[Translators-l] Wikimania scholarships

[Desilets, Alain]

> Alain wrote:
> >  I agree though that given current translation support in wiki
> engines like MediaWiki, the traditional way may be more appropriate.
> 
> Aphaia answered:
>
> I am not sure MediaWiki is an architecture which fits more to the
> traditional way but the general tendency of translators seems to be
> inclined to the traditional way. I rembemer some translators were
upset
> or complained when they saw the source materials unready or modified
> after we have asked them to translate. In this reason I tend to avoid
> asking for translation when the draft is still edited, but personally
I
> don't mind to work on ongoing materials - is that exactly what we are
> doing on content translations from one wiki to the oter?

Yes, the translation culture is a bit entrenched in that way of
thinking, but this is fast changing. I have been talking to translators
and terminologist for the last year or so, about how massive
collaboration will change their profession. For example:

  "Translation Wikfied: How will Massive Online Collaboration Impact the
World of Translation?"
  http://www.aslib.com/conferences/TranslationWikified.pdf

Over and over again, I have been agreeably surprised by translators'
openness to this new phenomenon. So I think they will embrace it soon.
They just don't quite know how at the moment.

That said, I still think that the tools for supporting this are not
there yet. For example, in MediaWiki, it can be difficult to figure out
what changes needs to be translated from say, the English to the Chinese
version. It's doable, but it involves a lot of tedious manual browsing
of the history of both linguistic versions of the page. None of those
issues are insurmountable, and we are trying to deal with them in the
Tiki CLWE project I mentioned earlier.

> >  Sorry if this sounds like a plug, but I couldn't resist.
> 
> No problem, and thanks for giving nice foods of thought strongly
> relevant to wiki and translation :)

Thank you for taking it into consideration.

Alain