Wikimedia Sweden organizes November 27th an open event for the students at KTH in order to, inter alia, translate the software that runs Wikipedia from English to Swedish. These so-called translation sprint is a new type of events to further strengthen open source software and free knowledge and reach new dedicated and knowledgeable people. The students will also learn about the huge Wikimedia movement and can make new contacts.
The focus is to translate open source software into Swedish by translation platform Translatewiki.net. Students will be involved in the Swedish translate MediaWiki, the software including Wikipedia uses. Many messages to MediaWiki has already been translated, but it adds thousands of new messages every year that must be translated – and now offered KTH students in to help. While other open source software will be translated by the students of the time and interest.
“This is a new type of events to work actively to engage more students in our projects and give them a new and interesting hobby that really gives them a chance to make a difference. In fact, this is so new that a professor and a graduate student in Umeå is currently researching whether and how this works as a concept, “said John Andersson, Project Manager at Wikimedia Sweden.
A computer program or a website contains lots of text that is displayed to the user. This is for instance the texts that are visible on the buttons, or the error message that pops up when something goes wrong. The developer of the program often create text in English only. For anyone not fluent in reading English is not very user friendly and limit the opportunities for many people. Lack translations make the Internet less accessible to large sections of the community.
“To translate all texts will be very important and can potentially lead to the open software allows even greater achievements. Can we strengthen the group of translators, exciting things happen. The students are accustomed to working with English terms and can computers – so they are perfect for the task, “said John Andersson, Project Manager of the Wikimedia Sweden.
The event is also a partner Meta Solutions AB working with linked open data and to start using Translatewiki.net to translate their software Entry Cape. Meta Solutions is also involved in the ongoing further development of öppnadata.se which is Sweden’s national portal for open data. This mission is based entirely on open source software and implemented together with the Open Knowledge Foundation.
“To internationalize software is a time consuming process. More and more companies base their business model around open source and it’s great to be able to get help from users who contribute translations. This approach opens up for users who are not willing or able to engage in technological development – to help with translations give these users an opportunity to make an important contribution to open source and feel involved, “says Hannes Ebner, co-founder and CEO of Meta Solutions.
Translation Sprint will be held at KTH in the Room Studio B , at. 13:00 to 15:30 on 27 November.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oversattningssprint-27-november-tickets-14441923181
The project has been made possible by support from the Internet Fund (.See).
Contact:
Wikimedia Sweden:
John Andersson, Project
e-mail: john.andersson @ wikimedia.se
Phone: 073-3965189
Meta Solutions AB:
Hannes Ebner, MD
e-mail: Hannes @ metasolutions.se
Phone: 073-7318431
Wikimedia Sweden is a non-profit charitable association which
working to make knowledge freely available to all people. We are
including experts at Wikipedia. We often collaborate with teachers and
librarians to use our projects in education and research and
with archives and museums to reach out with their material. The association supports the
volunteers that make Wikipedia better to make it easier and with
higher quality.
The association has no responsibility or opportunity
to influence the content on Wikipedia. All work to write new and
update existing items is done by volunteers.
Translatewiki.net
a localization platform for översättargemenskaper, language communities
and free and open projects. In Translatewiki.net translated MediaWiki,
the software behind Wikipedia, plus an additional 26 projects of 6600
users to 223 different languages.
Meta Solutions AB
a spin-off from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and has
founded to commercialize research based on
Semantic Web technologies. Meta Solutions product portfolio is licensed
as open source and consists of a series of applications that together
forming an ecosystem for information management based on linked
(Open) data.
Entry Cape is the Meta Solutions central solution
of modern information management. EntryScapes modules provides a
workflow based on data import, processing and management,
terminology management and linking, as well as publishing and presenting
data. Customers are public actors who need support to
make available open data in a structured and reusable manner,
and knowledge intensive organizations looking to streamline the
internal information management.
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