A suggestion regarding non-English language options for the future of WikiTree

Question

As a greeter, I have noticed an increase in new members from Other Than English speaking countries over the past couple of months.  Yay!  This is very exciting, but it does pose a problem. More and more are requesting help in their native language with help especially for the more complicated concepts such as gedcoms, adding DNA and merges.  And there are only so many language volunteers to go around.

Has anyone brought up the need to have links on some of these help pages to a translation in other languages?  French, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch would be great places to start.

With our growing bilingual community, I would hope there would be more members now available to take this on.  Our new members with English as a second language would have a better start to a great experience!

Thanks for listening :-)

Comments

Emma --

You might want to get in touch with Paul Bech and/or Karen Tobo. They would be able to give you more insight on why or why not this is feasible.

Here's the Languages Project page: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Language

As you know, Karen has been doing some work to get more people involved with this in recent months. (Yay, Karen!)

Answer 1

Emma, I am excited for WTs recent language growth!

Within https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Kitty's_Library 

I have added 

Special Codes Tools for Ascii & Language Variations Windows PC and MAC & Odds and Ends

• Windows 8 add language keyboard mapping

• Special Alt Characters ASCII Alt Characters yellowpipe.com

• Special ASCII HTML Character Codes yellowpipe.com

• ASCII table , ascii codes : American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The complete table of ASCII characters, letters, codes, symbols and signs theasciicode.com.ar

• Typing an ASCII Character on the MAC idautomation.com

• Diaeresis (diacritic) diæresis or dieresis trema or the umlaut wikipedia.org

• Non-English-based programming languages wikipedia.org

• List of Unicode characters wikipedia.org

• ASCII und html Codes für Umlaute und ß, Deutsch 101-326 an der Universität Michigan lsa.umich,edu

• Danish and Norwegian alphabet wikipedia.org

• Scandinavian (Mainland) Accents, Symbols & Foreign Scripts psu.edu

• A One-Step Portal for On-Line Genealogy. Stephen P. Morse stevemorse.org

• Determining Time between Two Events in One Step, (or Determining Birthdate from Deathdate and Age) Gregorian & Julian. by Stephen P. Morse, San Francisco stevemorse.org

• archive.org The Internet Archive WayBackMachine. Saves any webpage in its current state.

I have 6 or 5 more that I have not had a chance to add yet:

 http://www.typeit.org/

http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/accents/codealt.html

http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/ascii-printable-characters/lowercase-letter-o-minuscule-ascii-code-111.html 

https://translate.google.com/    there is room for more     JPV IV :)

Comments

In other words, allowing them to register and work in their native characters is the first step?  (Sorry, computer code speak goes over my head--you would never know I am the daughter of a computer scientist ;-) )

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I have been working on some Latin, Fricative and Affricate for my c1200 Clan Edmonstone.

Not bad for a fella that once dropped out of High School 38 years ago to Enlist and drive a Submarine. The U.S.N. helped me get my GED.

 I have "Some Old Rags" in a dusty box somewhere with some fancy Syntax on them, bout' 45 or so wall hangers.

P.S. I never really grasp English sentence diagramming, Tis' been over 40 years now.

P.P.S. "Some Old Rags" = Linen paper or paper that will not rot, certificates and such lol   

TOP O' THE WORLD MA !              JPV IV :)

Answer 2

There are a number of free translation devices (some work better than others) what are the implications of linking any of these to wikitreee pages?

I am not sure of their use on for profit websites.  But they can help users who do not speak each other languages to communicate.  The key is use very simple sentences.  And expects some funny translations.  But if we can get 80% decent translation that is better than nothing.  

I am working on several other tasks right now and translation is very time consuming if you are not 100% fluid.  I handle French and Church Latin but it does take time.  I created along with 8 others a simple translation grid of most often used genealogical terms.  I am happy to send it to anyone who wants it.  Just send me a private message.  

If there are downloadable Word Docs, Word has translation options built into it now.  I use that with those whose languages I do not use on a regular basis.

Comments

About your suggestion for downloadable Word docs -

Anyone (who has Word) can copy the content of one of the help pages and then paste it into Word, then apply Word's translator, thus a downloadable Word doc doesn't have to be provided here.  I have no experience with the results of Word translations, though, but would expect them to be near the bottom of the list on how good a job they do.

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Translation software like Google translate (I don't use a PC so I can't speak to Word) are not always the best.  It can give you the gist of the meaning, but for detailed step by step instructions, not so much.

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Agreed, the machine translators are not the best.  But if you can get an understanding even if it is not a good translation, that is better than nothing.  It can tell you if you want to go the next step to get a human translation.

I use several and find if I use 2 or 3 on the same document I get a much better overall translation.  The software has become better in more recent years than it was even 5 years ago.  

Google is one of many.  Some work better with some languages than others.

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I agree with everything you said.

I do fairly well with the translators, but I have a very good grasp on multiple languages.  I think if I did not, I would have a much harder time.

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I stumbled on this today, maybe it will help. It is the fourth one down from the top and says it is Free. I have not downloaded or tried to use it.

http://free.pdfconverterhq.com/index.jhtml?partner=^CAM^xdm106&s1=33021060004 JPV IV :)

Answer 3

Hi Emma, 

We have been and are still working on Language Portals, places where people from other Countries can find everything about WikiTree explained in their own language. So it would be wonderful if links (if they aren't already) would be added to the Greeters page as well of course .

Here's a Dutch Portal  for the Dutch /Belgium members, they are now working on translating/explaining the new WT Introduction for new members in Dutch as well 

And...we are preparing for a Suid Africa Portaal, some helppages and subjects are already explained in Afrikaans here and subjects will be easy to find in the Suid Afrikaans Portaal when it all is finished .

I've heard more projects were working (or were planning to) explaining things and help pages in their own language, so I think if all links to these help pages, projects and Portals would be easy to find in one place or if we all could work on this to make sure members will have a place where they can find everything explained in their own language of course would be a great thing for WikiTree .  

Comments

It sounds like your team has a great start already. Thank you for your hard work!  

Now we just need more language teams and as you said, to put everything in one place for new members.

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Thanks Emma, but well, it's not all my work, the credit is of course for all these awesome, pretty amazing and very hardworking team members, we couldn't do or organize anything without them. It's such a privilege to work with so many wonderful and enthusiastic people from all over the World and it shows how much we all can achieve in no time sometimes, if we all work on things together eeh :)

Answer 4

Having help for people whose first language is not English sounds  like a good idea. I know a very experienced genealogist who was put on moderation and left WikiTree because he thought his efforts were not appreciated, whereas it was all simply a case of Lost In Translation.