Wikivoyage talk:German Wikivoyage Expedition

German Wikivoyage

Moved from Project:travellers' pub by (WT-en) Evan

We seem to have quite a number of German-speaking Wikivoyagers. Are there enough people interested to get a German Wikivoyage Expedition started? It just takes 5 committed people, one liaison, and about 50 pages of translation. --(WT-en) Evan 16:07, 9 Jan 2004 (EST)

Nope, not me. When I find time to work on Wikivoyage, I would much rather create new material. Call me snobbish, but I believe every human being should speak fluent English anyway. Time for a world language. ;-) (WT-en) Nils 09:16 January 10th, 2004 (CET)

I'll skip the bait on discussing a world language B-), but I do have one note, though. (I'm not trying to encourage you to work on German Wikivoyage -- I just wanted to set the record straight here on where "new material" can go.) The translation step I mentioned is just to get the help pages and policies up and running on the new language version -- not to spend lots of time translating English pages into (say) German. I think the whole idea of having language versions is to allow contributions from people who don't feel comfortable writing in English, and to serve travellers who don't read English well. So, there's lots of original work to do there. --(WT-en) Evan 15:05, 10 Jan 2004 (EST)

"Guten Tag!" Hey, I'd love to tell German-speaking wiki editors, in their own language, that they're welcome here and I would much, much rather read about a place using Google German --> English translation than to have no information at all. Unfortunately, my Deutsch is much worse than Google English --> German. -- (WT-en) DavidCary

I am a native speaker of German, and I would support a German version of Wikivoyage. But we should wait for some people who are willing to push it actively. I can help, but atm I do not have a lot of time for Wikivoyage. --(WT-en) Zenogantner 03:51, 7 Feb 2004 (EST)

PS: I'd also donate a Spanish-German word list (at the moment I have about 5000 words/phrases, it just needs to be adjusted a bit for travellers' needs) as soon as there is a German language version of Wikivoyage. --(WT-en) zeno

I think with the German-language Wikipedia being the second-biggest it shouldn't be a big problem reaching some Germans/Austrias/Swiss/Liechtensteiners/Luxembourgers (?) who are willing to contribute to a German-language Wikivoyage. I do partly agree with Nils on at least understanding English to a certain degree but speaking/writing English is still something seemingly difficult as many German-speaking either are not so good at or do not dare to contribute something gramatically wrong. And, of course, it is just easier to write something in German than in English if German is your mother tongue. --(WT-en) EBB 10:16, 2 Aug 2004 (EDT)

The go-between needs to write good English; the others don't. For the French Wikivoyage go-between, it was a close race between me and Yann, both of whom are at least fairly good at both English and French. My French grammar is good but I don't know all the words, but I'm not afraid to write something and let Yann or Quirk fix the words.

English grammar is not much to worry about for Germans. We have the for all of der, die, das and we put the verb somewhere else in the sentence. The vocabulary is the big difference; English borrowed lots of Romance words that German didn't, and German borrowed some that English didn't.

If one of you knows French, you could be the French-German go-between. -(WT-en) phma 17:10, 2 Aug 2004 (EDT)

So, it looks like we have enough people to do a German-language Wikivoyage. The next two steps are to pick someone to act as the go-between and to get the language files translated. Let's work on it at Project:LanguageDe.php. I'll start it off with the Wikipedia language file, and we can use the English Project:Language.php file as a reference for things that need to be changed. It's mostly just changing the name of the site (Wikipedia -> Wikivoyage), the name of the license, and the names of some important pages.

Does that sound about right? --(WT-en) Evan 15:12, 9 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Keep up the momentum

So, uh... we had some nice momentum on this project, which is kind of lagging. I'd rather it didn't, since I think a German-language Wikivoyage would be a nice addition to the group.

It'd be nice if one of the people who is signed up got a go-between decision going. That's really the last step before we go live. --(WT-en) Evan 17:50, 19 Aug 2004 (EDT)

To Evan: Please don't worry if nothing has not yet happened in the German Wikivoyage. August is a major travel time for many Germans. But now, it should be the time to come back from holidays and start the work. -- (WT-en) Hansm 12:42, 2004 Sep 11 (EDT)

Work in Progress

The German language file is translated, now. Discussion und corrections are very welcome. I have started to make draft versions for the German translation of the most important files in my (WT-en) Sandbox. Please give me feedback. -- (WT-en) Hansm 14:45, 2004 Sep 13 (EDT)

Election mode of German Go-Between

Please, would some of you who speaks well English have a look on the rules for the elections of the German go-between. Give a short comment or better, correct, if they are still ambiguious. Thanks -- (WT-en) Hansm 11:12, 2004 Sep 27 (EDT)

A German Wikivoyage Expedition Organisation page in German

It looks as if the German Wikivoyage moves slowly towards its take off. Until now, 5 of those who have signed for the team have reconfirmed their will to contribute. But some of them are still in hollydays or have examinations during the next weeks. Thus, the schedule for Go-Between elections is rather slow. And, as the rules say, no de.wikivoyage.org without bo-between. At the other hand, some of us want to use the time and start to discuss principal questions concerning the organisation and begin important translations. Now, the big question to all administrators: Would any of you mind if we would open a page called "Wikivoyage: German Wikivoyage Expedition (Organisation)" on which we talk in German? After the German Wikivoyage realy has been started, we would copy its contence into the German part and the page could be deleted. -- (WT-en) Hansm 08:37, 2004 Sep 20 (EDT)

I don't have a problem with it. However, I'd rather have someone take a "temporary" go-between job without an election and get things started right away, than work on stuff on the English site. --(WT-en) Evan 11:51, 20 Sep 2004 (EDT)

And I would nominate Hansm for the job, since he is clearly driving the German Wikivoyage forward already! Your English is fine for the job. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:11, 20 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I have no objection to either creating a temporary German language space or with having Hansm as a temporary go-between. -- (WT-en) Mark 12:21, 20 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Thank you for your confidence. OK, I'd agree to be temporary (but only temporary) go-between until the elections are over. As soon as the German Wikivoyage is accessable, I'm going to move all that German stuff over there. That realy would make things much easier. -- (WT-en) Hansm 13:04, 2004 Sep 20 (EDT)

Isn't it time to launch the German Wikivoyage already, at least unofficially? Hansm's Sandbox is already full of material and there are even content articles in German ready... (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:57, 30 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Evan is a bit busy for the next couple of weeks planning an event, and none of the rest of us have root on the machine, so I'm afraid it will probably have to wait. -- (WT-en) Mark 06:07, 30 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I plan on launching both German and Swedish when I do the 1.3.4 upgrade next week. --(WT-en) Evan 13:37, 30 Sep 2004 (EDT)