Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination

[[:|WP:MI]]

'We use Wikipedia-L to coordinate Wikipedia across different languages. Please take a look at the Wikipedia Embassy and join if you're interested in the coordination project.

The Wikipedia community is committed to including any and all languages for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work. We are aware that many of the world's 6,500 languages are not well-represented on computers or the web, and we are committed to working with language speakers and computing organizations to support as many languages as possible.

Each language Wikipedia currently has a separate set of user accounts. Links between articles in different languages are called interlanguage links or (colloquially and a bit ambiguously) "interwiki".

The URL of the wikipedia for a given language is xx.wikipedia.org, where xx is the 2-letter language code as per ISO 639. For languages without an ISO 639 2-letter language code, the 3-letter language code is used, or if that also does not exist, a custom 3-letter language code is made. (On the mailing list and in discussion, people often write xx: to mean the xx-language wikipedia, as in I'm a regular on fr:.)

Encyclopedia projects

See m:Complete list of language wikis available on Meta-Wikipedia for a full list.

Wiki encyclopedias that are at least somewhat active have been started in various languages:

Afrikaans - started on November 16, 2001
Albanian (Shqip) - translated language file, six articles as of December 16, 2003
Alemannic (Alemannisch) - started on November 13, 2003 as "Alsatian Wikipedia"
Anglo-Saxon (Englisc) - started on October 14, 2004
Arabic (عربي) Started in July 2003. Currently in initial stages of content building - Isam
Aromanian (Armâneashti) - started on May 27, 2004
Aymar aru (Aymara)
Bangla (বাংলা) - (Started January 27, 2004 [১৪ মাঘ, ১৪১০ বঙ্গাব্দ])
Basque (Euskara) - (translation in progress, see m:Azal)
Belarusian (Беларуская) Started on August 12, 2004.
Bosnian (Bosanski) - started on December 12, 2002 (created out of the Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski))
Bulgarian (Български) - started on August 3, 2003
Catalan (Català) - started in March 2001
Chinese (中文) - started in May 2001, Main page made on November 16, 2002
Corsican (Corsu) - started on December 9, 2003
Croatian (Hrvatski) (created out of the Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski))
Czech (Český) - started on May 3, 2002
Danish (Dansk) - started on February 1, 2002
Dutch (Nederlands) - started on August 31, 2001
English - started in January 2001
Esperanto - started on November 15, 2001
Estonian (Eesti) - started on August 24, 2002
Faroese (Føroyskt) - started in December 2003
Finnish (Suomi) - started on February 21, 2002
French (Français) - started on March 23 2001
Frisian (Frysk) - started on September 2, 2002
Galician (Galego)
German (Deutsch) - started in May 2001
Greek (Ελληνικά) - December 1, 2002
Gujarati
Hebrew (עברית) - started on July 8, 2003
Hindi (हिन्दी) - started on July 11, 2003
Hungarian (Magyar) - started on July 8, 2003
Icelandic (Íslenska) - Unknown, first edit on December 6 2002 and first edit in Icelandic on December 5 2003.
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) - started on November 7, 2003
Interlingua - started on April 29, 2002
Irish (Gaeilge) - started on June 7, 2003
Italian (Italiano) - started in 2001
Japanese (日本語)
Javanese (Basa Jawa) - started on March 7, 2004
Kashubian (Kaszëbsczi) - started on April 1, 2004
Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ)- started on June 30, 2004
Klingon (tlhIngan Hol) - started on May 27, 2004
Korean (Hangukeo) - started on October 12, 2002
Kurdish (Kurdî) - started on January 7, 2004
Latin (Latina) - started on May 22, 2002
Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch) - started July 2004
Latvian (Latviešu) - started June 2003
Lithuanian (Lietuviškai) - started on February 19, 2003
Lojban (la lojban) - started on August 8 2004
Taiwanese (Hō-ló-oē; zh-min-nan-TW), called Holopedia at Wikipedia - started 30 July, 2003
Malay (Bahasa Melayu) - started on August 12, 2003
Malayalam
Maori - started early in 2004; most of first 150 articles were contributed by New Zealanders who are learning the Maori language and who would very much like to see fluent speakers contributing more
Mongolian - started on February 29,2004
Marathi - Started on May 1, 2003
Nauruan - started on August 9, 2003 - has an industrious Belgian enthusiast, a claimed and apparent native speaker, and some friendly hangers-on
Nahuatl started on August 10, 2003
Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch / platt / niederdeusch / plautdietsch) - started on April 27, 2003
Norwegian (Norsk) - started on November 26, 2001
Occitan (Occitan) - started on October 20, 2003
Polish (Polski) - started on September 26, 2001
Portuguese (Português)
Persian (Farsi) started January 2004
Quechua (Runa Simi) started in 2004
Romanian (Română) - started on June 19 2003
Russian (Русский) started December 2002
Sanskrit started June 2004
Serbocroatian (Sprskohrvatski) (now separated into a Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian version)
Serbian (Srpski) (created out of the Serbocroatian (Srpskohrvatski))
Simple English
Slovak (Slovenčina) - August 13, 2003
Slovenian (Slovenščina) - started on March 8, 2002
Sotho
Spanish (Castellano)- started on May 20, 2001
Sunda - much English content waiting for translators
Swahili (Kiswahili)
Swedish (Svenska) - started on June 3, 2001
Tamil (தமிழ்) - started on September 30, 2003
Tagalog - started on December, 2003
Thai (ไทย) - started December 2003.
Tatar (Tatarça) - started on September 15, 2003
Turkish (Türkçe) - December 2, 2002
Ukrainian (Українська)
Urdu (اردو)
Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) - restarted on November 12, 2003
Volapük - restarted on January 27, 2004
Walloon (Walon)
Welsh (Cymraeg) - started on March 15, 2003
Yiddish (ייִדיש) - started on March 13, 2004

For the name Wikipedia in these languages, with raster image, see m:Wikipedia raster name.

Other projects

There are other, non-Wikimedia, free Wiki-based encyclopedia projects independent of Wikipedia:

Enciclopedia Libre - Spanish (Castellano)
Викизнание - Russian (Русский)
Susning.nu - Swedish (Svenska)

Related projects

Starting a new language wikipedia

See meta:How to start a new Wikipedia for a tutorial on how to get a Wikipedia in your language running.

A certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing and playing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So we encourage anyone who wants to build a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it. :-)

Statistics

See Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics for a more complete overview.

As of November 1, 2003, the number of non-English language articles increased to over 50% of the total number, probably for the first time. This is an encouraging sign in favour of linguistic diversity.

As of February 18, 2004, the English language wikipedia had 209,637 articles, while the next 19 had 261,352 on that date, i.e. the number of non-English language articles was more than 55% of the total. The 2nd to 9th languages (de, ja, fr, pl, sv, nl, es, da) together had 210,448 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

As of May 6, 2004, the English language wikipedia had 261,003 articles, and the 2nd to 8th languages (de 86,269, ja 46,443, fr 35,481, pl 29,209, sv 28,260, nl 27,008, es 22,593) together had 275,263 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version. The Chinese (hanyu - zh) wikipedia more than doubled from February 18 to May 6 - from 4,395 to 9,457 entries.

As of 1 September 2004, the English language wikipedia had 337,808 articles, and the 2nd to 7th languages (de 134,190, ja 68,746, fr 50,489, sv 38,637, pl 37,061, nl 34,662) together had 363,785 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

As of 4 October 2004, the English language wikipedia had 362,104 articles, and the 2nd to 6th languages (de 148,462, ja 75,969, fr 55,608, sv 42,172, pl 40,178) together had 362,389 articles, together matching the number of articles in the English language version.

Since the (en) share of articles on 1 October 2004 was 34.749% and decreased by 0.93% from one month previously, and since over the 12 months previous to this it has been losing an average of slightly over 1% per month, we can expect that it will probably fall below the 1/3 mark (33.333%) by the end of November, and very likely by the end of 2004. Of course, this share decrease will eventually have to slow down as various saturation effects occur, but maybe not for quite some time: the dozen (roughly) languages in the 5000-10000 range have monthly increases mostly at 10% or above, while (en) remains at 7%. A purely linear (read: dead wrong) extrapolation using 0.93%/month implies that (en) should hit zero percent share by the end of 2007. So reasonable guesses at where (en) will eventually asymptote by the end of 2007 could be anywhere in the range 20%, 10%, 5% or 1% (that last figure meaning that - if English had continued at its current numerical growth of about 30,000 per month - the others would have at least 150 million articles between them) - any predictions? And will an asymptote really be approached by end 2007? (The speculative (read: dead wrong) material in the second half of this para probably belongs on the Talk page.)

The 20 largest Wikipedias (July 15, 2004):

English (305133)
German (Deutsch) (114250)
Japanese (日本語) (59283)
French (Français) (43703)
Swedish (Svenska) (34169)
Polish (Polska) (33879)
Spanish (Español) (32848)
Dutch (Nederlands) (31082)
Danish (Dansk) (19346)
Italian (Italiano) (16618)
Esperanto (13382)
Chinese (中文) (11671)
Portuguese (Português) (10781)
Hebrew (עברית) (7975)
Bulgarian (7276)
Norwegian (7070)
Catalan (Català) (7064)
Romanian (Română) (7031)
Finnish (Suomi) (6993)
Ukrainian (5070)

For an overview of the world's biggest wiki websites (Wikipedia or not), see MeatBall:BiggestWiki.

Policy issues

Some questions you might ask

What can I do to help?

Please consult Wikipedia Embassy
Consider joining Wikipedia-L, the international mailing list
Just jump through interlanguage links
Add yourself to the global and local lists of translators.
See m:Multilingualism for Wikimedia-wide coordination

I have just noticed the fact that the top and bottom bars are in English. Can something be done about that?

Those lines come from a configuration file that the public can't access (I believe). Please see the embassy and the technical mailing list for the ongoing effort to translate Wikipedia into different languages.

Here are some "international Wikipedia" policy questions. To a certain extent, these questions will resolve themselves, though.

How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca?
- In the embassy we are coordinating efforts between languages.

Is there going to be an easy way to link from one language to another?
- Yes, Interlanguage links are now available for all wikis.
Please explain the steps to join Wikipedia with a language not in the current development list - e.g. allocation of a wiki space and hosting vs. having own domain for the national wikipedia; initial setup of the pages to be translated; promotion strategies to be adhered to, etc.? Who is in charge for this?
- See how to create a new language in Wikipedia for an explanation.

Anything else?

Is there any place to find a list of *all* mediawiki sites? Why do barely-active languages like Manx appear on lists like the wikistats page? etc, etc. +sj + 13:57, 2004 Mar 14 (UTC)

How can I write text in non-Latin texts, what I mean to say is, is there a standard program or something? If anyone knows, please let me know in my My Talk Page. Thanks ThaGrind 10:29, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

User:Bst translated one of the tutorial pages into Macedonian. I'm not quite sure what Bst had in mind at the time, and the text was removed as not belonging in the English Wikipedia, but should anyone ever start a Wikipedia in Macedonian, his work is available in the page history of Wikipedia:Tutorial (Editing). Isomorphic 15:24, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)