History: Babel Wiki Workshop '08: Cross-Language Collaboration

Workshop descriptin

This workshop will be held in Porto, Portugal, in Sept 8th, 2008, during the Wikisym 2008 Symposium - http://www.wikisym.org/ws2008.

The Internet has by now become a truly global and multilingual community: non-English speakers presently account for two-thirds of Internet users. Yet, while dozens of languages are being used simultaneously on the same network, the language barriers make it difficult for connection and collaboration to happen across languages.

Recognizing that global projects and initiatives are growing in number, and that more and more people are working daily in multilingual environments, it appears that the "wiki way" - a philosophy of tool-building that creates open, collaborative Web-based environments - might show promise in realizing the potential of collaboration among members of different language communities.

The goal of this workshop is to explore how wikis and the wiki way might impact, and be influenced by, multilingual collaboration and language work. It aims to bring together people with an interest in multilingual collaboration, as well as specialists such as translators and terminologists, and authors who hope to find ways for their work to reach other language communities.

For more details about the nature of this workshop, see the call for participation.

1.1. Meeting notes and Workshop report

The workshop will be highly collaborative(see schedule for details). The page below will be the start point for taking notes and organizing them during the workshop.

BabelWiki meeting notes

• Raw notes taken during the workshop.

Babel Wiki workshop report

• Summary of what transpired during the workshop.

1.2. Papers

1.2.1. Fully-reviewed papers

The following papers were extensively peer-reviewed, and were accepted as part of the WikiSym'08 proceedings.

Huberdeau, Louis-Philippe, Sebastien Paquet & Alain Désilets

The Cross Lingual Wiki Engine: Enabling Collaboration Across Language Barriers.

File not found.

BabelWiki_08_Huberdeau_Louis-Philippe_Paquet_Sebastien_and_Desilets_Alain.pdf (804.00 Kb)

Kumaran, A.

Enabling Community Creation of Linguistic Data.
BabelWiki_08_Kumaran_A.pdf (1.47 Mb)

Bey, Youcef & Kyo Kageura

Translating the DEMGL Etymological Dictionary of Greek Mythology with the BEYTrans Wiki.
BabelWiki_08_Bey_Youcef_and_Kageura_Kyo .pdf (406.03 KB)

• Authors' affiliation
  [+]
  • (blank in current pdf)
    Youcef Bey, GETALP research group, LIG laboratory, Joseph Fourier University, France.
    Kyo Kageura, Library and Information Science, University of Tokyo, Japan.

1.2.2. BabelWiki peer-reviewed position papers

The following position paper were also peer reviewed, but more lightly than the above.

De Pedro, Xavier

Translating html the amateur way: double scrolling with highlighted markup
BabelWiki_08_DePedro_Xavier.pdf (329.88 Kb)

Désilets, Alain, Caroline Barrière & Jean Quirion

Translators and collaborative glossaries: what do they need from them?
BabelWiki_08_Desilets_Alain_Barriere_Caroline_Jean_Quirion.pdf (80.25 Kb)

Kinzler, Daniel

Building Language-Independent Concepts from Wikipedia.
BabelWiki_08_Kinzler_Daniel.pdf (114.12 Kb)

Kumaran, A.

Enabling Community Creation of Linguistic Data (Full paper, same as WS #2)
BabelWiki_08_Kumaran_A.pdf (1.47 Mb)

Liao, Han-Teng

How Wiki Can Exploit Linguistic Diversity
BabelWiki_08_Liao_Han-Teng.pdf (27.18 Kb)

Montagna, Dora

It's raining cats and dogs... Wiki in translation of idioms and proverbs: the importance of collaborative work
BabelWiki_08_Montagna_Dora.pdf (16.32 Kb)

Tosic, Milorad, & Olivera Tosic

Collaborative Wiki Tagging Platform for Multilingual Glossaries
BabelWiki_08_Tosic_Milorad_and_Tosic_Olivera.pdf (105.86 Kb)

1.2.3. Last minute contributions

The following papers were submitted at the last minute, and were not peer-reviewed.

You can, as registered user, add them to the related file gallery, and write down a link to it underneath.

<Put links to them here>

1.3. Location

Location: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto. Room B104 - 27 seats
http://www.fe.up.pt/si/salas_geral.FormView?p_edificio=B&p_sala=104

1.4. Schedule

Welcome (~ 10 mins)

• Alain Désilets and Xavier de Pedro Puente officially open the workshop, on behalf of the workshop chair: Sébastien Paquet.

Lightning talks (~ 35 mins depending on the number of papers)

• The people whose position paper or extended paper was accepted (either by the WikiSym program committee or the workshop commitee) are invited to present it as a 2-minute lightning talk.
• We will be very strict about the 2-minute time limit, so please make sure you are prepared well enough to be able to stick to that time. The purpose of the lightning talk is to give a very brief idea of what the paper is about, and incite people to read it from the wiki site. Below are pages to help you prepare for a lightning talk.
  • http://perl.plover.com/lightning-talks.html
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yU9FjrR2Ig

Roundtable (~ 15 mins)

• People who did not do a lightning talk get a chance to express their particular interest (2 mins each, max).
• Someone is appointed to take notes on the wiki site.
• This part can be skipped if we run out of time in the first section. People will have lots of opportunities to express their interests during the CardStorming stage.

CardStorming (~ 30 mins)

• Attendees are then handed sticky note pads and invited to write down themes, challenges, opportunities, etc.... relevant to the theme of collaborative wiki-style cross-lingual communication. They post them onto a blank poster, trying to post similar themes near each other.
• Note: People can post demos that they want to do, but those will be done at the end of the day.
• When attendees run out of ideas, they collaboratively start moving the yellow stickies around to create clusters of issues.
• When the clustering has become somewhat stable, clusters are labeled, and assigned particular times and locations.
  • If there are more clusters than can be discussed in the available time, ask people to vote by posting stickers on the ones they like most.
• Someone is appointed to write down the list of clusters and the issues they contain, in the wiki site. The writing down can be done later during the break, but a volunteer should be found right then.

First break out discussion (~60 mins)

• Participants each move to the location corresponding to the cluster they are most interested in for this first breakout session.
• Lively discussion ensues (Note: 20 years of experience with Open Space teaches us that when people form groups centered around the sub-topic they are most interested in, lively discussion naturally follows).
• Someone is appointed to take notes for that group on the wiki site.

Second break out discussion (~60 mins)

• Participants each move to the location corresponding to the cluster they are most interested in for this second breakout session.
• Lively discussion ensues (Note: 20 years of experience with Open Space teaches us that when people form groups centered around the sub-topic they are most interested in, lively discussion naturally follows).
• Someone is appointed to take notes for that group on the wiki site.

First Demo session (~ 30 mins)

• People who have things to demo do it.
• Depending on the number of demos, we might have a single track of back to back demo, or a bunch of concurrent demos at different locations.

Second Demo session (~ 30 mins)

• People who have things to demo do it.
• Depending on the number of demos, we might have a single track of back to back demo, or a bunch of concurrent demos at different locations.

BabelWiki closing circle (~ 45 mins)

• Participants form a large circle, and a microphone is passed along.
• Those who have something to say get to share insights, important things they heard, things they plan to do as a result of having attended the workshop etc...

Closing remarks (~ 15 mins)

• The workshop organisers offer some closing remarks.
• They invite participants to collaborate offline after the workshop, to write up the Babel Wiki workshop report.