linguists and translation scholars. The talks will focus on Wikipedia as a collaborative encyclopedia and on related projects, and is meant to contribute to a deeper understanding of Wikipedia basic principles as well as to provide an opportunity for an academic focus on Wikipedia from different perspectives. The overarching aim is to create a comprehensive environment in which the translation editathon itself will be perceived as part of a more comprehensive cultural enterprise.
2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions.
- The events will be advertised through our Department website http://www.uniba.it/ricerca/dipartimenti/lelia and all students will be personally invited through the MA Programme official mailing list, as their participation and performance in the project will be part of English Linguistics and Translation studies module.
3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event?
- On our team we have one experienced editor to help lead editathons and to support participants. If accorded a grant, we would use the funds to invite representatives of Wikimedia University and School projects (Italy) as well as staff from another European University involved in a similar Wikipedia translation project
4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?
- We plan to host the events in a fully-equipped computer lab at our University, so that all students will have the necessary resources for translation, including access to monolingual, comparable and parallel corpora (huge collections of digital text for assembled for linguistic purposes) and CAT tools. Library facilities, will be accessible both online and offline, and the students will have all the dictionaries available in our libraries at their disposal.
All students are from the MA in Specialized Translation and have both the theoretical background and the language skills required to produce high quality translations. Nonetheless, supervision by our teaching staff and quality assessment by experts have been included as part of the activities. Before publication in Wikipedia, all translations will be edited and proofread by university staff in translation studies, and revised for domain-specific terminology consistency and accuracy by experts in the field of Sustainable Development.Tools, resources and assignments, along with all other relevant material will be made available through the English Linguistics and Translation Studies course Moodle platform as well as through a dedicated Wikipedia Course page.
5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?
- As students in a Specialized Translation university course, the student editors/translators will naturally feel involved in this real-life translation project. Furthermore, their work will be monitored both in terms of performance and in terms of engagement throughout the project and will be evaluated - albeit informally - as part of their assessment. Communication among the participants and between the participants and the teaching staff before, during, and after the events is facilitated by logistics (all students attend courses in the same university buildings) as well as by other forms of digital communication (including shared folders in Google Drive and Whatsapp/Facebook groups)
6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?
- Making this event an opportunity to share experience and exchange 'good practice' with people from other countries where similar projects have already been successfully carried out would definitely benefit our Department's orientation towards internationalization.
Impact
editHow will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:
- Number of events: 1 launch event open to the general public and 2 translation editathons
- Number of participants: 25
- Number of new editors: 20-25
- Number of articles created or improved: 40-50
- Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events): 20-25
Resources
editWhat resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).
- The project is organized as part of the teaching activities in a two-year Master’s Degree Programme in Specialized Translation at the University of Bari. The project leader is the English Linguistics and Translation Studies module convener, Prof. Maristella Gatto. Other University staff involved includes Prof. Gaetano Falco (English Linguistics and Translation Studies) and dr Francesco Meledandri (ICT for Translation).
Nicolabel, an experienced Wikimedian and administrator in it.wp, has agreed to introduce our students to the key theoretical and practical issues involved in the editathon and will teach the group basic Wikipedia editing skills. Another experienced Wikimedian, Epantaleo, who has recently been renewed a WMF Individual Engangement Grant, will also attend the events as a mentor. Our University is providing the venue for free. Computer lab staff will help for logistics and library staff will help us with resources when required.
What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.
- We plan to use the grant to organize the launch event. More specifically, we need financial support to reimburse travel and accommodation expenses for University staff from another European higher education institution already involved in a Wikipedia Translation Project to join us and give a talk during the project’s launch event.
- Travel expenses and accommodation for speakers at the launch event: 1400$
- Food for the launch event: 200$
Endorsements
editCommunity members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!
- I am happy to endorse the proposal although I don't know if mine could be formally considered as a third-party endorsement. The grantee (who undoubtedly is the sole project creator and responsible) has indeed asked me to help her in the editathlon, specifically for two activities.
At the beginning, I will have a preparatory speech on the topic chosen for the editathlon: for educational purposes inherent to the class, all the entries to be translated will relate to a specialized field. We have preliminarily agreed on Sustainable Development, which is my own field of specialization and whose knowledge among the trainees is at a basic level, as requested: I work as researcher (in another university) and am used to present this topic to an academic audience. At present, we are sketching a list of articles to be included in the translatathon, but it is likely that we will focus on the ones related to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and attendant targets. Since the trainees' activity will focus on translation from en.wp to it.wp, rather on merely adding contents from external sources, the final list of entries to be considered will take into account the state of these entries in both languages at the time of the translatathon itself.
I was also asked to give a presentation on Wikipedia (history, goals, pillars, code of conduct, identification and use of reliable sources, etc.) and Wikipedia editing, and provide trainees with basics for autonomous editing and tricks for a better work, depending on their needs. As a longtime Wikipedian (mostly acting in it.wp, as user since 2005 and as administrator since 2011), I believe to be proficient enough to give information on these aspects. If possible, I will also mentor trainees during the lab activities. --Nicolabel (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2018 (UTC) - I endorse this project (I personally know the project leader and encouraged her to submit the project) as I believe in the professionality of the project leader, which, although not a very experienced Wikimedian, will find support in a number of expert Wikimedians. Also this could be the first of other similar events in future Master programs at the University of Bari. I also believe the project will be a step towards bridging the gap between the Wikimedia community and the academic world, and will attract potential editors with highly technical skills. Epantaleo (talk) 15:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Support Slowking4 (talk) 00:59, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
