The Struggle of an African-language Wikipedia 234
A reader writes to mention an International Herald Tribune article discussing the troubles an African-language Wikipedia faces in getting underway. While there is a lot of interest, the primary obstacle is that of exposure: the majority of people on the continent of Africa do not have internet access. From the article: "What use is an encyclopedia when literacy rates among a language's speakers approach zero? (This is not a problem for Swahili.) And who should control the content in a local language if not enough native speakers are inclined, or able, to contribute? If it had been native speakers only who contributed to the Swahili version, that Wikipedia might not exist at all."
Well, translation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well, translation. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, they should have no problems with Nigerian...
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News sites use African languages; blogging sites or community sites make sense in African languages; but for encyclopedias the barrier is higher, since what you write there is supposed to be objective, universal, noncontroversial, understandable by anybody. The language itself has to be universal enough. Swahili meets that criterion: almost all Tanzanians speak it, and this is the case in several other countries, so by writing in Swahili you do write for everybody. For most other African
Not going to be PC (Score:5, Insightful)
But if their literacy rate is approaching zero, why not teach the kids english alongside their language? English is the lingua franca of the world and they will have a lot more content at their hands than if they simply learned their language.*
I'm not saying that they shouldn't learn their language, it is important that they do to keep their culture alive. However, there is not one African language, but many - a ton of local language, moreso than Europe. A common English language will also help them communicate with each other better and will be a win/win for all concerned.
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Engish or Special English is at least a more plausible solution to this sort of problem than Esperanto [laptop.org]
Re:Not going to be PC (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that they shouldn't learn their language, it is important that they do to keep their culture alive. However, there is not one African language, but many - a ton of local language, moreso than Europe. A common English language will also help them communicate with each other better and will be a win/win for all concerned.
It is not controversial at all.
There are quite a few languages in Africa, that, for all practical purposes, do not exist in a written form. As peculiar as this may seem there is little interest to change that. In countries where there are perhaps ten major ethnic groups with distinct languages, there is a point in that the written language is that of the former colonial power (normally French or English). Elevating one of the domestic languages to official status could be recipe for disaster (unless this one language is dominant enough).
Lingala (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not going to be PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the instructors would have to know English. Africa is full of little farming villages where few people, if any, speak either of the big international languages (English and French). So in many cases, there simply isn't anyone to teach those languages.
Re:Not going to be PC (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes me think if some countries are violent now when they CAN'T understand each other, just imagine the bloodshed when they DO.
Au contraire (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were to post here that the internet is evil and run by little imps hauling your packets through tubes, probably everyone on Slashdot would immediately know that it's bullshit. But try it with bullshit like that the Koran demands terrorism/paedophilia/whatever-scare-of-the-month
Or let's put it this way: when was the last time you saw someone in the USA wanting to go to war with Canada or the UK? I mean, heck, you understand what they're saying all right. If understanding all the evil stuff they're saying would want people to go to war, you'd have more of a Casus Beli agains those than against Iraq by now. But in practice, once you do understand them, it turns out that they're people just like you.
It's easier for someone to pick one extremist Arab loonie out of context, and mis-represent it as being representative of Arabs as a whole, and you might even believe it because you have no clue what the other Arabs are saying. Maybe they are saying the same things after all, right? Even if you've travelled there once or twice, who knows what evil things they were saying around you in that language of theirs, right? (Actually, wrong.)
Whereas even if someone would cherry-pick one or two loonies from the UK or Canada (every country has theirs), there'll be _plenty_ of people who were there, understood what those people were saying, read some Canadian news agency's website, maybe watched some Canadian TV station if they're close to the border. They'll immediately point out, basically, "wtf, that's one isolated nutcase that noone else takes seriously. That't _not_ what the rest of Canada is thinking."
And that goes both ways, btw. It's also easier for some Arabs to get hyped up against the Americans or Israel or whatever, when they don't really understand the language, the country, or the culture. Don't think that the small minority that throws bombs and whatnot are the intellectual elite there. It's the people who don't know any better, and are the easiest manipulated.
Not understanding each other is basically a vicious circle, as violence goes. There'll be plenty of self-serving manipulators on both sides willing to translate only the conveniently belicose parts of what the others say. One loonie on side A says "let's bomb side B!" Everyone there laughs in his face, but on side B someone finds it convenient to translate only that as "look what side A says." Now someone on side B says, "oh yeah? let's see how cocky they'd be when they get a load of cruise missiles on their capital!" And someone on side A finds convenient to translate that, but ommit in what context it was said. Lather, rinse, repeat.
So if anything, starting to understand each other might just put a bit of a brake on that vicious circle.
What's the use? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the use? (Score:4, Interesting)
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This comes up every time. I'm sure there's truth to it. But it's wrong to expect that countries coming along now will go through the same process of stable government, agrarian society, industrialization, service based economy, information based economy as has happened in the past. If and when those parts of Africa come around, they will get it all in parallel. People may have cell phones before they have ru
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And who's going to pay for all that infrastructure?
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That is soooo politically incorrect. Someone needs sue someone else.
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Re-read granparent.
The school forbids the children from speaking Kiswahili. Period.
It's the best way to teach English, but terribly un-PC.
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Even in industrialized countries. A small fraction of the population can read English. What I mean by "reading" is to understand the meaning of a book, a letter, etc.
I learnt English because I needed it for computing. My brother, a lawyer, doesn't need it. He can speak a basic English but he can't read a novel without a di
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Do you think that the United States would have survived if the country was Balkanized? English here, German there, 100 aboriginal languages, Gaelic over there, Spanish, Swedish, French, Russian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Persian, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum?
No, it would not have lasted 20 years.
Countries need a single common language if they are to survive, much less prosper.
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I challenge this. It may be true for *some* industrialized countries, but there's certainly many where the english-knowledge is significantly better than that.
Furthermore, even if you are saying doing trade with or being a traveller in one of the countries where english *is* known by a small fraction -- odds are it's known by a much larger
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Actually, I think it would be far better if the entire world speaks mandarin. So, we can have only one version of wikipedia. Deal again?
Of course I'm not serious. But man, is the guy FTA serious? And is the parent serious? I mean, if there *are* concerned readers, they *will* fix the articles, right? And if there are *not* concerned readers, just never mind that! Isn't it the basic idea of an Wiki?
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True, but Chenyanja/Chichewa ("the "tongue of the lakes") is the lingua franca of southern Africa.
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I think you're missing the point of what Ndesanjo Macha said in the interview:
There are at least some Swahili speakers who don't want to use English all the time. And on the flip side, there are people who speak English just fine, and want a Wikipedia in their own language (Welsh, for instance).
What matters isn't "efficiency" or "degree of worldwide readability" or any other such metric. What matters is that the Wikipedia projec
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Africans or Africaans? One is a nationality, the other a language spoken mostly in South Africa.
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Translate them over into what? Africa isn't a monolithic culture, nor is is there an 'African' language to translate into. Africa (the continent) has hundreds (thousands?) of each.
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If nothing you said implied that - I wouldn't have answered how I did, would I have?
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I didn't see how african-american stereotypes would have been implied by my use of the word african in a story about african languages lack of wikipedia articles.
And as far as what I meant by relevency to africans. There are many articles in the english wikipedia that are very US, UK, Canada, and/or Australian specific. For instance US supreme court decisions would not be a good candidate for translation since they aren't relevent to Africa, even if the articles are well written. H
So, why only native speakers? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are many small size Wikipedias which are really just a collection of Q&D translated articles from the english or french version which is a bit sad to see.
Define master? (Score:3, Insightful)
A non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to sound like a troll, but who cares? No, seriously, if there's a language which too few of its speakers can possibly care about Wikipedia (since too few of them can access it) then who cares?
Too few people. The number of articles on a language 'partition' of Wikipedia reveals how many people really care about it, and when you have 1,000 articles for a language, it means that very few people can possibly care about it, and so we shouldn't care about that whole issue.
And if such a language partition of the Wikipedia gets written mostly by non-native speakers, it shows that there are even fewer native speakers who can possibly care.
I claim that this whole thing is a non-issue
Truth isn't sign of a troll. (Score:3, Insightful)
A wiki is a great idea but it also eats a lot of leisure time. Many in those nations don't have the luxury of that time let alone the means to even access it.
I know its not what th
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Attack the core of the issue instead of burning time for something that won't be entirely helpful to the people.
If you had planned on donating time to translating/writing content for the african language section then perhaps it would be better spent finding a way to help the people instead.
Maybe you want to do both? That is a very noble cause, but it is just that... noble. (Note, noble doesn't feed people, noble doesn't earn a pay check and noble isn't paying my rent. I hate this nob
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The only thing high-tech workforces won't be able to fix alone is the problem
Re:A non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod parent up (Score:2)
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And if you look here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias/ [wikimedia.org], the numbers of wikipedia articles is absolutely not proportional to the number of users of a specific language, meaning that Wikipedia is used differently over the world.
For example, the Polish version has about double the amount of articles as
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Spanish is a unique case, as a significant portion of the Spanish Wikipedia userbase split off to form the Enciclopedia Libre [enciclopedia.us.es] some time ago. You can read more about that here [wikipedia.org].
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My native language is not English and yet I mainly use English Wikipedia because it has more materials, better quality articles and is updated more frequently.
Same for me (I'm french). Reminds me that we should point out that a huge number of people (the majority maybe? I have no idea) in Africa speaks either english or french, along with their local language. So a Wikipedia in Swaheli or Wolof is fairly less necessary than some people may think.
Wait.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats an easy question to answer. You wait. Rome wasn't built in a day. Until there's a critical mass of people capable of creating the resource then it's not going to happen. I'm sure that's an answer someone in Martin Benjamin's position won't like, but it's the only one that makes sense.
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Write a cult african sci-fi TV show / movie franchise / trilogy or whatever. You'll have thousands of (contradictory) wiki pages by lunchtime.
Though, admittedly some waiting is still necessary as the pages on the detailed history of Namibia will be written some, if not many, many, years later...
Misplaced interest (Score:5, Insightful)
The article describes a twofold problem: no readers, too few writers. On Wikipedia, the readers are the writers, so in this case these two problems are actually one problem. It's also a problem which Wikipedia has already been designed to solve--when readers want content, they push it onto the wiki. If the content isn't there, obviously the demand is not great enough to make it happen. Isn't that the way of wikipedia?
WIKI is for "what I know is." If it were "what we want you to know is", we'd be calling it WWWYTKIpedia. I think we should simply lay this topic to rest and move on to something reasonable, such as "if wikipedia isn't the right tool to help educate African people, what other tools are possible?"
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Wikiwiki is Hawaiian for quick.
Re:Misplaced interest (Score:5, Informative)
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Swahili (Score:5, Interesting)
0% Literacy Rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a fan of Wikipedia (see my sig) but in this case raising the literacy rate using old-fashioned methods (ie books) surely has to have priority over getting some (token) entries into Wikipedia. It's not that the two are mutually exclusive, but until there's a certain level of literacy within the native language group, Wikipedia articles (presumably written by non-native speakers) are going to look at bit like encyclopedic colonialism.
Why other languages are important? (Score:4, Interesting)
- I know many people fluently speak more than one language since childhood and as a consequence can effortlessly master many more without much effort (if by the age of 6 you spoke more than one language your brain is "wired" well for learnign additional ones). Even those who stuck with only one language can learn one (and they should make it English).
Save klingonese wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
Klingons won't even come to Earth and talk with us about it, so most of the content in there is created by Star Trek fans.
The problem is even worse when no cross-planet ISP exist that can transmit the content to Klingon so Klingons can browse it.
What use is an encyclopedia when no one can read it or access it?
Oh wait. Why is this a problem again?
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Curiously, that hasn't stopped a user at Wikimedia Incubator, which was started last month to host test wi
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Even Mac OS X includes support for the Klingon language, although the operating system doesn't have any Klingon language files. The next application I write for it will.
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
What insight (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia exists due to a vast army of bored office drones, programmers and college students. Surfing (and contributing to) it is like the most bourgeois thing. I don't find it all that surprising that a continent with ten million orphans, a complete lack of basic health care and sanitation, and insanely corrupt political regimes, can't find the time to log on and post a couple articles.
Languages (Score:2)
Aren't there plenty of other languages there? Arabic? All the colonial languages? Afrikaans?
Cripes, to watch those Michael Palin travel shows, you'd think English and French were the official languages. :)
What we really need is a Coptic Wikipedia. Just because.
Build it and they will come (Score:5, Interesting)
Igpay Atinlay (Score:2)
Food first (Score:2)
But seriously, is access to Wikipedia really the most pressing issue when you can't feed your kids and your town is plagued by genocidal maniacs from alternating rival groups every other day?
I think we need to talk about the re-distribution of wealth and creating political stability first, then we can talk about Internet access. I'm not saying education isn't an i
huh? (Score:2)
The real problem is... (Score:2)
Swahili
Zulu
Chenyanja
Fanagalo
etc.
Chimbudzi miombo basopa njoka!
(if you shit in the woods, watch out for snakes)
The term "ngwenya" means "crocodile" in some dialects and "snake" in others, while it is "njoka" or nyoka" in others for snake.
See the problem?
That's the primary obstacle?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, no, the primary obstacle is that the vast majority of the people on the African continent are behaving as if they're only about half a step up the evolutionary ladder from complete and utter savages; they have no use for technology -- yet.
When they stop killing each other, move to where the goddamned food is and settle down for a while, then maybe they can work on curing malaria and after that, start on the Wikipedia Africanica.
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Why African language IT projects matter (Score:3, Interesting)
The recurring theme of the /. conversation is, why should people waste their time creating African language Wikipedias if the languages have low literacy and few computer users? However, the original NYT article was written about a discussion that has moved well beyond that level. The questions that the people working on African language Wikipedias (most of whom have spent a great deal of time in Africa, speaking African languages and thinking/ acting on the issues) are asking are more like these:
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
I think a lot, at first, will depend on educated Westerners who have learned an African language and want to contribute to the future of those cultures and peoples. Nothing's stopping me from learning Swahili or Yoruba and writing Wikipedia articles (in fact, I plan to learn an African language one day). In the long run, once the ball is rolling, these people will have much unique information of their ow
Lack of wiki the least of the problems (Score:2)
Re:Africa is not a country.... (Score:4, Insightful)
UK and US shares one wiki, the english. It is shared with all english speaking countries, and all english speakers across the world. Country-based wikis is not needed IMHO, but naturally you'll need one for every language.
The blurb even discusses a specific language, so thus your comment is not rooted in the article: It is neverthless an important notice, because we tend to forget.
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Us Scots have our own wiki at http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [wikipedia.org], and we're part of the UK.
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Note to mods: He is using sarcasm in a VERY funny way.
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Why just one wiki for Africa? [snip (rant about Africa being diversified)]
The author (Noam Cohen) of the original article know that. The wikipedians know that. You know that. I know that. Probably even most likely the majority of /.'s readers know that. The only people so far to conclusively prove that he/she has no clue at all, is the original submitter (Sharon Weinberger), and the slashdot editor Zonk. If you feel like blaming someone, blame them, not Noam Cohen or the wikipedians involved.
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Stupid idea. But no one is saying that. Try RTFA. (Yes, the Slashdot summary says "the troubles an African-language Wikipedia faces" ... but that does not imply there is ONLY one African wikipedia, and TFA mentions that 38 already exist.)
Re:Africa is not a country.... (Score:4, Interesting)
There isn't. Just skimming the list, I see Afrikaans [wikipedia.org], Swahili [wikipedia.org], Kongo [wikipedia.org], Somali [wikipedia.org], and Luganda [wikipedia.org].
In the case of Swahili, I think they're a lot closer to the true reason when mentioning Internet access. It's not that no one has Internet access at all - you'd be surprised who has an email address and what places have an Internet café. But it costs maybe 1,000 Tanzanian schillings (~ $.75) per hour. Tanzania's GDP per capita is $700, so an hour of Internet access costs the "mean person" 40% of his money for that day. I think that GDP figure's deceptive because many of the tribespeople don't even use money during an average day, so let's quadruple it. An hour of Internet access takes 10% of your money for the day. You're still not going to be sitting down at the computer pumping out wiki article after wiki article. The people who can afford to are all fluent in English. It's an official language of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Many of the schools teach in it, and people are eager to practice using it.
On the other hand, after OLPC gets into East Africa (not soon, I fear), there will be many, many people with plenty of computer time. They'll be able to download articles, modify them offline, and upload new revisions later. If they find a Swahili wikipedia valuable, it will take off.
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Some languages (Latin, German?) would be better to translate from than others which have many ambiguous interpretations (English, Engrish).
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US (Score:3, Insightful)
Show us that this is easier than writing the article from scratch. Have you even tried reading the output of Babel Fish on a typical Japanese page?
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That is your post, auto translated from English->Japanese->English.
MOD PARENT UP... (Score:2)
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Thanks, GerardM
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Re:obvious answers to some issues raised in articl (Score:2)
Multimedia is a language in itself.
Complex and challenging both to teach and to lean. Those who can use it effectively are rare. Sesame Street [wikipedia.org]
Re:obvious answers to some issues raised in articl (Score:4, Insightful)
[sarcasm] Because although they are illiterate they have plenty of access to the internet, multimedia computers, and good computer training. [/sarcasm]
A better idea would be to take some of those $100 laptops and put a really good locally tailored learn-to-read program on them and give them to very poor rural villages. This is assuming the $100 laptop has good enough sound to handle the task.
Re:obvious answers to some issues raised in articl (Score:2)
I suspect that part of the problem may be caused by the small minority of amateurs who simply refuse to listen to those who know better. I remember one article about wikipedia had a quote from some sort of expert in some particular field. He rewrote the wikipedia article about something or other that he had been directly involved with. Within a month, pretty much everything he had contributed had been replaced by stuf
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