[Foundation-l] African Languages Wikipedia Bashing on Slashdot

Mon Aug 28 16:19:43 UTC 2006

Regarding Jeffrey Merkey's earlier post, with all respect, the issue of 
machine translation is not one that can be addressed in a few weeks with 
a couple of native speakers.  This isn't the forum to discuss the 
nitty-gritty of machine translation issues, however, other than to say 
that the quality of Wikipedia entries is much more important than the 
quantity, and the only real path to quality Wikipedia entries in African 
languages is through real human labor.

The Slashdot discussion is interesting, mostly in what it reveals about 
the state of knowledge (or lack thereof) in the tech world about most 
things African.  Many  /.ers write with the attitude that, because 
African languages don't matter to them, they don't matter. These are my 
comments following on the Slashdot riffs on the article.

The recurring theme of the /. conversation is, why should people waste 
their time creating African language Wikipedias if the languages have 
low literacy and few computer users? However, the original NYT article 
was written about a discussion that has moved well beyond that level. 
The questions that the people working on African language Wikipedias 
(who have a new discussion list, 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis ) are asking are more like 
these:

    * Can some of Africa's entrenched economic difficulties relate to
      the fact that many of her people do not have access to literacy in
      the languages they speak and use on a daily basis?
    * How much of the lack of literacy in many languages is related to
      the lack of a systematic effort to produce written materials in
      those languages?
    * If a critical mass of written materials were produced for a given
      language, would it create the necessary foundation for widespread
      literacy in that language among speakers of that language?
    * If speakers of a given language were to develop literacy in that
      language, rather than having to learn an entirely different
      language (such as English or Arabic) in order to engage in written
      communications (send emails, write blogs, read newspapers, get
      commodity market and weather reports relevant to the crops they
      grow, apply for jobs, evaluate the truth claims of politicians,
      etc), might that literacy be a key to overcoming the continent's
      persistent economic difficulties?
    * Given the certified failure of print publishers and government
      agencies (colonial and post-colonial) to produce literacy
      materials in most African languages during the past 150 years, and
      the rapid success of the Wikipedia model in producing vast amounts
      of knowledge material quickly, might the resources of the
      Wikipedia world be a way to address the issues of creating
      literacy materials for those languages?
    * If One Laptop Per Child is indeed a foreseeable reality, and if
      Wikipedia is going to come prebundled, and if having literacy
      materials in the language a child speaks is a key to the ultimate
      success and usefulness of OLPC, isn't creating a good Wikipedia in
      that child's language an issue of somewhat immediate concern?
    * If any or all of the above, but also given the slow pace of
      African language Wikipedias to date, what have the barriers been
      thus far, and how can those barriers be overcome in a timely and
      systematic way?