User talk:GerardM/Africa

Map of Africa, what's NOT in Zulu

Dear User:GerardM, as the editor-contributor (though non-speaker of isiZulu) most active here for the past ten months, I'm highly enthusiastic about the content you're adding here! Allow me to make some timely observations, and I'll be glad to help follow up on necessary manual work (as I'm a fast typist and professional proofreader):

• Country names: on the map, only South Africa appears with its isiZulu name. As for the rest: both existing and red link page names in the ZU WP are not necessarily correct.
  • I recently requested help on country names, e.g. a gazetteer or similar resource online or as a .pdf-file gazetteer, from a South African university library, as yet without results. So now I'm going to approach Wikimedia ZA for advice to streamline my efforts.
• Page names for countries and lower-level geographical entities were not necessarily created by native-speaker editors. Also, many red-link page names were generated by geography templates, possibly without native-speaker review.
  • I would anticipate that once the correct names are known, the next steps would be to:
    • Use the correct name for existing pages via Move plus making a REDIRECT where indicated,
    • Edit the page names in geo templates,
    • Create geo-stub pages and populate categories.
• Note that the Xhosa WP (which I started following daily in early April) is weak on geography content. Paradoxically, there's an advantage of being able to do it right the first time. I suggest a parallel pursuit of an authoritative resource for XH place names along with the ZU as noted above.

I'll bring this to the attention of Wikimedia ZA editors and solicit their input and collaboration. Please let me know how I can contribute further to your process. -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 09:38, 1 uNhlangulana 2018 (UTC)

Preparing for EN:ZU translation of list terms

Please refer to the request on Category talk:Lists based on Wikidata#Two master lists needed for en:zu translation. Meanwhile I'll approach Wikimedia ZA for assistance in arranging translation into isiZulu (and eventually, isiXhosa), such as resource staff of a South African university library or language project. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:57, 3 uNhlangulana 2018 (UTC)

I blogged about this here. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 19:34, 4 uNhlangulana 2018 (UTC)