Multilingual Wikis

Hi Alain

I've been interested in multilingual wikis for many years. Currently I'm helping translate http://www.fluwikie.com (based on pmwiki) into Spanish, and I contribute at http://www.globalvillages.info which is also based on pmwiki.

My "vision" for fluwikie includes the possibility of a flashmob of 30 translators per language, x 25 languages, translating the 100-200 most relevant pages into 25 languages … all in 5 days, and long before a flu pandemic arrives.

My idea, in case it's any use, would be to have a way to "monitor changes in the original", through a web application that would keep a copy of the original page when it's updated, and then does a diff between the old-original and the new-original, so that the translator deals just with the changes. This has not been coded yet but I'm nagging my geek friends.

I've looked at http://lizzy.iit.nrc.ca/LizzyHelp/public/wiki.cgi?Working_with_multilingual_sites … I wonder how difficult it would be to do that with other wiki-software.

Please write to me at LGSzeroA (use the real number) at yahoo.

This is exactly the kind of functionality I have implemented and will demo. In addition, future developments will include use of Machine Translation To allow people translate changes from a language they don't know into a language that they DO know. Hope you can drop by.

I didn't see you last night at the reception. If you would like a demo of this multilingual stuff, come and see me during one of the breaks. I am wearing a bright red soft-shell jacket.

AlainD?silets

On community-wiki: multilingual experiment we gave it a try a while ago. http://www.communitywiki.org/de/MultilingualExperiment

MattisManzel

Alain,

I won't be able to drop by from the Canaries, sorry. Could you lend a hand, or help others lend a hand at fluwikie? There's a Translation topic at the pmwiki forum place (at fluwikie), where non-techies meet. Perhaps if you have a plan we can "recruit" techies, or perhaps you have "students" willing to move forward on a different wiki platform?

Mattis,

I've seen your experiment, and from a translator's point of view I resonate with some of the stuff. But I'm not a wiki-engine person so I'd much rather go for tools that are simple to use to get the work done.

I'd like to see a swarm of translators cooperatively translate some 200 pages into 25 languages, and keep the translations adequately updated. Something like what my friends are doing would help a lot: http://almacen.gulic.org/lgs/descarga.php Now we just need to keep a copy of the original page at the time when it was translated - we can then diff against the updated original and see what needs adding, deleting or changing. It may be just an ugly hack, but if it works it will be useful. Perhaps this or better functionality will one day be part of "normal" wiki software? I do hope so!

Thanks!

Lugon,

Sorry, I thought you were one of the people attending the conference ;-).

Let's talk about this by email. My email is alain dot desilets at nrc-cnrc dot gc dot ca. Let's include Mattis in the discussion.