Dear colleagues,
This is to let you know that:
1. on July 6th I was named into the Advisory Commission to the Republic of Tatarstan
President on the Matters of Preservation and Strengthening Tatar language vitality
(Presidential decree in both Russian
https://president.tatarstan.ru/legis/?law_id=303501
and Tatar
https://president.tatarstan.ru/legis/?law_id=303521, state languages of the
Republic) - a voluntary body consisting of regional executive and legislative government
members, various recognized academicians, writers and community members, shown as
Wikimedia Russia member.
2. ahead of the first in-person meeting (tomorrow, July 15th, on the premises of the
Republic's Parliament), I prepared and shared in Russian
https://w.wiki/Wn8 the
following: (full text available in English below, copied to Commission secretary).
* (I) my personal current understanding of the appropriate survival niches for
non-dominant languages in the digital era &
* (II) Wikimedia community best practices that can be applied by our worldwide
stakeholders for strengthening their language position if their context is somewhat
similar.
regards,
farhad
P.S. I do hope that respective undertaking might also be of benefit to other Russia and
internationally based non-dominant language communities, as majority of Tatar's
speakers reside outside of the Republic, where the language enjoys some public support.
P.P.S. Coincidentally, all this happened in the process of preparation towards Celtic Knot
2020 Online-only Wikimedia Language Conference
https://w.wiki/HVv - our Russian Wikinews
report was published today
https://ru.wikinews.org/?curid=4658720
--
Farhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин
http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan /
Wikipedia:frhdkazan / Wikidata:Q34036417
I. Content niche analysis for non-dominant languages of the planet.
Country, cultural or language borders don't matter much in digital era. Irrespective
of where one lives, a language which is neither national, regional auxiliary or
international working language can only be preserve own importance for humans as a channel
for consuming various digital content on personal hobbies:
* fishing and gardening, knitting and popular science, cartoons, football or haut couture
fashion ...
* entertainment by various social, political and glamour activists and clowns from around
the world
* choosing where to go for vacation or what to do on the weekend with friends or guests
wherever you live (Moscow, New York, etc.)
Conscious public use of some non-dominant language to demonstrate belonging to some
ethnocultural entity is only likely when the speaker is proud of one's specific
identity (i.e. it is prestigious somewhere, is a basis for some positive discrimination).
II. Wikimedia community best practices and possible measures to strengthen Tatar (and
other non-dominant language position) within the niche described in I.
Generating useful and exciting contemporary content in some specific language is key for
preservation of its use in digital domains. But the possibility of reusing it easily and
widely (without the obstacles of archaic copyright system) might be even more important,
thus possible steps would be:
1. to extend CC-BY use to all Tatar content generated or published using Tatarstan's
regional budget — tatarstan.ru adopted this in September 2018 (official news reprinting
part of Russian Wikinews article at
https://digital.tatarstan.ru/index.htm/news/1273420.htm )
2. to study possibilities of retrospective release of whatever is still "copyright
locked" (all content in museums, books, magazines, schools, encyclopedias etc.) —
2018 case with Russia's first paper encyclopedia
https://w.wiki/Wma , 2011 case with
Kazakh Encyclopedia
https://w.wiki/Wmp
3. to apply international experience of running contests and initiating projects around
Wikimedia content creation or improvement (as part of Wikimedia Education, collaboration
with various cultural institutions) — Basque and Welsh community experiences for secondary
education
https://w.wiki/Wmb would be particularly applicable (latter currently in English
only, will dubb it into Russian soon), see first steps in Tatarstan at
https://w.wiki/WDz
4. to use Wikidata offered opportunities to assure Tatarstan's e-gov services
availability in all supported languages of the planet, and then help promoting such an
approach to make all countries' and their regional e-gov services available in Tatar
as well — no such examples just yet, but this knowledge base is in public domain (СС0
legal license), thus it can be not only edited, but also downloaded and then used
autonomously in full or in part (keeping in mind for e-system security needs).
Note: Wikidata and Wikipedia support various alphabets. A number of Wikipedia language
sections, including Kazakh, offer a choice of Arabic, Cyrillic or Latin script for content
presentation (automatic transliteration).