 Good morning, good evening, good night, as appropriate. Thank you for being here. Thanks for coming to our session. My name is Ivan and I'm volunteer at Wikimedia Mexico. This session is called English as a lingua franca of the Wikimedia movement. How do we ensure the people's inclusion? Thanks for being here and thanks, many thanks to my dear friends here in the panel. I want to introduce you Anasuya Cebupta, prominent Wikimedia and head of Whose Knowledge Initiative. And thanks to Ana Torres, the executive directors of Wikimedia Argentina and Celio Costa Filho, who is vice president of Wikimovimento Brazil. Thanks for being here, my friends. So the way that we will do this session is to have a quick presentation to give some context about the use of the English in the Wikimedia movement, about the use in general, how it's the situation about using English in our society specifically in the global south and some situations and possible effects around the use of English in the world. And then we will pass the word to our friends, to our colleague panelists to have some opinions perspective. Please feel free to ask any question you have, any comments we are pending about the etherpad. We are giving a look to the remote questions. So feel free to ask any question you have. And well, let's start. Thank you. Well, there's no doubt today about the global character of the Wikimedia movement. So we, I think at this point of the history, there's no doubt that we are a community of persons around the world that have in common the same mission. I think since 2009, that when we have a survey provided by United Nations, made between United Nations and Wikimedia Foundation, at that point we had evidence that we have persons reading, of course, mostly an editing in 196 countries recognized by United Nations. At this point we have 39 chapters, we have two thematic organizations, 133 user groups. So we are a group of persons, passionate persons that wants to share the knowledge in their own context in all the corners of the world. But for me, it's at this point it's amazing, of course. But the decision and debate structures of this movement, the Wikimedia movement have English as the lingua franca. For an example, Wikimedia, this meeting, the main meeting of the Wikimedia community have English as a requirement to be attendee or speaker. I will explain in the next slides that many, many efforts by the community are actually doing, especially in this Wikimedia, this is the first Wikimedia that have a strong investment in inclusion to all the people that doesn't have the English as a modern language. But yeah, in the past editions of Wikimedia, in most of the editions of Wikimedia, you need to have English or at least the understanding or if you are a speaker, be fluent on English languages. For the Wikimedia conference, it has been recommended by the organizing committee that representatives should be fluent in English, that all the contents of the conference are entirely in English. Another example is the Wikimedia list, the international Wikimedia list that is frequently, we have many persons there that have a strong or native command of English, so that's the fact of language in the Wikimedia list. I saw some messages in other languages, but mostly are in English. And the WMF board, the working language is English. All the people that are actually running for positions, we have cleared that the working languages or we are advised that the working language in the board will be English. Some efforts was doing in the past, for an example, in the Wikimedia 2005, since the very beginning of Wikimedia, we have considered it's in multi-nostrulation. I found the evidence, but of course, at that point, the movement have learned resources that actually have. So I consider that was very expensive, it's very expensive. That was one of the main challenges to have simultaneous translation. In Wikimedia 2009, in Argentina, was the first Wikimedia in half Spanish as an official language, or another different language than English as an official language of the event. And it have a non-English track. Wikimedia 2015 was the first Wikimedia in half simultaneous translation, English Spanish. Just a few examples of the efforts of the community to include people, but that's not the rule in general. So the English learning is directly related to privileges. I want to show some examples, a few examples. I don't want you to be, so I didn't make a deep research. So I take the example of my own country to show that the English learning is directly related to privileges. So I will show you some facts of my country. I'm very sure that some other countries in the global south that have a similar situation of Mexico have similar numbers. In Mexico, we have English speakers, only 9.4% of the people are fluent in English according to a survey, because we don't have any clear numbers about the use of the English language at least in my country. We have only some surveys, some studies did by some companies, by the government, but we don't have official numbers. But as we can watch in the presentation, according to a survey, in 2013, only 11% of the people that was surveyed speaks English. And we are in the 39th position of 53 countries in an English proficiency index. This is an index did by an English first company. It's a school, it's an international school that teaches English. So you can watch, what's the position of my, at least of my country. I'm sure that other countries that are very similar to Mexico have similar numbers. In the English teaching in Mexico, only 7% of the secondary scholars in Mexico have a B1 level, according to the Common European Framework of Reference. I think it's a very low number. We have only 33 state educational programs and the National English Program in Basic Education reaches only 18% of elementary schools. For the purposes of this panel, we can take an intersectional view of the issues to have more clear idea that the dominion of the English is not a reality for many persons of the world. And if we want to have a real inclusive movement, we need to consider these barriers that the people need to tackle. For an example, just 40% of Mexican or German people reports speak English, but only 2% of Mexican rural people reports speak English. In general, 35% of people in Mexico clients do know any word of English or at least understand some phrases or have some basic conversations, but only two persons claims to have a working communication level, essentially for lack of money and lack of time. And in some numbers around the scores on an English for Academic Proposes test that were made on 2015 in the students, shown that 70% of students that have high scores in this test were from high socioeconomic backgrounds. So learning English, at least in my country, is related to the privilege. Only people who have money, who have time, who belongs to high socioeconomic backgrounds have the chance to have a good level of English. So it's a relevant issue. Some students point that language, it's not only a code we use to communicate between each other, the language, it's very related to social and political knowledge and of course the access to power structures. In addition, the social exclusion of not having the language that is used in some environments, for an example in Wikimedia Movement, can turn into persons according to some emotions on desired behaviors, a sadness, with feelings and social anxiety. And in some processes that is related to the use of languages, for an example for people who meet grades, for people who needs to work in another countries, some researchers talks about linguistic penalties that the people needs to pay of being seen as different or as not of one of us when you don't have the same level of the use of the languages in some social environments, especially when we have the use of majority languages in the world. This is the definition of inclusion of the Wikimedia strategy that's the act of reducing exclusion and discrimination by both individuals and groups, group modifying settings, policies, and all cultures and structures to create the proper conditions for the emergency of diversity. So I think this is a situation that was pointed previously in the strategy. And of course, we want to avoid or we want to talk about this problem to avoid the situation of this meme, the famous meme that they don't know, they don't know that I'm not understanding anything in a Wikimedia party. We want to have all the party included, all the people included in this beautiful party that it's with the Wikimedia movement. So the next part of the panel is to have all the answers of the participants. So I want to ask first how have you felt about the English languages and the Wikimedia movement? What has your individual experience been like or the experience of your organization? I'm not sure who wants to ask to make the first. I can go first if it's fine for everybody. Thank you. First of all, Yvonne, thank you very much and thank you for your question and from bringing the discussion to, yeah, for bringing to the discussion this topic that is so relevant and it's so important. Regarding my experience, I think that first of all, I will be lying if I said that I was surprised to learn that English was like the fundamental language of work in the Wikimedia movement. As you said, this is a global movement and the reality is that English is still the dominant language globally, right? But what I was surprised the most is that it was the only language. And for me, the incorporation of other languages, I mean the discussion around the incorporation of other languages is quite outdated somehow in other contexts. So that the Wikimedia movement didn't contemplate that for me was quite surprising. And I think that we all have suffered the consequences and probably, I mean, I'm not wrong if I say that my community have also suffered the consequences. If you speak English, which as you said, in many cases is also a reflection of our own privilege. You have many more opportunities and options to participate in the Wikimedia movement. We can change things, for example. I mean, you can occupy decision making power structures, right? And if you don't speak English, your area of influence is reduced to the local and hopefully to like the regional space. So you are like the scope of your influences is very low or it's lower. And something that I want to bring into this discussion that for me is really, really important. It's how this language, this English as a lingua francazine has also colonized the communication and the data of this movement. For example, we always talk about Wikipedia existing more than 280 languages, sorry. But when we communicate from a more central channel, for example, the channel from the Wikimedia Foundation, the unit of analysis is always English Wikipedia. The data is from the English Wikipedia. What happens in the world is often read through the impact that has in the English Wikipedia, right? It has never lost the hegemony like the language. And on the contrary, and from my perspective, this trend subjects other Wikipedia to even more invisibility somehow. So on the good side of this discussion, the Wikimea movement is in a very interesting moment right now. We have a great opportunity to change it. And I hope that the new strategy also will be like the beginning of this new change. So this is two times from my side. Thanks Anna. Who's next? Who wants to be the next? I can go and then maybe as we continue our conversations we should just pass the mic to whoever we think should go next. So Celio, be prepared. You know, it's really, it's very emotional to have this conversation. And I think we need to start there. This is not a conversation about simple logistics. It's not a technological conversation. It's a conversation that is at the root of our identities. It's at the root of our histories. It's at the root of the ways that we get to show up in the world. I often have to remind people that when someone is speaking in an English that they don't quite understand or their English is not as good as a native English speaker, I have to remind them that what that means is not that they're stupid, but that they speak another language than the monolingual person who is only an English speaker. And this is a history of colonization. Just look at us four friends. We are having this conversation about English as a lingua franca in English when none of us have been born into English speaking families. The irony of it is it's a meta irony to use a very Wikipedia phrase, right? And yet even within that, the languages we speak are the languages of our colonizers. So even as we speak Spanish, Portuguese or English, I have an advantage to the three of you because my colonizers were English speaking, right? So just even within the hierarchy of who speaks what, we're not even speaking the languages that our ancestors spoke. We are speaking the languages that our ancestors were forced to learn via very violent histories of colonization. Now, at the same time, there is, of course, and I'm sure this is the question that everyone sits with when they talk about English as a lingua franca, what's the alternative? But before we get to the alternative, because I know all four of us have ideas and we will get there, I think I want to just say something more about what Anna said so beautifully. I think when I came to the Wikimedia movement as someone who comes from South Asia, who speaks multiple languages, many of which are in the top 10 spoken languages of the world but are not in the top 10 written Wikipedias, what surprised me was that as a social movement, as a global movement and as someone who comes from different global movements, Wikipedia is rooted in the love of language. Unlike many, I come from the feminist movement, for instance, and other social justice movements. Language is important, but it's not at the center of the movement's issues. In the Wikimedia movement, language is literally at the center of our movement. The way that we have thought about Wikipedia is as a multilingual space and ecosystem. We talk about language Wikipedias amongst us as Wikipedians all the time and yet, as Anna says, even within a movement and set of communities that are organized around language, at least online, we are not able to get past the primacy and the hegemony of some languages, English in particular, but also other languages. And so that is the great irony. And I think it's important for me to say that I have found it relatively easy to be in the Wikimedia movement because I come from India where even as a middle-class person who didn't go to very rich schools, very privileged schools, I came out of government schools where the two mediums of instruction were English and Hindi. Even there, because of the processes of colonization and history, I didn't learn the languages of my parents. I did not learn Bangla. I didn't learn Tamil or Malayalam. So the only two languages I can read and write today are English and Hindi. I can't read and write in Malayalam or in Tamil or in Bangla. That itself for me is such a set of wounds. They are holes in my life. So it's important as we talk to our friends in the Wikimedia movement who are English speakers to remind them that this is not simply a social technical issue. This is about the power and privilege of the emotions that language gives us and the sense of superiority or inferiority and Ivan, as you said, you can feel anxious. You can feel outcast. You can feel othered in ways that we need to think about very deeply in the movement when we assume too quickly that we're going to speak in English. So, Celio, over to you. Thank you, Anasuya. Well, as Anasuya said, this is a very difficult question because it deals with emotive things, political aspects and obviously deals with identity. We can look at the other side, at the practical thing. A lingua franca is a part of human history. It's not nowadays thing or less central thing, but it changed through centuries. It was French in the 19th century. It became English during the 20th century as the United States became a very political and economic power and probably will change in time. Not 10 years, not in 20 years, but in a longer process but it will probably change. But a lingua franca is a tool as any other tool it may have a good use or a bad use. But in both cases, it's also instrument of power. So it's strange if we think with a person from Venezuela wants to talk with a person in Iran. In most cases, a person from Venezuela will not be able to speak Farsi and a person in Iran will not be able to speak in Spanish. So what connects then is a country that it's not very related or affiliated with both players. But when we're talking into the Wikimedia movement, we are talking to a very global movement. And it's important that the tool, the important tool of a lingua franca may not be a prerogative or the only way to do things. So for me, it's strange to see the translation of important messages or even the grant making thing, the translation thing being conducted as a volunteer thing. This is a crucial way if you want to bring people out from the main countries, what we used to call the global south or our voices. If you want to make the Wikimedia movement more first, not rely in a single lingua franca, in a single way to communicate. So for me, it's crucial that we as a movement and obviously Wikimedia foundation as a main player, not the only player, but is a man, try to create ways conducted into a profession that allow people that are not able to speak English properly or not to talk in English, to talk, to apply for grants, to understand the decision making that matter, for instance. So it's a very challenging, expensive, but it's a challenge that we must conduct and because we have people, we do have good people engaged in them. We are a strong movement that I'm proud to be part of. With them for the invite. Thank you, Anna Suya for your words. And we are trying to discuss this big challenge that is how to not be relying in a lingua franca that English is nowadays. Thank you, Celia. It's very valuable all your interventions and your words in order to go for the work. I think we have less than 20 minutes, 20 minutes left, of course. And related to the active discussion that we have in RIMO as speakers, we can watch the opinions in RIMO but we received some messages according to the opinions because we know that these issues, that discussion, it's polemic because it's annoying indeed for some persons to have, because this is only a conversation, it's only a debate, a false situation. As Celia said, we can only watch to the other side just only, but I think we can do that. So some of the questions is, in order to solve this problem, what we suggest, what is our suggestions? I don't think that the idea is to burden someone or to point with the fingers some persons. I think at all that's the intention, but we are a community that always have good ideas to solve some situations in a collective way. So this is an invitation to open the conversation, to find some answers, I think. I'm not sure if one of you can take the mic, the microphone to take about the next steps, some solving items. Yes, I think that is the final maturity that we are having this discussion. If I look myself in the movement, like seven or eight years ago, we weren't having this discussion. So it's not about pointing people or saying that it's over-fold or it's not over-fold. No, I think that we are doing a lot of efforts as a movement to build a more inclusive and diverse movement. I think that we, as organizations at the local level and also the CUNIA Foundation, Foundation is committed to make this happen. And I think one of the main things, but one thing that needs to happen in order to build more inclusive with CUNIA movement is to cross-cutting diversity and inclusion everywhere, from the communities at the local level to the more global level. Yes, it can be, maybe, it's not about the language we speak in the different events that this can be, of course, we can add some translation, like we do right now here in CUNIA and can be somehow solved, but understand that this diversity and inclusion matter topic also happens. I mean, it happens everywhere all the time. So I think that commitment is like the first step towards finding collaborative solutions, like all-together solutions to build a more inclusive and diverse with CUNIA movement. Thanks, Ana. I think we have some more questions in the chat. I think I want to repeat that we, as panelists and Wikimediants and colleagues of all the persons in the movement, we don't have any specific solution of this. Of course, we want to find a common answer. Of course, this is an invitation to maybe we need a specific initiative to have more inclusion and the Wikimedia events. Maybe a person mentions that if the problem maybe is to increase the English skills of the persons, maybe we can have an initiative devoted to that. Maybe we can find any technological solution basically in the open and free world. I'm not sure who wants to take the microphone from. Well, I can go with a few both practical thoughts, but the practical thoughts start like Ana said, I think in the most important wisdom that is given to us by Indigenous friends and teachers, which is pay attention, give respect. A great many things practically can be solved by just doing that. So even to start by reminding ourselves that every interaction in the Wikimedia movement is likely to be with someone who does not speak English as a native language is a very important start. Giving respect to that person's language is another important piece. Not all of us, we don't necessarily believe that everyone should be speaking to us fluently in our languages or that everything should be translated into our languages. That would be extremely difficult to do, as we know. That is why lingua franca's exist from a practical point of view, as Celio said. But there is a difference between taking that for granted, taking English, spoken English for granted and reminding ourselves that it is only one tool amongst others to communicate. And someone in Rimo, I think put it well, reminding ourselves that it is a lingua franca for convenience and not for overall communication in the sense that it's not about identity, I think is important. I think we should be thinking very seriously about in-person events having more languages than one. The fact that because of COVID, we are now online and can have interpretation in multiple languages should be a lesson that we take into the physical world. In many of the social movements that I have been in for over 15 years now, there is simultaneous interpretation in multiple languages. They may still be colonial languages, but at the very least, it allows more people in the world to respond and communicate in languages that are more familiar to them. And it's also in the language of the place where that conference is located. So for instance, if it was in Kolkata in India, it would be English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Bangla where it would be the five languages at the very least that you would have simultaneous interpretation in. Even that would bring our movement more close together than it is right now. And that is a way of going forward that our movement has the resources to do. And I think as someone said, it is important for the Wikimedia Foundation to recognize its own role in supporting with resources like this, but also us as individual Wikipedians. The next time you use the content translation tool to use Celio's example, do you use English to understand an article on Farsi or do you look at the Farsi article and then translate into Spanish? Why do we need to go via English to translate one article from the other, for instance? So just starting to take small steps in our heads around paying attention and giving respect, I think will move us a greater, it will move us ahead in this shared multilingual journey of us. Thank you, Nesuya Celio. Do you want to react to the comments of Anna or Nesuya? No, one important thing that may be obvious, but not necessary to say the obvious, this is not an English thing or an Americanist presentation. We are just talking about the problem of using a lingua franca, whatever lingua, in this case English, but it could be any other language. But the problem of having a lingua, using a lingua franca in a global movement, that's the point. Especially when I'm trying to bring more people, more diverse people inside the movement. So we know that privileged people in Europe, in Americas, in not most case, but privileged people can talk a little bit in English. My English, I'm not as skillet in English as I am in Portuguese. I feel a little bit uncomfortable here talking in English. I could explain things better in Portuguese, but I'm able to talk in English in an understandable way. But that's not the case when you are talking in most cases in the poor areas of Brazil or in many other countries in Americas or in Asia continent or Africa continent. The usual thing is the cases where people are not able to speak properly in English or doesn't speak English at all. So that's the challenge we are talking here. And it's important because some people may look into us and say, oh, these are anti-Americanist or anti-Englishing. This is not absolute in the case. No, I think the same. I think the idea is not left behind anyone in the movement. So many persons maybe in the past left behind about the situation. Of course, I think not only this conversation, and when we talk about privileges or when we talk about the global south and the global north situations, always some persons can feel personally challenged, but that's not the idea. The idea is to find a common solution, I think, and thinking that we have 10 minutes left at this moment. What if maybe we need to begin an initiative, a project to follow or another initiatives that are devoted in the movement to translation? Maybe we can research in more parts of the world. Maybe we can ask the experience to other movements. What it's needed? What do you think about this? And I'm not sure if Anna and Azulia Celio wants to take the microphone. You mean how initiative could look like to address this issue? Yeah, maybe a project. Yeah, I mean, I think as we are discussing, right, I think this is a really difficult topic, and as we said, it's something that we have to do all together. This is also a movement that a way of work, the way we work, we like to organize ourselves in advisory working groups or working groups. We are used to work together, right? I mean, this is something that is really common in the multimedia movement. So maybe it would be great, as I said before, in order to make sure that this diversity and inclusion is cross-cutting all the movement and we have the lens on all the time. Maybe it would be great to build a kind of advisory working group or something like this that would make sure in the future, for example, in the different events that these requirements are made and also could advise, like, practically advise the different proposals that can happen in the future in the multimedia movement. So that could be something more concrete and a way to move forward. And also it could be like also a group of people or I don't know, I haven't thought much about it, but like a group of people that could advise not just in events, but also in other areas of the Wikimedia movement regarding diversity and inclusion and make sure that we address this issue properly. That's my defense on this. Thank you, Anna. Thank you for sharing. I can very quickly go next and then leave the last word to Salio. I think I want to say very quickly to the person who says isn't the answer to just increase the English skills of everybody, right? Is to remind us, especially as a knowledge movement that language is a proxy for knowledge, that every knowledge is a different way of knowing the world. And so when we become monolingual as a movement or as a world, as a global movement, we are actually losing the richness of multiple forms of knowledge and multiple knowledges. So we cannot afford that as the Wikimedia movement. That is given our core mission. So an initiative that helps us think about how to be more multilingual in practical ways, I think is an excellent idea. Maybe it starts with an advisory group. Maybe it starts with the Wikimedia movement and the foundation supporting us to do a mapping around movements that are global that do try and be multilingual in practical ways so that we learn from others and see how we, as Wikimedians, can also be creative as we go forward in a multilingual way. Well, as I said, obviously, this is not an entire solution, but a practical thing that for me could be done is to change the translation tasks that are conducted in a volunteer level and jump into a professional level. We do have the resources for this. We, obviously, not every single affiliate, but many affiliates have the resources to do this and to make the conferences, the grant-making process, things more accessible for people that are not able to use properly English, written or spoken. Can I also quickly say that we should be honoring our translators? I would love to see Wikimedians of the Year awards, given the beautiful awards this morning that are for translators because they are the backbone of this process. Yeah, I think the same, I'm very happy to, I can take a look at the chat and I think it's very active. Thanks for all the persons who are actually discussing in the chat and thanks for all the community for all the efforts that are actually doing in this and actually my sincere gratitude to the persons in the Organization of Wikimania to have to consider this seriously. I think one of the positive effects of the pandemic is that we can have for the first time a really inclusive Wikimania at least in five languages. So we have three minutes left. I don't know if someone of you wants to give a final, final, quickly perspective. Super quick. I hope that this is the beginning of a discussion and hopefully, yes, we will be discussing further and building something amazing together as we do always in the Wikimania movement. So thanks everybody. Same. Gracias. Obrigada. Don't know about. Thank you to all my friends who helped me be multilingual and teach me Spanish and Portuguese and Guarani and Waiyu along the way as I try and remember my own languages. Thank you. Thank you all for an invitation, for allow me to be part of this presentation. And well, as Anasuya said, it deals with identity and as it deals with identity, it deals also with respect. And this is two very important things inside the movement. Respect, the identity of one another. So that's the way that we will build more diverse and rich movement and projects. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Celio. Thank you, Ana. Thank you, Anasuya. And thanks for all the people that are actually watching this. I hope that we can sooner, we can watch in person. I just only want to say thank you and goodbye and please stay safe. Please stay safe while the pandemic is going harding sometimes. My sincere solidarity for all the persons who are having issues with this pandemic and I hope just only watched in the next opportunity in phase. Thank you so much.