The GUM3C conference in Bangor

The GUM3C conference in Bangor has come and gone. Those who were there, were presented with an exquisite set of presentations. The ambiance was lovely and many of the conversations were thought provoking. This conference was in association with the UNESCO and consequently subjects like sign languages, minority languages and support for people who do not speak a dominant language featured prominently.

One of the discussions was a follow on of the presentation by David Crystal, who among other things presented about his work in the advertisement industry. There were a substantial number of people that agreed that advertisments in minority languages give a language an economic underpinning. Consider, the majority of the trade by Welsh companies is in Wales and people respond more favourable to advertisement that target them.

A presentation by Gwerfyl Roberts was thought provoking. As a practioner in this field she told us that people who do not speak and read the dominant language well, will get substandard medical treatment. Gwerfyl is working hard to improve the situation for the people for whom Welsh is their first language, but she agreed that people from the Indian subcontinent suffer from the same problem. Having the inserts for medicines available in as many languages as possible would be one problem to the solution. Providing terminological support as is currently provided by Wikiprofessional is another.

Sign languages and particularly SignWriting is dear to my heart. I could not be more pleased to have a presentation about sign language in India. Michael Morgan presented on how a university for the deaf is being set up, he explained about the problems that exist in India.. One anecdote was about people texting, not coming to a conclusion and in the end, people traveled two days to come to talk for five minutes.. they had to travel back as well. Chris Cox presented about the efforts that have been put into introducing SignWriting into Britain and Ireland.

When you are interested in all the goodies that you missed, you will be pleased to learn that the proceedings of the GUM3C are already published  ISBN No. 978-1-84220-115-2 and that the presentations will be posted on the GUM3C website..
Thanks,
      Gerard

MediaWiki language development in 2008

MediaWiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. Within the Wikimedia Foundation it is used in many languages for many projects. Some of these projects, like the Bengali Wikipedia, are the biggest single source for a language on the Internet.

The BetaWiki project has become the hub of the MediaWiki localisation, not only is a Web interface provided, there is also support for "gettext" or ".po" files. This allows for the use of CAT Tools like OmegaT. Managing the localisation of several hundred languages is not easy and making sure that MediaWiki is properly localised is a struggle. We found that the quality of the language support is spotty. Policies in the WMF have changed requiring localisation as a precondition for a new project. Big improvements in the MediaWiki localisation have happened in the last few months.

In order to improve the MediaWiki usabilty we have received some funding from Hivos. This will make it possible to put a premium on the localisation of MediaWiki for languages not in Europe or North America.

Many of the languages that MediaWiki supports are different and we do get requests for changing the sort order. Typically we follow the CLDR but there are languages where the CLDR does not help us. It would be good if we knew how to work with the CLDR and share our work.

For American Sign Language, we have been told that for SignWriting an extension will be programmed allowing for a Wikipedia in sign languages. This we hope will stimulate the emancipation of all sign languages a lot. It will be a first to have encyclopedic content for sign languages.

NB today new Wikipedias are starting in Saterland Frisian, Crimean Tatar and Lower Sorbian. :) For many more languages preparations are being made in the Incubator. :)

Thanks,
Gerard

Blinding with science ...

In a discussion about SignWriting it became apparent that people did not use the same definitions. One reasonable reaction was to point to a glossary of the terminology used and invoke its authority. The glossary in question has considerable authority; it is the glossary on the Unicode website. The implication for me was; shut up and first learn what you are talking about. As I do not have the paper qualifications that prove that I have spend a lot of time successfully mastering esoterica so I did just that.

To me it proved quickly that this Unicode glossary is written without any consideration of non-spoken languages. The definition for alphabet; "A writing system in which both consonants and vowels are indicated." makes it impossible for SignWriting to be an alphabet but it seems to me this is equally true for any of the alternatives given. Unicode does provide the standard for writing systems, but their definitions do not really matter as long as they use the right terminology for character, glyph and all the other concepts applicable to writing itself.

An alternate definition for alphabet has it as: "An ordered set of letters used in a language." This definition is possibly overly broad as it would fit an abugida equally well. To be fair to the Unicode literature and its glossary, it has not considered SignWriting because SignWriting is not mentioned and it is not yet included in Unicode. Then again, Unicode did recognise SignWriting as Sgnw in the ISO 15924 in 2004.

Thanks,
Gerard