Icommons.org

We hear of the thousands of people from around the world who contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis ‘ the number is so huge that it is easy to think of ‘them’ as a mass of faceless knowledge bearers who so meticulously edit on topics such as ‘enzyme kinetics’ and ‘convex regular polytopes.’

Well, this month we singled out one of ‘them’ ‘ Ian Gilfillan, a Cape Town local who, amongst many other things, developed the first South African online grocery store, runs an organic product delivery business called ‘Ethical Co-op’, and practices transcendental meditation. Not only is he a keen contributor to Wikipedia, he also has a very clever translation tool up his sleeve, which he has used with great success for the development of Afrikaans Wikipedia.

1. From looking at the work you’ve been doing, I can tell that your involvement with Wikipedia has been a true act of love - how was your passion for Wikipedia ignited?
I read a book once by Ursula Le Guin called Always Coming Home. It’s a utopian fiction set in a future where all the communities are small and rural, but not disconnected, they have access to all the world’s body of knowledge - so the best of both worlds in many ways. I loved the idea then, and when I came across Wikipedia, years later, it reminded me of that dream. So let’s say, it was love at first sight.

The multilingual aspect of Wikipedia also excites me - the potential is there, not just for a single dominant cultural view, but also for multiple views. I like the story I heard once of the difference between the Japanese and English Wikipedias - very different practices. Apparently, the English Wikipedia is much more cut throat with an ‘edit first, talk later’ attitude, while the reverse is more prevalent in the Japanese ‘ first there is discuss, and only once consensus has been reached, is the change made.

I can’t say how true the story is, but I like it as an example of different cultural takes on the same concept. The Wikipedias in each language should ideally be all as valuable as each other, not subservient to the English version.

2. So how do you think South African Wikipedia users interact?
There’s quite a small community. The Afrikaans Wikipedia is quite polite and friendly; it’s been great to be involved in it in a small way.

The other South African language Wikipedias are too small, really just the work of one contributor at a time, a community doesn’t exist yet.

The good news is that Afrikaans Wikipedia has shown a growth spurt in the last few weeks ‘ shooting to over 7 000 articles now.

3. Is that thanks to Jimmy Wales’ visit to South Africa for the SA Free Culture tour?
Well, it all seemed to all be coming together at the same time. The day after the conference, I was contacted by Apertium, a translation project. This was completely separate from the conference; they were testing their translation software and have also created a few Afrikaans articles. I’m hoping to work with them, and with translate.org.za, to prevent duplication as much as possible - translating is quite complicated!

4. So tell us more about your involvement in Afrikaans Wikipedia.
My focus has been very specific, in order to make my goals achievable. I never planned to machine translate entire articles, which would be more Apertium’s focus. My interest is more on translating specific templates to assist in the translation process.

To take a step back - I don’t believe translation is the answer, or even ideal, for Wikipedia, as it just imposes the dominant language on a smaller language. But in order for small languages to build community, it helps to have some sort of content in the page already. And translation is one way to do that, especially with entries on countries, where each country has a template listing things such as ‘president’, ‘population’, etc. These can easily be translated, as the context is always the same

Other contributors have used my tool in the Afrikaans Wikipedia on my website. It basically helps me whip up a very basic country article at high speed. Other contributors can then work on fine-tuning it and adding extra content - but at least it’s a start.

A good thing about it is that it can be used with any language, given that the strings are translated. So what I’m really looking for in terms of the South African context is help from Zulu, Xhosa and other South African language speakers in translating a few strings.

As Wikipedia says, “be bold” - so even if my Afrikaans is terrible I’m still having fun.

5. So are there any other tools like the one you’ve developed?
I looked into it quite extensively before I started, as I was trying to avoid duplication. There isn’t really anything like it. The software though is trivial, really basic. But that’s an advantage.

I’m not trying to conjugate verbs properly, or use the correct gender - it’s really just a simple 1:1 translation (for example, ‘population’ to ‘bevolking’), and so on. Then you cut and paste the original template, stick it through the online tool, and get a 90% accurate result out the other side. So it’s a huge time-saver!

6. So now that you have your translation tool - do you still have your dictionary by your side when you are working on translations?
Yes, I still need it! The complication comes is that WIkipedia is so unstructured - a template can change without notice. For example, ‘leader’ as translated to ‘leier’ was a nice mapping, but now there’s ‘leader1′, ‘leader2′, so the mapping breaks. It needs constant tweaking like this all the time. And things like footnotes don’t get translated, they need to be done manually.

If you’re translating from English, you need to keep that side of the mapping updated for it to work. Templates too don’t really need to differ between languages as the data they display is quite generic such as ‘population’, ‘area’, ‘GDP’, etc.

But there’s also the issue of fragmentation. When I first started, I created a new country template in Afrikaans, without knowing there was already an existing one, then we had to merge them, which was a bit of work. Now there’s another new country template, used in quite a few countries. But that’s just the nature of wikis - they’re convenient and easy to use, but not very structured.

7. I’m interested in the community aspect of Wikipedia - as one of the early contributors to Afrikaans Wikipedia you must have seen the community grow around it - so how have you seen people being motivated to contribute?
People get motivated for all sorts of reasons. A big one I think is knowing that one’s contribution is worthwhile, which is why it helps to have content on a page already, as the contributor knows the project has a foundation and is not taking a chance. In this case, the Afrikaans Wikipedia is already viable, but Xhosa Wikipedia, with 33 ‘articles’ is not viable yet.

So the early contributors are real pioneers, theirs is a labour of love, then later contributors build upon that work. I’m very keen to hook up with people who can help translate the initial articles in Xhosa, then later users can build the community more organically.

I’m not sure it’s only due to the translation tool as my contribution has been quite small overall. Afrikaans probably has more of its speakers online, so it has that advantage. And there’s another motivating factor - it’s fun!

8. So have you had any people showing interest in Xhosa Wikipedia yet?
No, unfortunately not. I contacted various language departments a year or so ago but didn’t get much response. Academics can sometimes be too engrossed in that particular world, there’s the cliché that “they just don’t get it”.

Many contributors (to all Wikipedias) have been students. It’s easier to work with people who immediately see the potential of the idea and project, rather than having to ’sell’ it, which is not my skill.

9. How are South African language Wikipedias going to change the way people learn in South Africa?
Wikipedia is a great resource. At school level, in English, it pretty much has everything that’s needed in most fields - a learner can look up the Boer War, or world history, and much more, to find enough information for a school-level essay. That’s a huge advantage, if used properly by learners and teachers.

But for someone learning in Xhosa, there’s not much in the way of resources in general - books are being printed, slowly and access to knowledge is that much smaller.

I strongly believe in the advantages of learning in a mother tongue language. Of course, learning English is an advantage, and a good choice for everyone, but being able to first learn in mother tongue gives learners an equal chance.

10. What was the most tedious and time consuming article you have had to edit?
The Herero and Namaqua genocide article on the English Wikipedia was probably my lowest moment on Wikipedia, and I had to take a ‘wikibreak’. There was a revisionist historian, to put it mildly, involved in reverting any changes that reflected badly on Germany. I got very frustrated and stupidly involved in an edit war.

Then s/he got banned and the article progressed normally, but when they were un-banned again, the same thing happened. Except this time I actually followed the process, contacted administrators and showed the history. Tedious, but the user was banned permanently, and all is peaceful with the article again.

As for Afrikaans Wikipedia, none really stand out. Most of my contributions have been on countries and using the translation tool, no one was really more tedious than the other. They all were quite slow initially, which is why I developed the tool.

Ian’s Favourites:
“They’ll probably change from day to day, being a good Gemini character!”

Favourite organic vegetable: Probably green pepper
Favourite place to chill in Cape Town: The Indie Armchair Theatre, but I don’t go there nearly often enough, or a secret spot in the forest above Kirstenbosch, where I go to do tai chi and meditate.
Favourite online shopping store: Probably Loot
Favourite wiki: Wikipedia. Although there are some good examples in projects I follow, the Gregarius wiki is great one of the best examples of documentation I’ve seen.

If anyone is interested in helping out with translating strings, or would like to find out more about the software, please feel free to contact Ian: ian ‘AT’ greenman ‘DOT’ co ‘DOT’ za.

Photograph: Ian Gilfillan, by Gregor Rohrig, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:00 10 and is filed under iCommons, Commoner Profile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.