On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2008/11/11 Mickey Conn <mickey.conn(a)gmail.com>om>:
Minutes of the latest board meeting are now
on-line at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Board_meetings/2008-11-10
Among other items, you will find the very exciting news that Wiki UK
Ltd is now an officially registered company!
The board are also preparing a monthly newsletter to keep everyone in
touch. If you would be able to help by translating a brief summary of
the newsletter into any language spoken in the UK, please contact me.
Does that include languages spoken by immigrants, eg. Polish? (Not
that I speak Polish, but hopefully somebody does.)
Well have fun with that :-) I can tell you from own experience how
difficult it is to have a real multilingual chapter...we succeeded now
in having a pentaglot website (German, French, Italian, Rumantsch,
English) which is even more or less up-to-date in all the languages --
but when it comes to publications, this gets more critical...
Seriously, I am very much in favor of linguistical diversity and I
think, WmUK could surely set a good example by translating (or
publishing alternative, even localised? versions of) newsletters into
Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Irish (, Ulster Scots, Manx, Cornish...).
However, I believe, as a young organisation, it would be a bit strange
to spend a lot of time and energy on the commissioning and
coordinating of translations into the 10 principal immigrant languages
in the UK...
To put it simply: If you focus too much on translations, at the end
you won't do anything else "newsworthy" anymore which will make the
newsletter be a bit...empty?
I do not intend to discourage you at all, and if you manage to make so
many translations, that would certainly be great.
Regards,
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com