1
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My name is Vira, I like to translate 
articles in Wikipedia very much.

2
00:00:04,837 --> 00:00:10,938
I think the more information there is in 
Ukrainian the better it is for everyone.

3
00:00:11,377 --> 00:00:13,943
Better for me, because I will be
able to go back later

4
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and read something I've never seen
or something I read five years ago,

5
00:00:19,173 --> 00:00:21,991
and then I come back
and it's still present in Wikipedia,

6
00:00:21,991 --> 00:00:25,216
because articles in Wikipedia are saved 
as soon as you write them.

7
00:00:26,733 --> 00:00:33,364
And even if I don't have enough skills 
to write an article from scratch

8
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because to write certain articles
one needs to conduct a real research,

9
00:00:37,094 --> 00:00:40,877
to write something like 
"Art of Mozambique"

10
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one would need to read a pile of books
and write a detailed text.

11
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This is not something I can do,
I'm not educated enough for it,

12
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but I can translate an article 
about some well-known person,

13
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contemporary or from previous epochs,

14
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who is famous in their country and has
an article about them in another language.

15
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I work with English, I translate articles
from English to Ukrainian.

16
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And it is, indeed, very interesting.

17
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It requires much less effort
but has absolutely no less impact.

18
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And I know that I can check 
the statistics of views for my articles

19
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and see how many people
come and read them every day.

20
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And even if it's one person every two days

21
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I know for sure that my work
was useful to the person who viewed,

22
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who read my article.

23
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Wikipedia readers likely don't read 
the whole article from top to bottom.

24
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Very often, when you'd like
to know what a certain thing is,

25
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the first paragraph is enough 
to get the general idea.

26
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But even so, when I know
that my work was useful to people,

27
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it is really a very pleasant feeling.

28
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And to make it more interesting to work
in Wikipedia for those who write articles,

29
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I also translate the interface.

30
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I started doing it rather
long time ago because…

31
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Actually, for writing articles
to be a comfortable process,

32
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one has to understand
all the features of Wikipedia.

33
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There are indeed a lot of them:
there are special pages,

34
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there are different gadgets,

35
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tools for writing articles,
for translation, for further formatting,

36
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so that everything looking nice
and pretty, and so on.

37
00:02:33,923 --> 00:02:39,948
And I really wanted that those
who don't know English could do it, too.

38
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And because translating interface 
is much easier, in general,

39
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than literary translation, right --
at least, that's what I believe --

40
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so I decided to start doing it.

41
00:02:50,492 --> 00:02:52,568
And there are things which I do regularly.

42
00:02:52,599 --> 00:02:57,171
For example, every week I translate 
tech news from the developers

43
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about changes in Wikipedia 
during the week.

44
00:02:59,500 --> 00:03:04,821
There are likely some new things that
will be definitely interesting to people,

45
00:03:04,853 --> 00:03:09,970
and they could miss those if not for the 
chance to read about them in Ukrainian.

46
00:03:11,273 --> 00:03:13,386
This is true in a broad sense, as well:

47
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the more information
in Ukrainian is on the internet,

48
00:03:17,269 --> 00:03:18,834
the cooler it is.

49
00:03:18,886 --> 00:03:23,508
Because, I believe that everyone came 
across a bad machine translation

50
00:03:23,541 --> 00:03:27,473
from another language
from time to time.

51
00:03:27,507 --> 00:03:34,439
This gives bad impression of the Internet,
as a stockpile of information,

52
00:03:36,423 --> 00:03:40,245
where there are no combed texts,
but only some bad stuff.

53
00:03:40,267 --> 00:03:44,171
There more you encounter such things,
the weaker your faith in humanity becomes.

54
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This is why I believe that good texts,
made by good translators,

55
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are indeed useful.

56
00:03:51,464 --> 00:03:58,015
The more diverse information a speaker of 
any language can read in their language,

57
00:03:58,462 --> 00:04:04,026
the better, the easier it is for everyone,
the less time this person will waste

58
00:04:04,086 --> 00:04:08,562
again, on translating, for example,
or on looking for the information.

59
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It will be easier for them to spend their 
time in good mood for something else.

60
00:04:17,229 --> 00:04:23,265
This is why I believe that those who make
translations are indeed very good people.

61
00:04:23,286 --> 00:04:27,755
Those who make literary translations,
who translate fiction books,

62
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poetry and prose --
they are simply my heroes.

63
00:04:31,406 --> 00:04:35,644
And I am very pleased when I can 
translate an article, for example,

64
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about a male or female writer
from another country

65
00:04:40,406 --> 00:04:45,467
and not only translate the existing 
content of the article, say, in English,

66
00:04:45,517 --> 00:04:50,795
but also add a line about the Ukrainian 
translation of this person's works.

67
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This is actually a great pleasure --

68
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to know that my compatriots can also
read this definitely worthy literature.

69
00:05:01,779 --> 00:05:04,736
And it is definitely worthy:
if an author gets into Wikipedia

70
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it means that they are known
and notable for something.

71
00:05:08,918 --> 00:05:11,183
And when it's available
to read in Ukrainian --

72
00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:12,850
it's very pleasant, indeed.

73
00:05:14,087 --> 00:05:18,418
There is a speculation that the English 
language will conquer the world.

74
00:05:18,644 --> 00:05:21,599
Or, that it will be not English,
or another language after it.

75
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This may be Spanish or Chinese 
depending on how events unfold.

76
00:05:29,425 --> 00:05:32,582
But whether it will happen
or not -- we don't know,

77
00:05:33,885 --> 00:05:36,568
and saving the languages
that exist in the world

78
00:05:37,014 --> 00:05:39,068
today is actually no less important.

79
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Cultural diversity is feature of humanity

80
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that cannot be overstated.

81
00:05:51,008 --> 00:05:54,045
The fact of how different we are 
is very interesting.

82
00:05:55,610 --> 00:05:59,617
Sometimes it's hard for translators
to find an equivalent

83
00:05:59,714 --> 00:06:03,872
to a word or a phrase
in different languages

84
00:06:03,922 --> 00:06:08,158
because there might not be some
cultural concept in history of one nation

85
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which is present in the other one,
and it is very hard to be passed then.

86
00:06:12,292 --> 00:06:16,662
But at the same time these cases are very
interesting because you understand

87
00:06:17,261 --> 00:06:23,723
how different people are, how different 
their backgrounds, their stories can be,

88
00:06:23,723 --> 00:06:25,819
nations as well as individuals.

89
00:06:26,178 --> 00:06:29,012
Sometimes when it comes to idioms,

90
00:06:29,952 --> 00:06:36,102
every word combination can hide
almost bottomless deposits of meanings,

91
00:06:36,171 --> 00:06:39,205
of some historical phenomena,

92
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that every idiom can be essentially viewed

93
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as a sort of very concentrated
little history textbook.

94
00:06:51,789 --> 00:06:57,234
I know that not all people
like to talk about language

95
00:06:57,234 --> 00:07:01,458
and follow these phenomena
as much as I do, and this is okay.

96
00:07:01,524 --> 00:07:03,951
Each person has their own hobby,

97
00:07:04,208 --> 00:07:07,929
each person, in my opinion,
has to do what they can do best.

98
00:07:08,479 --> 00:07:11,129
And if they fail a little bit
but really want to do it,

99
00:07:11,179 --> 00:07:14,563
they have to learn and learn more.

100
00:07:15,269 --> 00:07:22,318
And if everyone worked
on what they want and can do,

101
00:07:23,638 --> 00:07:28,037
and if at least some fraction
of this work was useful for all,

102
00:07:28,771 --> 00:07:31,516
then everything would be
great and wonderful.

103
00:07:31,736 --> 00:07:38,303
And also if every person in the world
wrote at least one article in Wikipedia

104
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we'd really have 
the sum of all human knowledge.