IRC office hours/Office hours 2014-09-10

Language Engineering

Log

Time: 17:00-18:00 UTC

Channel: #wikimedia-office

Timestamps are in UTC.

00:30 <arrbee> #startmeeting Language Engineering monthly office hour - September 2014

00:30 <wm-labs-meetbot`> Meeting started Wed Sep 10 17:00:30 2014 UTC and is due to finish in 60 minutes.  The chair is arrbee. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.

00:30 <wm-labs-meetbot`> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic #startvote.

00:30 <wm-labs-meetbot`> The meeting name has been set to 'language_engineering_monthly_office_hour___september_2014'

00:42 <arrbee> yay.. all set with meetbot

01:04 <arrbee> Hello, Welcome to the monthly office hour of the Wikimedia Language Engineering team

01:31 <arrbee> I am Runa, the Outreach and QA co-ordinator for our team

01:55 <arrbee> Our office hours are held every 2nd Wednesday of the month

02:15 <arrbee> The last office hour was on 9th July

02:25 <arrbee> Logs at:

02:33 <arrbee> #link https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2014-07-09

03:03 <arrbee> We did not host an office hour in August as it coincided with Wikimania

03:27 <arrbee> we met with a lot of our community members in person at the conference

03:43 <arrbee> Before we start, the important announcement:

03:57 <arrbee> IMPORTANT: The chat today will be logged and publicly posted

04:13 <arrbee> This is also mentioned in the channel topic

04:37 <arrbee> A quick introduction of the team (if you haven't met us before)

04:55 <arrbee> We are the Wikimedia Language Engineering team

05:01 <Scott_WUaS> Good day

05:09 <arrbee> Hello

05:20 <Scott_WUaS> Hello

05:26 <arrbee> Our team page on mediawiki.org has details about the projects we work on and how you can participate in them

05:29 <Niharika> LeT.

05:38 <arrbee> #link https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_engineering

06:12 <arrbee> We build and maintain language features and tools for the wikis in more than 300 languages

06:23 <arrbee> and support the wiki communities around the world

07:21 <arrbee> Along with me, present today are my team mates aharoni kart_ jsahleen Nikerabbit pginer santhosh

08:18 <arrbee> jsahleen joined us very recently

08:30 <Scott_WUaS> Thanks for your great work with and between so many languages!

08:36 <jsahleen> Hi everyone.

08:38 <arrbee> :)

08:51 <Niharika> Hi jsahleen!

09:07 <arrbee> Scott_WUaS: Thank you. :)

09:15 <Scott_WUaS> :)

09:30 <arrbee> We are an entirely remote team and work from several places around the world

10:06 <arrbee> Today we will begin with an update from the project that has kept us busy for quite a few months

10:21 <arrbee> Content Translation

10:26 <arrbee> #link https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation

10:53 <arrbee> and then move on to other topics and Q & A

11:13 <arrbee> Please feel free to ask questions at any time

11:40 <arrbee> The Content Translation tool is a way to create new Wikipedia articles from existing articles in another language

11:58 <arrbee> The first release of the tool was made right after our last office hour in July

12:15 <arrbee> You may have seen the announcement on the Wikimedia blog

12:18 <arrbee> #link http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/07/16/first-look-at-the-content-translation-tool/

12:43 <arrbee> This version was deployed on the beta wikis and machine translation support was enabled for Spanish to Catalan

13:09 <arrbee> You can try the tool by reading through the instructions on the project page

13:15 <arrbee> #link https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation#Try_the_tool

13:36 <arrbee> In just over a month more than 150 articles have already been created for the Catalan Wikipedia

14:14 <arrbee> Last week, we hosted an online round-table with some of the Catalan editors, who shared their experiences about how they were using the tool to create articles

14:35 <arrbee> You can watch the video (its an hour long)

14:37 <arrbee> #link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHu3vdlE1X8

15:02 <arrbee> The second release is currently in progress and targeted for completion by the last week of September

15:25 <arrbee> The details of the release plan is at the following link

15:29 <arrbee> #link https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Roadmap/CX01Release

16:04 <arrbee> I will pass on to aharoni to talk a bit more about what we can expect from this upcoming release

16:40 <aharoni> Hallo!

16:49 <arrbee> aharoni: Hello

16:57 <aharoni> For the next release we are working on the following:

17:24 <aharoni> carefully testing more tools for more language pairs

17:56 <aharoni> making template handling more stable and predictable, so that in general terms:

18:20 <aharoni> 1. Big block templates such as infoboxes are usually skipped completely, unless specific adaptation code was written for them.

18:57 <aharoni> 2. Inline templates, such as {{{1}}},  or everybody's favorite [citation needed] are copied as HTML (this will be improved later).

19:41 <aharoni> 3. Specifically adapted templates are adapted automatically - we did this as an experiment for three templates in Spanish for now.

20:05 <Scott_WUaS> Where in MediaWiki or on the web, please, is there a list of sister, external, and complementary interlingual projects, if any exist, that are in MediaWiki and in Wikidata / Wikibase, as well?

20:39 <aharoni> Further, we are fixing a lot of bugs in the translation interface, based on feedback from the users in the Catalan Wikipedia.

21:13 <aharoni> And we are making the algorithms for preventing articles that have nothing but machine translation smarter.

22:48 <Pavanaja> How to link to external dictionaries and glossaries like FUELproject?

22:58 <arrbee> Thanks aharoni

23:52 <aharoni> Pavanaja, adding more glossaries and dictionaries is definitely on our roadmap.

24:23 <Pavanaja> Thanks aharoni

24:33 <aharoni> Currently we have simplistic support with a few free dictionaries, but we are going to enhance it in the coming months.

25:03 <aharoni> The issue is that for each dictionary we need to write its own API, but we'll get there, step by step.

25:49 <arrbee> Scott_WUaS: aharoni may be the best person to answer that. I will wait for him to return with a reply.

26:01 <arrbee> Moving on

26:31 <Scott_WUaS> thanks

26:57 <arrbee> To add to what aharoni already mentioned about the next release, we are currently testing more language pairs that are on the roadmap

27:17 <arrbee> Catalan to Spanish i.e. the reverse of what currently exists

27:31 <arrbee> and also Spanish to Portuguese

28:15 <arrbee> pginer is currently testing the tool with users with the new languages

28:42 <arrbee> Please do let him know if you would like to participate in the tests

29:00 <arrbee> (I will post the link to the sign up form in a few minutes)

29:39 <arrbee> For Spanish and Portuguese we are planning for bidirectional support

29:55 <aharoni> Scott_WUaS: If I understand your question correctly _and_ as far as I know, the projects supported by Wikidata are Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikivoyage and Wikimedia Commons.

29:56 <pginer> You can fill this form: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/forms/d/1yCvPS65eWk9S8uXkksAbDbLsbZQd0ISQKBDFfJnSSo0/viewform

30:06 <arrbee> Thanks pginer :)

30:14 <pginer> if you are interested in taking part of upcoming testing sessions

31:02 <pginer> We prioritize based on the next languages to be enabled, but we like to test with people that speak as many different languages as possible

31:27 <arrbee> and with a variety of scripts

32:27 <arrbee> We would also love to hear feedback from users who have used the tool by using the tweak

32:41 <arrbee> i.e. by specifying the source and target language in the URL

34:01 <arrbee> Scott_WUaS: I see aharoni just replied. Is that the information you were after?

35:05 <arrbee> okay.. we will come back to that discussion :)

35:22 <arrbee> Also, there were two updates related to Universal Language Selector

36:13 <arrbee> On request from the respective communities, webfonts have now been enabled on the English Wikisource and all the wikis in Divehi language

37:03 <arrbee> So if you are viewing any of these wikis you should not be seeing any tofu or square blocks of text

37:54 <arrbee> We have about 20 more minutes left

38:21 <arrbee> aharoni: pginer kart_: did you want to add anything more about the Content Translation project?

38:58 <Pavanaja> What about ULS integration with VE?

39:23 <arrbee> Good point

39:43 <arrbee> divec has made some progress with integrating the input methods with VE

40:03 <arrbee> But its still needs more work

40:50 <arrbee> He is not here today but he might be reaching out to more users to test the input methods

41:12 <arrbee> We or the more likely the VE team will keep you posted when that happens

41:41 <arrbee> Thanks for bringing that up Pavanaja

42:11 <Pavanaja> @arrbee :)

43:03 <arrbee> Okay, since we mentioned Wikimania earlier on

43:57 <arrbee> In case you were not there at the conference or could not attend the talks we presented, here are the videos:

44:23 <arrbee> 1.  - Santhosh Thottingal, Amir Aharoni: Machine-aided machine translation (Content Translation)

44:31 <arrbee> #link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qvv3eJ_Ag&t=32m40s

44:42 <arrbee> 2. Runa Bhattacharjee, Kartik Mistry: Testing multilingual applications

44:52 <arrbee> #link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hcjZvateZs&t=32m15s

45:00 <Scott_WUaS> Thanks Arrbee and Aharoni - much happening at this end - I've heard on the Wikidata email list that there are external sister projects engaging Wikidata and Mediawiki ... and I'm curious if you know where these are listed ... thanks

45:27 <aharoni> thousands of websites use MediaWiki :)

45:53 <aharoni> in simplistic terms, it's just a content management system.

46:15 <Scott_WUaS> aharoni: inter-lingually and for many languages (and with Wikidata)?

46:53 <aharoni> no, mediawiki by itself is *just* a content management system. Its users make it really multilingual; we just provide the tools.

47:26 <aharoni> Wikidata is still pretty young and growing, but just a few days ago I heard about http://www.histropedia.com/  , a site that uses Wikidata to show information in a different way.

47:40 <aharoni> But it's a completely external site, that we have no influence on.

49:29 <Scott_WUaS> thanks ... I don't see various languages there yet ... and I'm also interested in ones that engage Wikicommons in a variety of languages ...

50:33 <Scott_WUaS> as well as SemanticWiki in a variety of languages with MediaWiki

51:49 * arrbee will check the wikidata list again to see if we can find more information to help better about this

52:08 <Scott_WUaS> thanks

52:41 <arrbee> Scott_WUaS: if possible could you please PM me your email address, so that I can contact you if we find something?

53:23 <arrbee> We have about 5 more minutes left

53:49 * arrbee looks around for any more questions :)

55:18 <arrbee> oh, before I forget, we also had our quarterly review last week.

55:38 <arrbee> The notes and slides from the meeting will be up on this page sometime soon

55:42 <arrbee> #link https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews

56:01 <arrbee> Please let us know if you have questions

56:54 <Scott_WUaS> arrbee - just sent you my email - thanks ... what's yours?

57:26 <arrbee> Scott_WUaS: Thanks. Mine is runa at wikimedia dot org. I will share the contact details for our team in a minute.

58:05 <arrbee> Okay, so we are now nearly out of time

58:26 <arrbee> We won't keep you back longer :)

58:43 <arrbee> As I mentioned earlier, our office hours are generally held every 2nd Wednesday of the month at 1700 UTC

58:48 <Scott_WUaS> Thank you, Runa!

58:52 <Niharika> Thanks arrbee!

59:00 <arrbee> So if nothing changes, our next office hour will be on October 8, 2014

59:17 <arrbee> Our mailing list is mediawiki-i18n@lists.wikimedia.org and IRC channel is #mediawiki-i18n

59:47 <kclau> Hi everyone, this is KC. I have 2 questions: 1. Could anyone give a guesstimate on a V1.0 release date for the Content Translation Tool? 2. Could anyone give a guesstimate on a V1.0 release date for Extension:Translate/Usability improvements 2014 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate/Usability_improvements_2014#The_page_language_for_multilingual_wikis_should_not_be_fixed), particularly with reference to Bug 3548

59:56 <arrbee> Also contact details can be found here:

59:59 <arrbee> #link https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_engineering#Contact_us

00:10 <kclau> be arbitrary (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35489)

00:35 <arrbee> kclau: Hi, for your first question, its last week of September 2014 i.e this month

01:03 <arrbee> For the 2nd I will ping Nikerabbit but you may have to continue the discussion ong #mediawiki-i18n

01:14 <arrbee> We will have to leave this channel now, sorry

01:33 <kclau> thank you

01:48 <arrbee> Thanks everyone. See you next month.

01:50 <arrbee> #endmeeting
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