WEBVTT 00:00:00.484 --> 00:00:04.590 My name is Vira, I like to translate articles in Wikipedia very much. 00:00:04.837 --> 00:00:10.938 I think the more information there is in Ukrainian the better it is for everyone. 00:00:11.377 --> 00:00:13.943 Better for me, because I will be able to go back later 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:19.157 and read something I've never seen or something I read five years ago, 00:00:19.173 --> 00:00:21.991 and then I come back and it's still present in Wikipedia, 00:00:21.991 --> 00:00:25.216 because articles in Wikipedia are saved as soon as you write them. 00:00:26.733 --> 00:00:33.364 And even if I don't have enough skills to write an article from scratch 00:00:33.364 --> 00:00:37.094 because to write certain articles one needs to conduct a real research, 00:00:37.094 --> 00:00:40.877 to write something like "Art of Mozambique" 00:00:40.877 --> 00:00:44.564 one would need to read a pile of books and write a detailed text. 00:00:44.997 --> 00:00:47.950 This is not something I can do, I'm not educated enough for it, 00:00:47.950 --> 00:00:50.816 but I can translate an article about some well-known person, 00:00:51.524 --> 00:00:56.334 contemporary or from previous epochs, 00:00:56.553 --> 00:01:00.591 who is famous in their country and has an article about them in another language. 00:01:00.653 --> 00:01:04.904 I work with English, I translate articles from English to Ukrainian. 00:01:06.185 --> 00:01:08.171 And it is, indeed, very interesting. 00:01:08.269 --> 00:01:15.504 It requires much less effort but has absolutely no less impact. 00:01:15.609 --> 00:01:19.504 And I know that I can check the statistics of views for my articles 00:01:19.529 --> 00:01:22.387 and see how many people come and read them every day. 00:01:22.655 --> 00:01:25.980 And even if it's one person every two days 00:01:26.090 --> 00:01:31.395 I know for sure that my work was useful to the person who viewed, 00:01:31.493 --> 00:01:33.580 who read my article. 00:01:33.866 --> 00:01:39.595 Wikipedia readers likely don't read the whole article from top to bottom. 00:01:39.686 --> 00:01:43.014 Very often, when you'd like to know what a certain thing is, 00:01:43.014 --> 00:01:46.891 the first paragraph is enough to get the general idea. 00:01:47.516 --> 00:01:51.444 But even so, when I know that my work was useful to people, 00:01:51.445 --> 00:01:54.366 it is really a very pleasant feeling. 00:01:55.532 --> 00:01:59.908 And to make it more interesting to work in Wikipedia for those who write articles, 00:02:00.013 --> 00:02:02.224 I also translate the interface. 00:02:04.272 --> 00:02:08.482 I started doing it rather long time ago because… 00:02:10.365 --> 00:02:14.195 Actually, for writing articles to be a comfortable process, 00:02:14.245 --> 00:02:18.067 one has to understand all the features of Wikipedia. 00:02:18.099 --> 00:02:20.766 There are indeed a lot of them: there are special pages, 00:02:20.799 --> 00:02:24.210 there are different gadgets, 00:02:24.243 --> 00:02:30.465 tools for writing articles, for translation, for further formatting, 00:02:30.532 --> 00:02:33.906 so that everything looking nice and pretty, and so on. 00:02:33.923 --> 00:02:39.948 And I really wanted that those who don't know English could do it, too. 00:02:40.023 --> 00:02:43.183 And because translating interface is much easier, in general, 00:02:43.183 --> 00:02:46.825 than literary translation, right -- at least, that's what I believe -- 00:02:47.845 --> 00:02:49.749 so I decided to start doing it. 00:02:50.492 --> 00:02:52.568 And there are things which I do regularly. 00:02:52.599 --> 00:02:57.171 For example, every week I translate tech news from the developers 00:02:57.220 --> 00:02:59.434 about changes in Wikipedia during the week. 00:02:59.500 --> 00:03:04.821 There are likely some new things that will be definitely interesting to people, 00:03:04.853 --> 00:03:09.970 and they could miss those if not for the chance to read about them in Ukrainian. 00:03:11.273 --> 00:03:13.386 This is true in a broad sense, as well: 00:03:13.403 --> 00:03:16.318 the more information in Ukrainian is on the internet, 00:03:17.269 --> 00:03:18.834 the cooler it is. 00:03:18.886 --> 00:03:23.508 Because, I believe that everyone came across a bad machine translation 00:03:23.541 --> 00:03:27.473 from another language from time to time. 00:03:27.507 --> 00:03:34.439 This gives bad impression of the Internet, as a stockpile of information, 00:03:36.423 --> 00:03:40.245 where there are no combed texts, but only some bad stuff. 00:03:40.267 --> 00:03:44.171 There more you encounter such things, the weaker your faith in humanity becomes. 00:03:44.222 --> 00:03:48.256 This is why I believe that good texts, made by good translators, 00:03:48.456 --> 00:03:50.554 are indeed useful. 00:03:51.464 --> 00:03:58.015 The more diverse information a speaker of any language can read in their language, 00:03:58.462 --> 00:04:04.026 the better, the easier it is for everyone, the less time this person will waste 00:04:04.086 --> 00:04:08.562 again, on translating, for example, or on looking for the information. 00:04:10.443 --> 00:04:16.553 It will be easier for them to spend their time in good mood for something else. 00:04:17.229 --> 00:04:23.265 This is why I believe that those who make translations are indeed very good people. 00:04:23.286 --> 00:04:27.755 Those who make literary translations, who translate fiction books, 00:04:27.844 --> 00:04:31.280 poetry and prose -- they are simply my heroes. 00:04:31.406 --> 00:04:35.644 And I am very pleased when I can translate an article, for example, 00:04:35.809 --> 00:04:39.992 about a male or female writer from another country 00:04:40.406 --> 00:04:45.467 and not only translate the existing content of the article, say, in English, 00:04:45.517 --> 00:04:50.795 but also add a line about the Ukrainian translation of this person's works. 00:04:50.812 --> 00:04:53.071 This is actually a great pleasure -- 00:04:53.238 --> 00:05:00.288 to know that my compatriots can also read this definitely worthy literature. 00:05:01.779 --> 00:05:04.736 And it is definitely worthy: if an author gets into Wikipedia 00:05:04.785 --> 00:05:08.572 it means that they are known and notable for something. 00:05:08.918 --> 00:05:11.183 And when it's available to read in Ukrainian -- 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:12.850 it's very pleasant, indeed. 00:05:14.087 --> 00:05:18.418 There is a speculation that the English language will conquer the world. 00:05:18.644 --> 00:05:21.599 Or, that it will be not English, or another language after it. 00:05:21.615 --> 00:05:26.750 This may be Spanish or Chinese depending on how events unfold. 00:05:29.425 --> 00:05:32.582 But whether it will happen or not -- we don't know, 00:05:33.885 --> 00:05:36.568 and saving the languages that exist in the world 00:05:37.014 --> 00:05:39.068 today is actually no less important. 00:05:39.352 --> 00:05:45.816 Cultural diversity is feature of humanity 00:05:46.216 --> 00:05:49.634 that cannot be overstated. 00:05:51.008 --> 00:05:54.045 The fact of how different we are is very interesting. 00:05:55.610 --> 00:05:59.617 Sometimes it's hard for translators to find an equivalent 00:05:59.714 --> 00:06:03.872 to a word or a phrase in different languages 00:06:03.922 --> 00:06:08.158 because there might not be some cultural concept in history of one nation 00:06:08.158 --> 00:06:12.171 which is present in the other one, and it is very hard to be passed then. 00:06:12.292 --> 00:06:16.662 But at the same time these cases are very interesting because you understand 00:06:17.261 --> 00:06:23.723 how different people are, how different their backgrounds, their stories can be, 00:06:23.723 --> 00:06:25.819 nations as well as individuals. 00:06:26.178 --> 00:06:29.012 Sometimes when it comes to idioms, 00:06:29.952 --> 00:06:36.102 every word combination can hide almost bottomless deposits of meanings, 00:06:36.171 --> 00:06:39.205 of some historical phenomena, 00:06:40.514 --> 00:06:44.169 that every idiom can be essentially viewed 00:06:44.169 --> 00:06:50.175 as a sort of very concentrated little history textbook. 00:06:51.789 --> 00:06:57.234 I know that not all people like to talk about language 00:06:57.234 --> 00:07:01.458 and follow these phenomena as much as I do, and this is okay. 00:07:01.524 --> 00:07:03.951 Each person has their own hobby, 00:07:04.208 --> 00:07:07.929 each person, in my opinion, has to do what they can do best. 00:07:08.479 --> 00:07:11.129 And if they fail a little bit but really want to do it, 00:07:11.179 --> 00:07:14.563 they have to learn and learn more. 00:07:15.269 --> 00:07:22.318 And if everyone worked on what they want and can do, 00:07:23.638 --> 00:07:28.037 and if at least some fraction of this work was useful for all, 00:07:28.771 --> 00:07:31.516 then everything would be great and wonderful. 00:07:31.736 --> 00:07:38.303 And also if every person in the world wrote at least one article in Wikipedia 00:07:38.503 --> 00:07:42.800 we'd really have the sum of all human knowledge.