Analysing the use and perception of Wikipedia in the professional context of translation
Wikipedia translation: Collaborativity, translation and the web
Transcript of Wikipedia translation: Collaborativity, translation and the web
Why study Wikipedia translation – and how?
� this presentation proposes possible methods for collecting raw data for researching this complex new type of translation
� the aim is not only to identify where the translated material is located but – more significantly – also what the factors are that determine the likelihood of particular content being translatedtranslated
� the ensuing research can focus on a wide range of topics within the three broad areas of product, process and function
� an open question to research: in what ways is Wikipedia translation a kind of collaborative translation?
� using Wikipedia to study Wikipedia: an extravagant amount of information is available
2
Wikipedia and Wikipedia translation
� complex structure of Wikipedia: page anatomy, hierarchies of articles, cross references, metadata, editorial structure, etc.
� Wikipedia as an ‘evolving continuity’ (Meta:Translate Extension 2014)
� the Wikipedian translation landscape is also surprisingly complex: translation can be ad hoc (i.e. self-motivated), semi-organised (i.e. guided) or organised (i.e. part of a project)
3
organised (i.e. guided) or organised (i.e. part of a project)� lack of clarity as to the amount, nature and location of
translated material: before you can study it you need to find it� ST and TT both ‘moving objects’ – content does not stay still
over time� untangling the joint evolution of a pair (or group) of articles
can be extremely complex…� … yet is a prerequisite for studying other aspects of Wikipedia
translation
Wikipedia translation vs. collaborative
translation
� Wikipedia as a ‘massively collaborative environment’ (Cross Lingual Wiki Engine Project Proposal n.d.)
� Wikipedia translation as a special case of collaborative translation
� collaborative structure: needs to be researched
4
The Wikipedia research ecosystem
� For the translation researcher Wikipedia itself offers what is almost a complete, self-contained research ecosystem in a single site:
� (potential) STs and TTs in 288 languages
� also annotated drafts, comments and discussion, translation guidelines and requests, statistics and analysis
5
guidelines and requests, statistics and analysis
� information on and access to the translators themselves as well as full records of their activity, and so on
� all draft versions remain accessible (along with everything else): a virtual archive!
The Book of Lists…
Lists on Wikipedia
� Lists of people from Quebec by region
� Lists of hospitals in Oceania
� Lists of Star Trek planets
6
� Lists of Star Trek planets
� Lists of vampires
� … taken from the ‘List of lists of lists’ article (seriously)
Templates
� Wikipedia templates can be used, e.g. to flag an article as a stub or to indicate that it has issues
� a template is a short string of characters added to an article that is rendered as a text box
� e.g. ‘{{translated page|ja|堀越二郎}}’ is displayed as
7
Using page history to identify translated content
9
� acts of translation are often flagged, and are sometimes apparent through sudden jumps in size
Using page history to identify translated content
10
� versions from different dates can be compared to pin-point precise differences
Using talk pages to identify translated content
� talk pages are used to discuss all kinds of question to do with content, including translation
� sometimes the presence of – or need for – translation is flagged by the presence of a template:
11
Using the articles themselves to identify
translated content
� sometimes an article is also flagged in a similar way:
� putative translation pairs can also be spot-checked
12
� putative translation pairs can also be spot-checked manually, e.g. via interwiki links, although this is a fairly painstaking approach
‘Pages translated from…’
� in tandem with the page history and talk pages, Wikipedia provides automatically generated lists of pages translated from different language versions:
� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pages_translated_from_Russian_Wikipedia
� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pages_translated_from_
13
� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pages_translated_from_Chinese_Wikipedia
� all such pages listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Translated_pages
� in practice the articles listed may only contain a small amount of translated material
‘Articles needing translation from…’
� also automatically generated on the basis of the presence of the relevant template:
� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_translation_from_Russian_Wikipedia
� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_translation_from_Chinese_Wikipedia
14
tion_from_Chinese_Wikipedia
� all such pages listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_translation_from_foreign-language_Wikipedias
� such lists can show us, for example, what the priorities are of a particular SL Wikipedia community
Generalising one’s findings: categories and
grading scheme
� it’s possible that material identified as translation tends to belong to particular categories (culture, geography, history, etc.: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Categories)
� or to particular grades of article (featured article, start, stub, etc.: see
15
stub, etc.: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Grading_scheme)
� alternatively, maybe other factors are more important? (E.g. controversiality; currency; relative status of SL and TL; etc.)
Conclusions
With the above approaches we can
� track translation (pages translated from), desired translations (translations needed from) and routes of influence (interwikis) – not all relevant to translation studies
� discover the many factors determining the likelihood that
16
� discover the many factors determining the likelihood that translation will be used to produce a particular language version of a certain article
� ascertain the kind of translation and translation-related phenomenon that can be found on Wikipedia (e.g. strategies and procedures; types of translated and hybrid text)
References
� Cross Lingual Wiki Engine Project Proposal (n.d.) Available at http://www.wiki-translation.com/Cross+Lingual+Wiki+Engine+Project+Proposal(accessed 21st August 2014).
� Meta:Translate Extension (2014) Available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Translate_extension, date
17
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Translate_extension, date updated 3rd April 2014 (accessed 27th August 2014).