Update on the MediaWiki localisation

BetaWiki is a success. The numbers prove it; in a year the number of supported languages has increased from 266 to 307 and all the indicators have been steadily improving. When you consider that this is a project run by volunteers, it is pretty amazing. It is for this reason that I am so happy that UNESCO acknowledged BetaWiki for what it is; a community success story. BetaWiki is doing really well for the major languages but also for languages like Telugu, Marathi, Northern Sotho and Tajik. Martin's stirling effort for Swahili is not reflected yet in these numbers, his contributions will be life on all Wikimedia Foundation's wikis in the coming days. :)

I think you will agree with me that with improved localisation, it will be easier to reach out with MediaWiki to the readers of the world. We want more people to read and write in Swahili, Comorian, Maithili, Basque, Piedmontese...

In 2008, the year of languages, we have to celebrate our achievements. I am sure that projects like BetaWiki will help languages improve their presence on the Internet. Wikipedia, wikis are geeky, they attract young people. When young people continue to express themselves in their mother tongue, their language and culture is alive and well.

This week a Wikipedia was requested for Mingrelian and Maithili... As communities continue to form to write their Wikipedia in their language, we will be able to bring more information to more people in their language.

This year is still young :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Localisation of MediaWiki

MediaWiki, the software that runs, among others Wikipedia, is localised in many languages. Most new projects get their localisation as part of the software, the only thing left after an installation is to customise the system messages where neede. When a language is truly new to MediaWiki, the localisation can be done locally or centrally. When the localisation is done centrally, the messages are merged almost daily into the MediaWiki core and become available in all Wikimedia Foundation projects within a few days and every four months in a new MediaWiki release.

So far all the new localisations happened as a result of a request for new Wikipedias. Yesterday I noticed that the localisation for the Tuvin language, was driven by a project that is not within the WMF. You then ask yourself if there are localisations for languages elsewhere. I asked Angela, and she pointed me to several constructed languages hosted by Wikia. Some of them, like Aeres and Anglish are so new, that the Wikia project is likely the first real effort to realise these languages. A private use code can be used to indicate the language used until there is sufficient maturity for recognition.

There are Wikipedias in over 250 languages. The quality of the localisation of MediaWiki however is still patchy. It has improved a lot with the great work of Niklas Laxström and because no new WMF project is started without a good localisation for the language.

With so many people involved, all volunteers, it is not easy to get and maintain the desired quality. This quality is however essential as MediaWiki is a tool that supports more languages then virtually any other application and has an installed base that is growing rapidly.

Thanks,
Gerard