MINSK, 21 February (BelTA) – The Belarusian Embassy in Sweden has launched the campaign “Writing Wikipedia in Belarusian” urging Belarusians to write articles for Wikipedia in the Belarusian language. The campaign is timed to Mother Language Day celebrated on 21 February, BelTA learned from the embassy.
According to specialists' estimates, only 4% of the existing languages are used on the internet, Belarusian Ambassador in Sweden Dmitry Mironchik noted. People tend to think that if something is not on the internet is does not exist at all. This is why every language should aim to overcome the so-called “digital barrier”. “Nowadays everyone can feel themselves in Francysk Skaryna's shoes. Wikipedia can be viewed as an early indicator that a language is breaking through the ‘digital barrier'. This is why we propose to help our mother language and enrich the Belarusian Wikipedia with new articles,” he said.
On 20 February, the campaign brought together employees of the Belarusian Embassy in Sweden with their families, active members of the non-governmental organization Belarusians in Sweden, and Belarusians who live in Stockholm. A lot of people joined the event online.
The participants wrote and added to Wikipedia articles in the Belarusian language on various topics: from information about their birthplaces to biographies of Swedish politicians who contributed to Belarus-Sweden relations. Moreover, they uploaded a lot of detailed information about the Belarusian language.
“Participants of the event agreed that making more information information on various topics available on the Belarusian Wikipedia will contribute greatly to preservation and development of the Belarusian language,” the embassy noted. It called on Belarusians to work on enriching the internet with information in their native language not only ahead of holidays, but on a regular basis.
