Commons:SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India/Report

Report of SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India

21 February 2019 – 31 March 2019

General overview[edit]

Background: In September 2018, Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India) was organised to train Wikimedians in and around India on vector graphics and using Inkscape to work with SVG files, and also build a community of Wikigraphists in India. The program was quite successful in terms of participation and also output. Later on, to this further, and create awareness to other community members in India, a campaign was ideated. Since translating of SVGs can be one of the easiest ways to introduce vector graphics and Inkscape, easily to the larger community, it was planned that the campaign should be around translating SVG files. Also in many of the articles in Indic languages, often English-labelled diagrams are used. This campaign was also intended to bridge this gap, and have more diagrams and maps with labels in native languages. The campaign was supported by CIS-A2K.

The campaign, SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India, started on 21 February 2019 (marking the International Mother Language Day) and continued till 31 March 2019. After setting up required resources and pages, communities were notified about the campaign on 11 February, and they were welcomed to sign-up and organise the campaign for their languages. The message received good response and within less than two weeks, and eighteen language communities signed up to participate, with an exception to the Assamese community. Though it did not have an official organiser, active participation in the campaign had been witnessed. Before the campaign began, four online sessions were organised to language-organisers and also a few other users, during which the basics of vector graphics, using Inkscape to translate the files, and uploading them back to WCommons, were explained. In addition to organising and promoting the campaign in their respective languages, the organisers were also encouraged to collaboratively build the resources page, which later proved to be quite useful for participants. A 24-min video was also created, to enable users (even with zero knowledge about vector graphics) to participate in the campaign.

After the campaign started, though there was slow and less participation during the first two weeks, there was increased participation later on. Participants were directed to lists of images for their respective languages. These lists included a mix of diagrams and charts related to physics, biology, mathematics, economics, and also maps related to India and its various states. A Telegram group and also an on-Wiki help desk was set up to help participants fix issues and overcome problems while they work with SVG files. During the period of thirty-eight days, eleven onsite events were organised at ten different locations in India and Nepal. The campaign ended on 31 March, and immediately after that the first phase of cleanup was started, where duplicate images, images with completely wrong translates were deleted. Following that, results of the campaign was published, which spoke about the total number of SVG images translated as a part of the campaign, number of participants, winners, top contributors and metrics tables for all the participating languages. The second phase of cleanup is going on as of 5 May 2019, which includes thorough checking of each file for appropriate descriptions, author info, Other version templates, and categories. This will ensure that all the files created are appropriately placed on Wikimedia Commons. The A2K team has initiated the prize distribution process on 1 May 2019.

Metrics of the campaign, aspects that worked well, and what did not work well are explained in detail in the later sections of this report.

Metrics[edit]

More info at Commons:SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India/Results

Total number of SVG files translated: 2652
Files translated (language-wise):

Telugu: 321 {Creations from STC19 in te}
Marathi: 312 {Creations from STC19 in mr}
Hindi: 306 {Creations from STC19 in hi}
Malayalam: 262 {Creations from STC19 in ml}
Kannada: 241 {Creations from STC19 in kn}
Gujarati: 221 {Creations from STC19 in gu}
Bengali: 206 {Creations from STC19 in bn}
Punjabi: 189 {Creations from STC19 in pa}
Assamese: 185 {Creations from STC19 in as}
Tamil: 135 {Creations from STC19 in ta}
Santali: 100 {Creations from STC19 in sat}
Nepali: 87 {Creations from STC19 in ne}
Doteli: 32 {Creations from STC19 in dty}
Oriya: 26 {Creations from STC19 in or}
Sanskrit: 15 {Creations from STC19 in sa}
Urdu: 8 {Creations from STC19 in ur}
Bihari: 5 {Creations from STC19 in bho}
Maithili: 1 {Creations from STC19 in mai}
Tulu: 1 {Creations from STC19 in tcy}

Total number of participants: 194
Participants by language:

Marathi: 56
Hindi: 44
Punjabi: 20
Malayalam: 19
Kannada: 14
Nepali: 14
Telugu: 12
Tamil: 10
Bengali: 8
Doteli: 3
Gujarati: 3
Sanskrit: 3
Assamese: 2
Oriya: 2
Santali: 2
Urdu: 2
Bihari: 1
Maithili: 1
Tulu: 1

Total number of users involved in organising: 31 (4 Coordinators + 26 Language organisers + 1 Media support person)

Total number of onsite events: 11

Learning[edit]

What worked well at the event?[edit]

Instead of having a central organising team, it was great to have organisers for different languages and coordinators to bring streamline the efforts of all the organisers and guide them as necessary. Having local organisers helped us in several ways and contributed to the eventual success of the project in the following ways; the campaign was able to reach to many users and able to boost the momentum as it was promoted by their own community members rather than an external person, and also some of the language organisers conducted individual online training sessions which helped to overcome the language barrier in enabling more users to participate.
Before the campaign started, three online training sessions were conducted for language organisers and a few other users, most of whom were learning about vector graphics and Inkscape for the first time. These sessions were predominantly conducted in English, but some of the organisers, in turn, conducted such sessions with communities in their respective languages. A major challenge for the campaign had been the number of users having the knowledge of vector graphics and editing SVG files—the count quite was less (and mostly comprised the participants of Wikigraphists Bootcamp). But through these sessions, this gap was bridged and now more a hundred users in India have knowledge vector graphics and very basics of Inkscape.
The onsite events provided a great boost to the overall result. Many of these workshops resulted in having great outcomes in terms of metrics and some of them even were responsible for having such a large of translations possible. These events not only helped us to improve the metrics but also spread awareness about vector graphics to more users, and thereby contributing to the growth of Wikigraphists community in India.
The campaign reached out some effectively reached out to communities, which have largely been disconnected with the active community and did have much participation in the outreach space. Such of them include Assamese and Santali communities, which showcased a great deal of participation. This gives more chances for others to organise community development activities for them. Also, the first-ever workshop on vector graphics was organised in Nepal, paving a path for further follow-up in that area.

What did not work so well?[edit]

We did not have any dedicated Upload Wizard for the campaign, like of the Wiki Loves campaigns do. This was realised later, and by the time it was, there wasn't any time left to set it up. Due not having this, a lot of time was invested in manually adding the campaign categories, and also later then checking them during cleanup phases. Also, some users reported that we forgot to add the campaign category, and only came to know when the results were announced, and their files were not listed. Since it is impossible to track outside the category, nothing can be done about this. However, having a dedicated Upload Wizard could have avoided all these problems.
The process of translating the SVG files, uploading them to WCommons, adding necessary templates and category, and also marking as done in the file list page, is too much for a newbie. Especially one of our main goals was to recruit new users in this space, some users reported that it was too hectic for them to go through the entire process at the very beginning. Also, as the files lists pages were continuously updated with translation statuses and it often led to edit conflicts (during onsite events) and sometimes breaking the Wiki-code, which made things difficult for others.
While many languages performed extremely well, some terribly lacked the participation. For example, participation from Goan Konkani was nill, and less than (or =) five files were translated into Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Tulu languages. There should have been more focus on these languages, and if needed conduct an onsite event to boost the participation. Languages such as Oriya and Sanskrit could also have done better with more focus, and providing proactive support to the respective language organisers.

What would you do differently next time?[edit]

The problems identified and as mentioned in the previous section would be rectified. Also apart from that, we would have better organisational and support structures. Language-organisers would be equipped with more and better resources to mobilise their communities. As it was observed onsite events had been effective to boost the overall metrics and also including more participants, there will be more organised efforts in this area.

Gallery[edit]

Creations[edit]

Please note that these just a few *random* examples (one for a language) to showcase the work done during this campaign, to see all the creations, please visit Category:Creations from STC19.