[Translators-l] Translation Commitee's meeting report (2007/03)

[Christophe Henner]

Hi folks,

On the 9th March 2007, at 8h00 UTC on #wikimedia-translation,
wikimedians had a meeting about the translation in the Wikimedia
projects
and about the TransCom in particular. 13 people participated at the
meeting, you can find the list of them on meta. [1] along with the
log.

Many issues have been talked during this two hours, and in my opinion
this kind of meeting is really productive. The issues were:
*The Translation Request page reform.
*The importance of translation among the projects communities
*How to inform the community of related and relevant issues about WMF
*Where to work?
*Recruitment of new volunteers and local coordinator

I will summarize the meeting, but if you have any question about the
meeting, the transcom or the translations, you're invited to join
#wikimedia-translation
channel on IRC (irc.freenode/net) and leave your question or to mail
"translators-l [at] lists.wikimedia [dot] org".


== The Translation Request page reform ==

On the last transcom meeting it has been raised problems with the
Translation Request page, next to this aphaia started to make a new
one. She has made a great
job and showed during the meeting what will probably be the future TR.
We talked about the organisation of the page, what to add, remove,
etc... the
page is still under construction and will be set up within the next weeks.

== The importance of translation among the projects communities ==
We all agreed that the translation was important to get more local
volunteers involved within the Wikimedia Foundation and the Chapters.
We talked about
how to get more people involved in the translations. There was many
problems interdependent. First we are actually outnumbered and the
translations of Press
Statement take many days, when they're translated. So we need to have
more translators, if we want more translators, we have to take time to
communicate with
the community. But we also need time to translate Press Statement.

== How to inform the community of related and relevant issues about WMF ==
So we have, and still are, talked on how to get more people involved.
We have listed what's
actually existing: LSS and the Wikizine. Actually none is mastered by a
committee, we discussed on how to get the transcom more involved.

During the meeting schiste putted a stress on a test make on the
french Wikipedia. Two announcement pages has been set up, one for the
foundation and the second for the local chapter.
As those pages have been created really recently and it needs a lot of
time , we will see in few weeks how to enhanced the use of this kind
of page.

== Where to work? ==
Actually the transcom does work on meta., and for translations it's
enough. But an issue has been raised, can't the TransCom become the
core committee between
the different communities and the foundation. On a first time we can
continue to translate the Press Statement, and the stuff from the
foundations, I do believe this
kind of translations needs to be easily reachable by the community.
meta. is a mess, newcomers can't find anything. If we want to have
more volunteers implicated in the foundation,
we need to be attractive. To get people involved we need to provide a
place where the community can find easily the main information, here
comes the idea of a "translation wiki".
It would be a wiki with important information, press statement,
foundation announcement, chapters report,  etc... translated in many
languages. A wiki of this kind would be a way to
tempt people, and get them involved either in the foundation or their chapter

== Recruitment of new volunteers and local coordinator ==
As written above, this is a more than important issue. In the next
weeks the Translation Committee will communicate with the local
projects in order to find new members and to involve some people
as local coordinator. The TransCom needs to have more volunteers to
translate statements faster, and to provide more information to the
communities.


This is a quick summary of a meeting of two hours, we spoke of some
other stuff, but there are the more important ones. I hope the
transCom will soon have new
members.


All the best

[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/Trans/meetings/2007-03



-- 
schiste