[Translators-l] Copy of e-mail to Philippe Beaudelaire regarding 2010 fundraiser

Fri Jan 28 17:42:11 UTC 2011

The weird thing is that I've received all messages full in my inbox (I guess
everybody else has too)  but if I check
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2011-January/001532.htmlis
not complete. Maybe is too long?

2011/1/28 Eleri James <elerijms at yahoo.co.uk>

> Sorry, the name should have been Philippe Beaudette!
>
> Eleri James
>
> --- On *Fri, 28/1/11, Eleri James <elerijms at yahoo.co.uk>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Eleri James <elerijms at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: [Translators-l] Copy of e-mail to Philippe Beaudelaire regarding
> 2010 fundraiser
> To: "translators-l" <translators-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Friday, 28 January, 2011, 17:28
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> There follows an e-mail I tried to post on this list on 22.1.11 and
> 26.1.11, but which was cut off after the 'Dear Philippe'.  I hope it is
> accepted this time:
>
> Dear Philippe,
>
>
> From my point of view the translation of the fundraiser 2010 was a very
> frustrating and disappointing experience. Despite my best efforts we did not
> receive a completely translated central banner in Welsh and clicking on the
> central banner never took us to the Welsh language version of the donation
> landing page, at least for the vast majority of cy users, those living in
> the UK.
>
> To describe in detail:
>
>
> Translation links for translators
> This year you decided not to include translation links from the central
> notice to meta because this was drawing people away from the donation link.
> I'm not taking issue with that decision. As you know the disadvantage of
> this is that potential translators do not know where to translate, which is
> potentially aggravating for those users (of which more below). One way of
> mitigating this difficulty would have been to post on the community page an
> invitation and link to the translation tab of the Fundraiser 2010 hub,
> specifically inviting users to translate, when the campaign went permanently
> live. Assuming that the central banner will lack the translation links next
> year too I recommend you do this next year.
>
> The link to the fundraiser translation which was included as a banner on
> meta was very useful by the way - please can we have this next year too.
>
>
> i-10n issues
> It does not appear that i-10n issues were considered during the preparation
> and testing of the fundraiser either at Wikimedia Foundation or at any of
> the chapters. Each chapter had its own landing pages with its own messages.
> No mechanism was put in place to allow all language wikis within the
> geographical area of the chapter to localise these chapter-specific
> messages. It was only when this issue was raised by the wikis affected that
> this was addressed. Casey brown set up some translated pages for individual
> combinations of language/chapter, at their request. This was done on an ad
> hoc basis, it being down to each language wiki to understand the problem and
> request action. This issue was discussed on the l-translators list but not
> all translators subscribe to the list (especially not those who are
> first-time translators at meta). I requested that somebody who knew the ins
> and outs of this issue write some general advice about this on meta itself.
> I was disappointed that my request was not answered.
>
> I recommend that when further action is needed by translators, to get their
> translations applied, then notes about this should be posted where we are
> likely to see them - such as on the relevant translation pages at meta.
>
>
> Image format
> After having translated various messages specific to Wikimedia UK and Casey
> Brown having published them it was still not possible to see them because of
> a technical issue with the banner, apparently caused by its being done as an
> image on Wikimedia UK. As I understand it the image format performed better
> during the testing and so was chosen. No consideration whatsoever had been
> given to the issue of localisation of image formats.
>
> Unfortunately it appears that there was only one person at WikiMedia UK who
> was in a position to create the correct banner images with 'Read Now'
> localised and linking to the localised WikiMedia UK landing pages. This one
> person was unfortunately too busy to do this as I understand it. I had hoped
> that we would get this done by Christmas but it never was done. I am quite
> disappointed that my last e-mail of concerning this has still not been
> answered, leaving me still in the dark to some extent.  In any case he would
> have had to attend to each language individually, meaning that only those
> languages requesting this would have been able to be fixed.
>
> Please make sure that you use localisable formats in future.
>
>
> Disregard of non-state language wikis
> I guess that the amount of money that you could raise from the wikis of
> non-state languages is usually small so from the point of view of an
> efficient fund-raiser all this is unimportant. But from my point of view
> fundraiser central notices appearing wholly or partly in a language which is
> not the wiki language are counter-productive. Rather than encouraging users
> to donate they discourage donation. You did not receive a donation from me
> this year, as I was waiting to be able to do this via the central banner.
>
> Worse than that however is that these central notices appearing in English
> or state languages are intrusive and alienating, and in my opinion damage
> these wikis. It creates a them and us mentality, reinforcing the view that
> the users of these wikis do not 'own' them. Usually central notices are
> translated quickly by me to avoid any appearing in English. It was very
> frustrating to do many hours of work on the fundraiser, only for most of it
> not to appear via the central banner.  The whole experience was very
> discouraging.
>
>
> Next year
> I write all the above in the hope that next year's fundraiser can be
> improved. I realise that all involved, volunteers and paid staff, are
> working under a lot of pressure and that there was no intention to aggravate
> the readers and translators of the smaller wikis.  Some of the smaller wikis
> do not have enough manpower to translate all the stuff produced by WMF,
> either in a timely fashion, or at all.  It was a shame that technical issues
> prevented the  hard work of those of us who did translate the fundraiser
> from being put to use. Since I know that I was not the only person who had
> difficulties this year I am copying this message to the translators-l list.
>
> Regards,
> Eleri James (Lloffiwr), Wales
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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