I'm an English speaker with almost no Spanish and this was my first Wikimania, so I don't have a monolingual wikimania to compare it to. To be honest I didn't use the translation service much, but it didn't significantly intrude either. But I think the idea is great and fully inline with the idea that we are building a global encyclopaedia.
The closing Spanish remarks by the head of Wikipedia Argentina needed no translation - he was obviously thanking all and sundry and I'm sure I wasn't the only "no hablo espagnol" pedian who clapped at the appropriate places. Such speeches are better made by an unintelligible enthusiast than a dull but all too comprehendable bore. I think the big questions we will have to face in the future include: 1 Which languages have to be covered at every Wikimania? The de-facto minimum is probably now host country plus English, but that might rise in future. 2 What weighting will languages covered be given when considering bids for future Wikimanias? 3 How many attendees who only speak a particular language does it need to justify full or even partial translation? 4 With skype etc can we get the necessary translation done by volunteers over the web? WereSpielChequers 2009/9/14 Roan Kattouw <[email protected]>: > 2009/9/14 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email protected]>: >> Anyway these rumored individuals who said they "wouldn't come because >> it was bilingual" probably had mistaken prejudgements about the >> implementation. Perhaps they thought a Spanish speaking person would >> be standing on stage with the speaker translating every sentence the >> speaker said? >> > Before the conference, I assumed correctly that there would be a track > about Latin America with most talks in Spanish, but I didn't know > there were gonna be simultaneous translations, let alone that English > talks would have Spanish translations. I don't know if this was > communicated in advance, maybe I missed that. I didn't particularly > like having the closing ceremony partly in Spanish, especially since I > wasn't expecting it and didn't grab a headset. > > I'm generally supportive of the efforts to make Wikimania > multilingual, and I would support similar setups with Polish and > French (or whatever the language of the organizing city in 2011), but > I think more consideration should be taken for people who don't speak > the second language. The schedule should be more explicit about which > language(s) are spoken in which sessions, including plenary sessions, > so people don't end up attending a session they don't understand. > > Also, we could do more outreach among people who speak only the second > language; I don't know what the 2009 team did about this, but when > Stallman asked (in Spanish) who didn't speak English, I saw less than > ten people raise their hands. > > Roan Kattouw (Catrope) > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l > -- WereSpielChequers _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
