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)
obvious answers to some issues raised in article (Score:1, Interesting)
And that bit about academics who look down on contributions from amateurs just frosts me, their sole purpose and job is to teach: providing leadership, correction, quality improvement, and encouragement to amateur contributors to a resevoir of knowledge should be looked on as a wonderful opportunity, not a distraction or annoyance.
Re:Who? (Score:2, Interesting)
Some languages (Latin, German?) would be better to translate from than others which have many ambiguous interpretations (English, Engrish).
It is important to preserve small languages, as language is the medium which directs perspective. If we all spoke the same language, the diversity of perspectives would be much smaller. There's a recent book called "Spoken Here", which talks about efforts to preserve dying languages. In it, he brings up the point of perspective. In some languages, words are classified in relationships that we can't even imagine in the Western world. The significance of these relationships dies out when the languages do.
- RG>
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.
Swahili (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:Oh No, call Jimmy Carter (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
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?
Re:Truth isn't sign of a troll. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing high-tech workforces won't be able to fix alone is the problem of civil rights, but access to technology will HELP even there, as ideas about civil rights are stagnant in most of the African continent right now.
Re:Not going to be PC (Score:1, Interesting)
Build it and they will come (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the use? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not going to be PC (Score:3, Interesting)
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 dictionary for example. We both had 6 hours of English lesson per week at the college.
For most of us English is merely a communication tool, a small set of words that you use occasionally abroad.
Never forget than you had to spend years in school to master it, you were surrounded by an Englishspeaking culture and probably from a middle-class (read very weathly background compared to them). I read English information daily, but I won't say I master it. I "understand" it. It's a big difference.
African countries should promote their local languages instead. I'm sure it would be far more easy for their children to learn a language so deeply rooted in their culture. They would start their intellectual journey with such strong roots. European countries are a good example IMHO.
I love English but I seriously doubt that English can be the lingua franca for the whole world. Not in its current form (too complex) at least.
Olivier
Re:What's the use? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:
- Can some of Africa's entrenched economic difficulties relate to the fact that many of her people do not have access to literacy in the languages they speak and use on a daily basis?
- How much of the lack of literacy in many languages is related to the lack of a systematic effort to produce written materials in those languages?
- If a critical mass of written materials were produced for a given language, would it create the necessary foundation for widespread literacy in that language among speakers of that language?
- If speakers of a given language were to develop literacy in that language, rather than having to learn an entirely different language (such as English or Arabic) in order to engage in written communications (send emails, write blogs, read newspapers, get commodity market and weather reports relevant to the crops they grow, apply for jobs, evaluate the truth claims of politicians, etc), might that literacy be a key to overcoming the continent's persistent economic difficulties?
- Given the certified failure of print publishers and government agencies (colonial and post-colonial) to produce literacy materials in most African languages during the past 150 years, and the rapid success of the Wikipedia model in producing vast amounts of knowledge material quickly, might the resources of the Wikipedia world be a way to address the issues of creating literacy materials for those languages?
- If One Laptop Per Child is indeed a foreseeable reality, and if Wikipedia is going to come prebundled, and if having literacy materials in the language a child speaks is a key to the ultimate success and usefulness of OLPC, isn't creating a good Wikipedia in that child's language an issue of somewhat immediate concern?
- If any or all of the above, but also given the slow pace of African language Wikipedias to date, what have the barriers been thus far, and how can those barriers be overcome in a timely and systematic way?
That is the discussion the NYT was reporting on. It would be interesting to read the thoughts of theRe:Not going to be PC (Score:3, Interesting)
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 fraction of the people who deal with international trade and/or tourism.
Norway is an industrialized country. Everyone whos had primary and secondary school has had a minimum of 6 years of english-teaching, everyone with more than that (even if they're just car-mechanics) will have had a minimum of 8 years of english.
Aditionally, 80% of the music here is in english, 80% of the movies (subtitled though), perhaps half of all television-programs, and a large fraction of internet and game-media. It's safe to say exposure is high.
No, not everyone speaks english perfectly fluently with no difficulty whatsoever. Reading a book may be slow going for some, reading a letter would be simple for most. The *english* version of Harry Potter outsold the Norwegian one -- on grounds of being available a few months earlier. And that's a teenager-book. It's got simple english, but on the other hand it *is* like 4000 pages or whatever. I'd say anyone who is capable of reading HP in english knows english.
No, not like a native. That's not the point. (I also don't speak/write english as well as similarily educated natives) But well enough to be able to effectively use the language for communicating, and that's the point, isn't it ?
I agree one should learn the mothertongue well first. But I think learning english second can be a good choice.