FISDEV:Internationalisation

From Open Sustainability

This article is a key part of enabling an Open Methodology Framework. Eventually, it will be protected and changes will be proposed on its corresponding discussion page. For now, anyone can change this article.

This article is refer to an aspirational goal of the FISDEV methodology. It refers to the generally applied approach from the Open Methodology Framework that will be more relevant once FISDEV has reached a mature state.

One of the goals of the FISDEV Methodology is Internationalisation, in particular, adding content in non-English languages. This is not just a strict translation of content from English to other languages, but a bi-directional model where content can added to the wiki in languages other than English and this content can then be available for translation into any language and be incorporated into the Core FISDev Methodology.

We have also interfaced into the Google Translation program to translate all FISDev text that is in English into a number of non-English languages.

Translation Challenges

It is envisaged that supporting multiple languages through a formal, manual process will pose a number of challenges, including:

• Governance to keep pages strictly aligned will be difficult. As can be seen on Wikipedia, linked pages often cover the same topics but sometimes the content is significantly different. The approach to address this issue will be to make use of the Peer Review process, especially for content that is part of the Core FISDev Methodology.

• Page names and category names will be different in non-English languages (also as in Wikipedia). Interwiki-linking provides a mechanism for linking pages with different names. MediaWiki automatically resolves inter-wiki language links and puts an entry in the page. Categories are also listed at the bottom of each article page that links to the translated page.

• Vandalism will likely be more difficult to prevent with FISDEV in multiple languages. This is because the user community helping to maintain pages will likely be smaller. Because of this issue, users should practice particular caution when using non-English language versions of MIKE2.0.

• Multi-language sites split the community. As users are on different sites they will have less of a change to collaborate with one another.

Despite these challenges, we strongly feel that having FISDEV in multiple languages is worth the effort as it provides a means to reach not a broader user audience, but also a wider Contributor audience.

We also believe that the use of the automated translated can assist in dealing with vandalism issues and governance challenges.

Automated Translation

FISDEV has interfaced into the Google Translation program to automatically covert all FISDEV text that is in English to other languages.

Although automated translation programs can have issues and Google does not offer translation services to all languages, using automated translation can provide a number of benefits:

• Quickly allows translation of FISDEV content written in English into a number of languages
• Helps assist readers whose first language is not English in the translation process
• Minimises governance issues – a single page is used as a master reference point
• Automatically translates all content: article text, image text, category definitions, etc.
• Makes it easier to identify vandalism issues

In addition, it is the belief of the FISDEV Leadership Team that these tools will continue to improve and that more translation capabilities will continue to be offered over time.

Therefore, the approach will be to formally translate FISDEV over time but use automated translation to assist in the process.

Formal Translation Process

Formal translation of a page involves the following steps:

1. Pick any of the same article pages from the main site and then create a new article page on the non-english language wiki. If there aren’t many pages for translate for that language wiki, its best to start with is one of the introductory pages: Executive Summary on English wiki
2. Set yourself up with access to the non-English wiki (you need to create a separate account for each language instance of the wiki). You can self-register to any of the sites.
3. Once the page is created, you create a link page to the original page by creating an inter-wiki link by adding the. For example:

[[en:Executive_Summary]]

1. The go back to the article page that is written in English and create the link back to the page you created.

[[es:Executive_Summary]]

At this stage, we have only begun to prototype this work and users should note that single-sign on is not available across wikis.

If you would like to help translate versions of FISDEV into a non-English language and a wiki does not exist for the language, please contact a member of the FISDEV Leadership Team.