Dear Philippe,
From my point of view the translation of the fundraiser
2010
was a very frustrating and disappointing experience. Despite my best efforts
we
did not receive a completely translated central banner
in Welsh and clicking on the central banner
never took us to the Welsh language version of the donation landing page, at
least for the vast majority of cy users, those living in the UK.
To describe in detail:
Translation links for translators
This year you decided not to include translation links from the central notice
to meta because this was drawing people away from the donation link. I'm not
taking issue with that decision. As you know the disadvantage of this is that
potential translators do not know where to translate, which is potentially
aggravating for those users (of which more below). One way of mitigating this
difficulty would have been to post on the community page an invitation and link
to the translation tab of the Fundraiser 2010 hub, specifically inviting users
to translate, when the campaign went permanently live. Assuming that the
central banner will lack the translation links
next year too I recommend you do this next year.
The link to the fundraiser translation which was included as a banner
on meta was very useful by the way - please can we have this next year too.
i-10n issues
It does not appear that i-10n issues were considered during the preparation and
testing of the fundraiser either at Wikimedia Foundation or at any of the
chapters. Each chapter had its own landing pages with its own messages. No
mechanism was put in place to allow all language wikis within the geographical
area of the chapter to localise these chapter-specific messages. It was only
when this issue was raised by the wikis affected that this was addressed. Casey
brown set up some translated pages for individual combinations of
language/chapter, at their request. This was done on an ad hoc basis, it being
down to each language wiki to understand the problem and request action. This
issue was discussed on the l-translators list but not all translators subscribe
to the list (especially not those who are first-time translators at meta). I
requested that somebody who knew the ins and outs of this issue write some
general advice about this on meta itself. I was disappointed that my request
was not answered.
I recommend that when further action is needed by translators, to get their
translations applied, then notes about this should be posted where we are
likely to see them - such as on the relevant translation pages at meta.
Image format
After having translated various messages specific to Wikimedia UK
and Casey Brown having published them it was still not possible to see them
because of a technical issue with the banner,
apparently caused by its being done as an image on Wikimedia UK.
As I understand it the image format performed better during the testing and so
was chosen. No consideration whatsoever had been given to the issue of
localisation of image formats.
Unfortunately it appears that there was only one person at WikiMedia UK
who was in a position to create the correct banner
images with 'Read Now' localised and linking to the localised WikiMedia UK
landing pages. This one person was unfortunately too busy to do this as I
understand it. I had hoped that we would get this done by Christmas
but it never was done. I am quite disappointed that my last e-mail of concerning
this has still not been answered, leaving me still in the dark to some
extent. In any case he would have had to attend to each language
individually, meaning that only those languages requesting this would have been
able to be fixed.
Please make sure that you use localisable formats in future.
Disregard of non-state language wikis
I guess that the amount of money that you could raise from the wikis of
non-state languages is usually small so from the point of view of an efficient
fund-raiser all this is unimportant. But from my point of view fundraiser
central notices appearing wholly or partly in a language which is not the wiki
language are counter-productive. Rather than encouraging users to donate they
discourage donation. You did not receive a donation from me this year, as I was
waiting to be able to do this via the central banner.
Worse than that however is that these central notices appearing in English or
state languages are intrusive and alienating, and in my opinion damage these
wikis. It creates a them and us mentality, reinforcing the view that the users
of these wikis do not 'own' them. Usually central notices are translated
quickly by me to avoid any appearing in English. It was very frustrating to do
many hours of work on the fundraiser, only for most of it not to appear via the
central banner. The whole experience was
very discouraging.
Next year
I write all the above in the hope that next year's
fundraiser can be improved. I realise that all involved, volunteers and paid
staff, are working under a lot of pressure and that there was no intention to
aggravate the readers and translators of the smaller wikis. Some of the
smaller wikis do not have enough manpower to translate all the stuff produced
by WMF, either in a timely fashion, or at all. It was a shame that
technical issues prevented the hard work of those of us who did translate
the fundraiser from being put to use. Since I know that I was not the only
person who had difficulties this year I am copying this message to the
translators-l list.
Regards,
Eleri James (Lloffiwr), Wales
--- On Sat, 8/1/11, Philippe Beaudette <pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
From: Philippe Beaudette <pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Translators-l] Thank you
To: "Wikimedia Translators" <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>,
"Translation committee and coordinators" <transcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: "Sue Gardner" <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, "Zack Exley"
<zexley(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, "Megan Hernandez"
<mhernandez(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, 8 January, 2011, 3:32
Translators,
I wanted to take a moment as we're winding down from the fundraiser, and thank you for
your incredible work.
There's no question that without you, the fundraiser would not be anywhere near as
successful. More than 50% of our
donations come from outside the US now, which begins to highlight the incredible value
that you provide to the projects.
On behalf of the staff at the Foundation, the fundraising team, and the community, please
accept my thanks for the hard work that you do.
pb
PS - I'd be very interested in your thoughts on how we can make this process better
next year. Will you please write me privately (philippe(a)wikimedia.org) to share your
thoughts?
_______________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
Help us make it a reality!
http://donate.wikimedia.org
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