Dear all,
We would like to inform you about the project Wiktionary Meets Matica
Srpska [1]. This project aims to increase support for Open Knowledge /
Free Content movement through establishing long term strategic
partnership with the venerable cultural institution Matica Srpska [2]
and to increase the quality, accuracy and volume of Wiktionaries through
digitization of two dictionaries, while developing a potential model for
future development of cooperation across Wiktionaries through targeted
mobilization of the communities.
There are two activities within the project that we need your support
for. First, we are preparing a list of lexicographical terms (it would
contain approximately 100 terms) that needs to be translated into as
many languages as possible, in order to ensure further work on the
project and to create the foundations for other lexicographical projects
in the future. For this task, we would use a separate application, but
all of the terms would be inserted into Wiktionaries, as well (making
approximately 10,000 new entries per Wiktionary, counting that the
terminology would be translated into 100 languages). That would also
serve as the preparation for translating the Serbian Ornithological
dictionary, which is the second activity.
The Serbian ornithological dictionary encompasses all local names of
birds living on the Serbian speaking territory. All names are specified
under the appropriate Latin name in accordance with the contemporary
classification system. This creates the opportunity to translate it
easily to various languages, since the basic list of terms is in Latin
and it is fairly small (370 species of birds).
We would like to try and motivate as many Wiktionary communities as
possible to participate in translating these two dictionaries,
especially since the benefit for each particular Wiktionary would be
great - for example, if we succeed to motivate people from 100
Wiktionaries to participate, the amount of primary entries to these 100
Wiktionaries would be 3,700,000 (37,000 per Wiktionary). If we succeed
to motivate just 20 Wiktionaries, the amount of entries to these 20
Wikitionaries would be 148,000 basic entries. Of course, these entries
would be incorporated into the respective Wiktionaries according to the
interest and the rules of each community.
With this project, we are opening cooperation with the venerable Serbian
cultural institution Matica srpska and we believe that this partnership
will have major impact on future cooperation between Wikimedia
organizations and similar institutions in Slavic countries. If this
cooperation could be relevant to any other partnership you are trying to
establish in your country or globally, we would be more than willing to
share our knowledge and contacts.
Besides support in translation, we are open for Wikimedia volunteers to
participate more substantially and thus build knowledge inside of the
community on how to deal with this kind of data. For example, if you are
willing to join the core team and help us in communication with the
Wiktionary communities of the languages which you are speaking, please
contact Milica (milica.gudovic(a)yahoo.com) or Milos (millosh(a)gmail.com)
via email. The same goes if you are willing to contribute by coding in
Python and/or PHP.
Please join us on project's discussion page [3] or send us an e-mail.
If you are willing to participate but are not sure in your knowledge of
English please check the list of languages organizational team is
speaking - there is a chance we can communicate in your native language.
We are very excited about this projects and hope that you will be part
of it as well!
Looking forward to hear from you!
Milica Gudovic
[
1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Interglider.ORG/Wiktionary_Mee…
[
2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matica_srpska
[
3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:PEG/Interglider.ORG/Wiktionar…