Have you ever wondered why the information in Wikipedia is extensive for some topics and scarce for others? Particularly in different language Wikipedias? Commencing in October 2022 and concluding in January 2023, the University's
Information Services team will run a Wikipedia translate-a-thon.
We will provide training on how to edit and participate in an open knowledge community. Participants will be supported to translate articles.
Translating a Wikipedia article is best achieved by attending the earlier workshops (2nd/9th Nov) to make sure a) you receive the technical instructions on best practice and b) can ask questions related to your own article selection as all will be different. Please bring a laptop and charger so you can begin translation work.
2nd November 3pm-5pm in LG.07, 40 George Square. All class welcome. Recommended.
9th November 3pm-5pm in LG.07, 40 George Square. All class welcome. Please note: This may be cancelled due to train strikes.
15th November 1pm-3pm in 1.07, Main Library, 30 George Square. Only room for 20-30 students.
16th November 3pm-5pm in 1.07, Main Library, 30 George Square. Only room for 20-30 students.
23rd November 3pm-5pm in LG.07, 40 George Square. All class welcome.
Assignment scope and dates
2,000-2,500 words to be translated from one language Wikipedia to another. This is per student so you can work in pairs/groups also.
Article choices should be well-referenced. Inline citations peppering all the way through the article.
Article selections must be added to Excel sheet AND emailed to your language tutor for approval.
Email by Monday 31 October 5pm so that we can finally settle on article choices.
Upload source article (with word count) and translated article (with word count) in MS Word format to Learn by 5pm on Monday 19th December 2022.
Peer review of another student's work to emailed to student and myself by 5pm on Friday 6th January 2023. Please consider commenting/annotating the student's full translation in MS Word/Google Doc.
Article to be published to target Wikipedia w/c 9th January 2023 and no later than 5pm on Friday 13th January 2023.
In the first session we will introduce you to Wikipedia, how to format a page and provide advice on articles to select for your assignment.
If not already done so the
Content Translation tool must be enabled. This can be done in the
Beta menu (top right corner of your screen). Once in the Beta menu, make sure the Content Translation option is ticked and then click Save (bottom left corner of your screen).
Now you need to select an article or articles to translate. The tools below (categories, portals, Gapfinder, Not in the other language) will help you decide. Importantly, it should be a high quality article (check the references being used) of suitable importance & subject matter.
Select your chosen article(s) by 5pm on Monday 31st October 2022. The article you select must be approved by BOTH your course tutor AND Ewan McAndrew (email: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk) before you begin. Once you have approval from both then email the approved article title along with the languages being translated from and to ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk
The assignment must be 2,000-2,500 words this semester (& by that we include only the main prose text - not the notes, references & bibliography etc. at the end of the article). Copy the main prose text from the source article onto a new Microsoft Word document. Add the Word count at the end of the article (e.g. Word count = 2,454 words). Save the Word document as YOUR NAME - Source Article - Source Article Title and make sure you have recorded the word count at the bottom of this new document.
Input the languages you are translating from and to.
Input the source article title.
Click Start translation.
The article will then be translated by you paragraph by paragraph. Check and double-check the paragraphs being translated that they make sense in the target language and that the formatting copies across correctly. Important: Save your work as you go by copying completed paragraphs into a second Word document entitled: 'YOUR NAME - New translated article - New article title'.
Consult the
Content Translation Guide,
FAQ and
screencast to help you with any issues. Your article is to be peer reviewed by another student and peer reviews are to be emailed to ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk by Friday 6th January 2023.
Aim to publish on the target language Wikipedia w/c Monday 9th January 2023 and no later than 5pm on Friday 13th January 2023 so that the project is finally concluded on Friday 13th January 2023. Once you are satisfied with your translation email ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk to advise this and then click Publish translation to complete your translation. Make sure the newly published article has enough categories and links to other pages (and that other pages link to it). If your article was not around 2500 words (this word count has to be recorded at the bottom of your 2nd Word document for the new translated article you have just created) then you will need to repeat this process with a second article.
If your newly translated article(s) are now around 2500 words, congratulations you have created your first page(s) and the assignment. Copy the text of the source article (with word count) to an MS Word document. Copy the text of the new translated article (with word count) to another MS Word document. Upload both to Learn by 5pm on Monday 19 December 2022.
One final step
Finally, Wikipedia articles each have a sidebar listing its counterparts in other languages, so the last thing you should do is to make sure this includes links to and from the new translated material. A guide on this can be found at
Help:Interlanguage links.
Choosing an article
The word limit is 2000-2500 words but please make sure the chosen article is sufficiently challenging. The article in question will need to be run past both your portfolio tutor and myself to avoid issues where the original source articles do not have enough citations or references so consequently the target article did not either.
Please challenge yourself - work in a different language direction/pairing if possible this semester or with a different student or on a completely different topic from last time.
Make sure the topic you work on is of interest to you and maybe of interest/importance to readers of the target Wikipedia. Use these two weeks until mid October to assess Wikipedia's current content and see where you would like to contribute and do the most good.
Consider the under-representation of topics related to postcolonial theory and the
Black Lives Matter movement as topic areas to work on. Students on the University History Society have also worked on articles related
to Scotland's links with slavery here. Email Dr. Hephzibah Israel if you are require suggestions or advice on this theme.
Please aim to select an article from the Featured Articles quality criteria (the highest quality standard on Wikipedia) or the Good Article quality criteria (the 2nd highest). There is a wider pool to choose from on English Wikipedia because it is the largest Wikipedia but you’ll notice that if you click on the Featured article link, there are links on the left hand side of pages to the
‘Featured Articles’ page in each of the other language Wikipedias. You will find the same if you click on the
‘Good Article’ links. There will be a lot less featured and good articles in other language Wikipedias but as long as the article has achieved good article status or featured article status, regardless of the language then it should be of the required standard to translate for our purposes. Therefore please take extra time to choose your source article(s) so that they are the right length, right level of linguistic challenge and have enough citations so that they will have no such problems in the target Wikipedia.
If neither of these high quality articles meets your interest then next try A class articles then B class articles then C class articles. The subject matter, structuring, and coherence of the article may be less good but it is the referencing that is the most important factor when considering these articles.
Tool: Gapfinder - This tool has been developed to help editors find missing content in any language for which there is a Wikipedia edition. GapFinder helps you discover articles that exist in one language but are missing in another. Start by selecting a source language and a target language. GapFinder will find trending articles in the source that are missing in the target. If you are interested in a particular topic area, provide a seed article in the source language, and GapFinder will find related articles missing in the target. Click on a card to take a closer look at a missing article to see if you would like to create it from scratch or translate it.
Tool: "Not in the other language" - This tool looks for Wikidata items that have a page in one language but not in the other (using Wikipedia categories to filter the results).
Check the word count of the source article. You can use this tool
Search tool to look up the article & its word count but this includes references in its count so is not accurate enough for our purposes. Hence you should copy the article's main text (not including notes, references, bibliographies etc.) into a Word document so you can get a more accurate indication of the main body of the article's wordcount.
Assignment details
Articles to be settled on by no later than 5pm on Monday 31st October 2022 and published no later than 5pm on Friday 13th January 2023.
Once you've learned the basics of editing using Wikipedia’s Visual Editor, I hope that you'll stay logged in and edit or create more articles. I've added some booklets and some links below that you may find useful. As a first step you may like to check out what
What Wikipedia is not along with its 5 guiding principles:
The 5 pillars.
Please sign your messages on
talk pages with four
tildes (~~~~). This will automatically insert your "
signature" (your username and a date stamp). The or button, on the tool bar above Wikipedia's text editing window, also does this.
If you would like to play around with your new Wiki skills without changing the
mainspace, the Sandbox is for you.
Sources
Wikipedia is a tertiary resource, which relies upon secondary sources. Wikipedia is not a place for original research.
Sign up! Add your Wikipedia User Name to this section by clicking the blue button below (follow instructions). Your name will be added to the bottom of this page
Don't worry! If you haven't edited Wikipedia before and don't have a Wikipedia User Name yet, we will help you on the day of the event! And remember to have fun!