Talk:Multilingual worksheet

This resource has a test implementation at Pen Pal Wiki, an online system for multilingual correspondance.

Background: "More about this new template CQ made. I think it should have another link for each language, a link to a page which tells people how to use the site to get a pen pal (either listing themself or finding one), eg. Getting a pen pal, Obtenir un correspondant (please don't quote me on the French translation, I'm only a high school student and I've never been to a French-speaking country). This page, I believe, would be important because more people will be using this wiki to get a pen pal or list themselves than contributing to it by making a new article, and it should be easy for them to get help in doing this." Markdarb 03:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Native language perspective

The sixteen languages in the study are listed in order of estimated number of native speakers:

zh, es, en, pt, ru, ja, de, ko, fr, it, pl, ku, ro, nl, sv, eo

Our next task is to break these down into some grouping that make sense from the native speaker perspective. Since eo is a constructed language, it comes out first.

The site is quite young, mostly of English speakers, so the users_en group takes on the role: host. An earlier directive presented by the founder of Pen Pal Wiki and agreed on by concensus, resolved that the site would be as multilingual as possible. The challenge seems a good one for a multilingual studies learning group, so here we are.

My own thought, was to constrain the initial set of languages to those sixteen, but once I saw the 16X16 table, I'm inclined now to work from a much smaller "vector" of more or less "neigboring" languages:

en, de, nl, sv, pl, fr, es, pt, ... ko, ja, zh

Since we have a Chinese department here at V, perhaps some one from that end would like to extend a hand this way. Please chime in below with thoughts and reactions. Go the extra mile/kilometer and sign in to the Pen Pal Wiki. We're setting up categories, templates and main pages and doing the initial translations. It's really kind of fun! CQ 01:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Language selection

What criterion was used to select the 16 languages used here? Can other languages be added at will? I question somewhat the selection of Kurdish, Esperanto, and Romanian over say Hindi, Farsi, Cantonese, Hebrew, or even Catalan. (For what it's worth, my university currently offers courses in Hindi, Farsi, Cantonese and Hebrew, but not in Kurdish, Romanian, or Esperanto.) The Jade Knight 04:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

The idea was to just get the ball rolling and come up with a structure for adding languages, as resources and translators become available. The testbed (Pen Pal Wiki) is far from established, so languages can be added/removed from the listing. The selection of those 16 was somewhat arbitrary based on translations and resources that were available. This is all very new. CQ 01:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I still don't really understand what this is all about. How does this relate to the Wikia project? What is the goal? What are the pages supposed to be? The Jade Knight 06:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Would a Kurdish-speaking person question the selection of Kurdî or likewise a speaker of Română? The multilingual worksheet is to gather resourses for learning and teaching about multilingualism and translation. You want Hindi, Farsi, Cantonese and Hebrew, then join the project and add them!

The Pen Pal Wiki is about making new friends who speak different languages. It will help train new traslators by providing a place for native speakers of different languages to speak casually as "penpals" learning not only a different language but a different culture.

This worksheet is to help with translation from one language to another, the goal being to present the same content on pages for each language. (Main Page/en, Main Page/de, Main Page/zh, etc.) These can be compared in each native language to the foreign language of new penpals. CQ 17:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just thick, but I still don't understand what this is about. Is this a place to try to coordinate translation of Beta pages? A place to find penpals? The Jade Knight 04:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Express Multilingualism

Wikiversity:Multilingualism should soon be imported to the English and German Wikiversities in a synchronised fashion in my opinion. A Multilingualism page ought to have a language-neutral page like the one at beta.wikiversity.

I'm not sure how the architects of Wikiversity are planning to implement multilingualism, but as a pathetically monolingual person, I hope an express learning path can be created. That's the idea behind the little worksheet, which I hope can morph into a Wikiversity:Translator's Workbook or such.

Our Pen Pal Wiki project will happily provide an external testbed for extending and testing the language-neutral paradigm. If you have time, please help out over there.

I welcome any kind of feedback. Thanks Jade, for challenging the LANG16 choices. They are simply examples to illustrate how challenging this process is. The final model will be too big to handle. I need some input on how to constrain it to a practical size based on participation. (w:Practicum)

The upper left hand corner will have to look like this for current Wikiversity purposes:

en	de
en-de	de-en

However, it should be easily expanded on a learner-by-learner basis using something like this listing. I'm thinking we should build a learning path Wikiversity:Practicum that will eventually certify much-needed translators.

The founders or the Pen Pal Wiki would like for their table to be based on Language speaker data and participation on their site. There is much interest in East/West (Orient/Occident) translation there. If you want to get involved there, read Wikia first.

I would like to here from custodians here about policy effects and Wikiversity multilingual structure. Wikiversity the Movie/multi-lingual is a consideration also. Please talk to me. CQ 22:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Clarifications

The following should be clarified:

The goal of translation is to ensure that the source and the target texts communicate the same message.

What's the source, and what are the target texts? I don't understand what this refers to. Beta material? Wikiversity coursework?

"Wikiversity is Multilingual"

Equivalent Wikipedia policies should be summed up here so that the reader understands what is being referred to without having to try to read a large article/page to get the gist of it. Also, seeing Wikiversity:Multilingualism doesn't clarify anything, and only exacerbates this problem.

"Suggested Reading"

For some background on what? This page? This is somewhat confusing, and descriptions of links would be helpful.

"Codes"

Not a clarification issue, but make sure this project isn't limited to languages with Codes. If so, Norman would get left out, among others. (PS, is there any way to link to a foreign language Wikipedia without using a hyperlink?)

"Meaning"

I don't really understand this section. That's the damage for now. The Jade Knight 06:41, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've completely refactored the page now. I think I even have it in the wrong School. Maybe it should be in Linguistics? I'm lost now. CQ 03:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)