Wikipedia:University of Edinburgh/Events and Workshops/Translation Studies - 2023/2024

About the project


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 September 2023 and concluding in January 2024, 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.


 * (Video) Introduction to the Content Translation tool (1 minute).
 * Watch this 20 minute video explainer on BEST PRACTICE for the WIKIPEDIA TRANSLATION ASSIGNMENT
 * Our student-created website for helping staff and students understand how to benefit from and contribute to the free and open Wikimedia projects can be found here.

Upcoming drop-in sessions
Please also note: that Chinese Wikipedia reviewing editors in particular are very very scrupulous when it comes to not allowing articles to be published with too much machine translation (or 'Translation-ese' as it is sometimes termed) so it is better to submit your Wikipedia translations for a draft review in one of the early workshops (e.g 17th or 24th Jan) so that any reviewing editor can also suggest any improvement/modifications to help your translation practice by the time so that by the later drop-in workshops (e.g. 31st Jan/ 7 Feb) we can ensure ALL your translations are fully 100% checked over and published correctly and something you can justly be very proud of and satisfied with by the end of project date of Friday 9th February 2024.
 * 17th January 2pm-4pm in Computing Lab, 50 George Square.
 * 24th January 2pm-4pm in Computing Lab, 50 George Square.
 * 31st January 2pm-4pm in Computing Lab, 50 George Square.
 * 7th February 2pm-4pm in Computing Lab, 50 George Square.

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.
 * Add article selection to Excel sheet by Wednesday 8th November midnight so that we can finally approve and 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 Thursday 21st December 2023.
 * Peer review of another student's work to emailed to student and myself by 5pm on Friday 12th January 2024. Please add commenting/annotating the student's full translation in MS Word/Google Doc.
 * Article to be published to target Wikipedia w/c 22nd January 2024 and no later than 5pm on Friday 9th February 2024.

How do I get started?

 * 1) Create a Wikipedia account
 * 2) Sign up for the project using the Dashboard link here.
 * 3) When you have decided on your chosen article add your chosen article details to this Excel spreadsheet so it can be approved a) by the Wikimedian in Residence and b) your Portfolio Language Tutor.
 * 4) Learn about editing if you like: Tutorial, or Getting started on Wikipedia for more information. There is a short self-directed tutorial on Translating Articles here and the Wikipedia Adventure is a fun tutorial where you earn badges.

First steps on Wikipedia

 * Creating your user page on Wikipedia.
 * Switching on the Visual Editor interface and Content Translation.
 * Creating your sandbox.
 * Creating your Talk page.
 * Posting a message of Wiki Love to another Wikipedia editor.
 * How to choose a high quality Wikipedia article to translate.

Trainers
Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh

Class List
Please put your Wikipedia username in the space below:


 * Ewan McAndrew (Wikimedian in Residence)
 * Your name here

15 steps to translation success

 * 1) The first step is to Create an account.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) 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).
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) Select your chosen article(s) by midnight 8 November 2023. The article you select must be approved by BOTH your course tutor AND Ewan McAndrew (email: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk) before you begin. Add your chosen article to this Excel spreadsheet. Once you have approval you may begin.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) Go to the Content Translation tool in the Contributions menu.
 * 8) Click Start a new translation.
 * 9) Input the languages you are translating from and to.
 * 10) Input the source article title.
 * 11) Click Start translation.
 * 12) 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'.
 * 13) 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 12th January 2024.
 * 14) Aim to publish on the target language Wikipedia w/c Monday 22nd January 2024 and no later than 5pm on Friday 9th February 2024 so that the project is finally concluded on 9 February 2024. 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.
 * 15) 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 Thursday 21 December 2023.

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

 * 1) 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.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) WikiProjects on English Wikipedia have Assessment tables which list the best quality articles related to their project area. e.g. Wikiproject Sociology, WikiProject Human Rights, WikiProject Black Lives Matter, WikiProject African diaspora
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) 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.
 * 8) You can view Pages needing translation into English and do category searches for articles in a subject you are interested in e.g. Category:Articles needing translation from foreign-language Wikipedias. You can also view the Portal directory to search portals in the same way.
 * 9) 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.
 * 10) 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).
 * 11) 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 midnight on Wednesday 8th November 2023 and published no later than 5pm on Friday 16th February 2024.

Helpful links
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.


 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page - a fun tutorial introducing new editors to Wikipedia
 * Visual Editor user guide
 * Questions – a guide on where to ask questions
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages
 * Article wizard – a Wizard to help you create articles
 * The simplified ruleset – a summary of Wikipedia's most important rules
 * Guide to Wikipedia – a thorough step-by-step guide to Wikipedia
 * Is your topic notable enough for an article?
 * Be Bold!
 * Don't let grumpy users scare you off.
 * Learn from others
 * How to write a great article
 * A simplified manual of style


 * Please sign your messages on talk pages with four tildes ( ~ ). This will automatically insert your "signature" (your username and a date stamp). The [[File:Button sig.png]] or [[File:Insert-signature.png]] 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.

General

 * DiscoverEd to find books, ebooks, journals, ejournals and more.

News sources

 * Factiva
 * British Newspaper Archive
 * More at: Edinburgh University Library - Newspaper database

Theses databases

 * Edinburgh Research Archive. For theses produced at the University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Research Archive
 * Proquest Dissertations
 * More at: Edinburgh University Library - Theses database

Video guides to editing Wikipedia

 * Wikipedia - It's main policies & guidelines
 * Navigating Wikipedia's front page
 * How to structure an article on Wikipedia: the Featured Article
 * Wikipedia editing in under 25 mins
 * How to edit using with Visual Editor Part 1: Creating an Account
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 1.1 Adding Headings
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 1.2 Adding bold & italics
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 1.3 Adding bullet points
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 1.4 Adding links
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 2.1 Adding citations and references
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 2.2 Further practice with citations (DOI and Pubmed IDs)
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor:Part 2.3 Adding an image
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 2.4 Adding categories
 * Editing Wikipedia using Visual Editor: Part 3 Creating a new article in the Sandbox
 * Editing Wikipedia: Communicating with others using the Talk page and Help Desk

Tutorials on Wikipedia editing

 * Visual Editor User Guide
 * manual of style
 * Wikipedia cheat sheet (Bookshelf), another markup cheatsheet
 * Training for students, a tutorial for beginners
 * Beginners' guide to Wikipedia (account creation, article editing)
 * Five pillars of Wikipedia, philosophical guidelines and best practices for editing
 * Tutorial
 * How to edit a page
 * Wiki markup quick reference, PDF version of printed handout
 * Article development
 * Your first article (using the Article Wizard, if you wish)
 * Bookshelf, additional "getting started" resources
 * Biographies of Living Persons

Participants - Sign Up Here!
Prior to the event: 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!
 * 1) RSVP: [mailto:ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk] 
 * 2) Do you have a Wikipedia User Name?
 * No? Create a Wikipedia account
 * Yes? Go to Step #2
 * 1) 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