Workshop: Building One Piece of Knowledge in Many Languages
From a concept to a knowledge object with an identity, a provenance and many language forms
This event is part of a demonstration of what Lera offers for running knowledge events. Its content is written with care and draws on real sources, but the conference has not taken place, and apart from the convener its participants are fictional.
Purpose
In this two-hour workshop participants take a concept from their own field and turn it into a complete piece of knowledge: an original text in the language they think in, an identifier that marks the concept independently of any language, references that make its provenance clear, and at least one translation that is another form of the same object rather than a separate copy. The workshop’s central question is this: when a concept travels from one language to another, what must stay fixed and what has the right to change?
Who it is for
Researchers, librarians, translators, editors and teachers who work in at least two languages. No programming knowledge is needed. The workshop runs in Persian and English, and everyone may work in whichever language is easier for them. There are forty places, and the work is done in groups of four.
Programme
- 11:00–11:20 — Introduction: body and orbit, identity and form; an example of a concept that met three different fates in three languages.
- 11:20–11:45 — Groups choose a concept and find its identifier in Wikidata, or decide why the existing identifier is not enough.
- 11:45–12:20 — Writing the original text, short and complete, with clear references, in the language each group chooses.
- 12:20–12:45 — Translating into a second language and recording the translator’s decisions: where a word stayed untranslatable, and why.
- 12:45–13:00 — Closing conversation: what was lost or gained on the way through translation.
Before the workshop
Bring a laptop, and have in mind a concept from your own work that you think is not properly understood in another language. Reading Vrandečić and Krötzsch’s short article on Wikidata, and the FAIR and CARE principles for research data, will help you prepare.
Outcome
Each group leaves the workshop with a bilingual piece of knowledge whose provenance and translation decisions are recorded. If their writers wish, the pieces are published among the conference materials and keep the names of their writers and translators.
References
Vrandečić, Denny, and Markus Krötzsch. 2014. “Wikidata: A Free Collaborative Knowledgebase.” Communications of the ACM 57 (10): 78–85.
Wilkinson, Mark D., et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3: 160018.
Carroll, Stephanie Russo, et al. 2020. “The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” Data Science Journal 19: 43.