 My name is Mark Bradshaw, and I'm doing a Masters in Translation Studies here at the University of Edinburgh. Well, I have used Wikipedia my whole life, it seems, ever since I was a student in high school, and it's amazing. I mean, I have it as an app on my phone. You know, I use it a lot just for checking simple facts or looking up something or seeing when a movie was made, whatever it is. You know, I seem to be able to find it on Wikipedia. So obviously, the idea that I could actually do something a little bit, translate an article from Spanish into English as I did, and, you know, give a little bit back was really appealing to me. I found it really, I don't know, I was passionate about it, and it was also something that fulfilled me, I guess, in a way. What I ended up choosing was a Spanish article that was franquismo sociologico, and I found that article just mainly by kind of searching through from one article to the next, linking to try and find an article that actually hadn't been either written in English or had even a stub in English that was completely off the English Wikipedia. And it was by doing that little, you know, bit by bit that I managed to find an article that I enjoyed. It was interesting and it was also the right length. And after finding the article, then it was about how was I going to translate this, and so I used my sandbox and I basically built it from, you know, the ground up and I had the Spanish article on one side of the screen and my English sandbox on the other side and just went through, sometimes I would have to use the actual content editor in terms of the pictures and boxes and things like that that I needed to use. But I've kind of used things like that before, so it wasn't too much of an issue. And then with citations and things, yeah, it was kind of like I was learning as I was doing and just by checking other pages as well to see how they did it and the behind of other pages that really helped just to see the construction of it. And so when I did my own, I was able to copy what their structure was. I guess when it came down to actually doing the translation, I found it quite interesting because I know what Wikipedia is about and it's about having this kind of unbiased language and it's all very just factual and everything's backed up by citations. And while this article was backed up with citations and it was a good article on the Spanish Wikipedia, I found that there were a few passages that were somewhat biased. I mean it was talking about Francisco Franco as a dictator in Spain and so it was natural, I assume, but the language choice itself, the words, I can't remember them off the top of my head right now, but they were definitely slanted one way and so when I was doing this translation I knew that Wikipedia didn't necessarily want that kind of language or it would have been flagged anyway, so I guess I had this decision as a translator. Is this important to keep, you know, this kind of biased language or can I find a way of saying it that isn't as biased? So yeah, in some occasions I had to do that. It was my choice and my decision, but I felt that it was justified in that sense. In terms of the actual differences between the Wikipedia's, there was a few things there. There was the way the boxes are set up and things like that. I had a lot of large quotes that were set off in boxes in the Spanish Wikipedia and in the English one they weren't put into boxes. They were just quotes that sat between lines of text. So little things like that were I also had to think about. And yeah, so I think with this sort of article, because it was about such a kind of a controversial topic or a topic that in Spain people talk about and it inflames passions and whatnot, I think that definitely was a hindrance, but also it was a challenge and it was something interesting that I could look at. When you're a student, the biggest problem is actually doing practical translations. I mean we get a bunch of different things to do, you know, excerpts of books or whatever that we translate and talk about with our fellow classmates and our teachers, but it's just for us or it's just for our teachers. We're not actually out there doing something that affects other people or other people will read. So to be given the opportunity to translate something practical that will end up being read by people and used by people, I think just that motivation itself was the biggest positive of this project. Yeah, I mean thinking that it would have an end reader I think was probably the biggest thing. And so obviously then my actual translation of it was effective because I was thinking, wow, this is going to be read by people around the world, you know, so I have to, well not only do I have to be professional about it, but I have to think of them as my target audience and not just please a teacher or whatever the case may be. So I think that was one of the biggest positives for me. And yeah, just the practical translation work, you know, just getting an opportunity to translate something that I was interested in on a website and that I use regularly I think was a big positive, yeah. So all of those things were wonderful about this project. In terms of how this Wikipedia project and how it relates to higher learning, to universities and whatnot, I mean, there's always that same bias, right, that oh, you know, don't use Wikipedia, you can't use it for references, it's, you know, it's anathema to what we do in university, but I think this project really shows that that doesn't have to be the case. And actually the two can work really well together. I mean, using it to source or to cite for an academic paper is one thing, but actually using your knowledge that you gain in university to help the Wikipedia project and to add on to the Wikipedia project I think is a great opportunity and a great resource that we can offer as university students or teachers or whatever the case may be. And so, especially with, it's so easy now with the visual editor and whatnot, I mean it's really, it's on us and we have the opportunity to help disseminate information, I think we can do that and translation studies or whatever the case may be, it has a role for us and we can contribute to it, I think, and it helps us and it helps Wikipedia and it helps people around the world, so why not? Well, I think the role of translation is, I mean they use this a lot, but it's the bridge between two cultures or two languages and especially on the internet you've got so much of it as in English and not as much in the other 6,000 languages in the world and a lot of that, especially with regards to Wikipedia, is written by Anglophones, people who speak English natively and even if they're writing about something that takes place in Spain or Russia or wherever the case may be, they're writing it from their own Anglophone perspective and I think, especially from my position as a translator into English from French and Spanish, I think I have this opportunity to translate articles that were written by people who are French or are Spanish or Spanish speaking or French speaking and writing about something that is important to their cultures and so by translating it into English, I'm not imposing my Anglophone view on whatever it is that they're writing about. I'm taking what they've written in their native language and showing it to the English speaking world as it was, if you will. So I think that can be my role and I think that's perhaps a role of something like Wikipedia on the internet where you have a database, a massive database of information from all around the world and from so many different languages and cultures. I think it's this opportunity to make this bridge between one culture and the other especially to turn the tide against the English hegemony and be able to bring some things back towards English from the other cultures and languages. So that's what I think. If someone came to me and asked me, what is there at the University of Edinburgh's Masters of Translation? What is there at the University of Edinburgh's Masters in translation that would be interesting for me? I would definitely say to them, look, we've got this thing where we translate Wikipedia articles as part of our program and it's just this perfect opportunity, I think, to practice what we're learning but also to be able to use our knowledge to help and to add to something that we use so often. Who doesn't use Wikipedia? I think it's a great opportunity to practice and to spread a little bit of knowledge around the world.