Translating Effective Altruism Wikipedia Content Into Other Languages

Summary: Non-English speakers lack quality Wikipedia content on effective altruism (EA), limiting its accessibility globally. This project proposes organizing volunteer-driven translations of key EA articles from English Wikipedia into other languages, ensuring high quality through peer review, benefiting non-English speakers and expanding EA's reach while maintaining neutrality and accuracy.

Effective altruism (EA) content is predominantly available in English, creating a barrier for non-English speakers who rely on Wikipedia as a primary source of information. Even when EA-related articles exist in other languages, they often lack the depth and accuracy of their English counterparts, limiting their usefulness for policymakers, academics, and local communities. One way to address this gap could be to organize volunteer-driven efforts to translate high-quality EA articles from English Wikipedia into other languages, ensuring accuracy, neutrality, and relevance.

How It Could Work

The project could focus on translating well-developed EA articles, such as those on global health or animal welfare, into widely spoken languages like Spanish or Mandarin. Volunteers—recruited through EA forums or local groups—would handle translations while adhering to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV) guidelines. To maintain quality, translations could undergo peer review by bilingual EA community members before being published. Coordination might happen via online platforms like Slack or Discord, with occasional edit-a-thons to boost productivity.

Benefits and Stakeholders

This approach could benefit several groups:

Non-English speakers: Gain access to reliable EA content in their native language.
Local EA communities: Use translated articles to educate and grow their networks.
Wikipedia: Enriches its repository with high-quality, multilingual content.

Volunteers might be motivated by altruism, skill-building, or community engagement, while EA organizations could support logistics like hosting edit-a-thons.

Execution and Challenges

A minimal version could start with translating 5-10 key articles into one language, then expand based on volunteer availability. Challenges like sustaining volunteer interest or ensuring translation quality could be addressed through recognition (e.g., featuring contributors on EA blogs) and structured peer review. Unlike machine translations, human-driven efforts would better capture nuanced EA concepts while avoiding the ethical pitfalls of paid Wikipedia editing.

By leveraging Wikipedia's reach and EA's volunteer base, this project could make altruism more accessible globally—without compromising on quality or neutrality.

Source of Idea:

This idea was taken from https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gtDferPKzLX4xXkKd/write-more-wikipedia-articles-on-policy-relevant-ea-concepts and further developed using an algorithm.

Skills Needed to Execute This Idea:

TranslationWikipedia EditingContent LocalizationVolunteer CoordinationPeer ReviewMultilingual CommunicationProject ManagementCommunity EngagementNeutral Point Of View ComplianceGlobal Health KnowledgeAnimal Welfare Knowledge

Categories:Effective AltruismWikipediaTranslationVolunteer WorkGlobal OutreachEducation

Hours To Execute (basic)

40 hours to execute minimal version ()

Hours to Execute (full)

150 hours to execute full idea ()

Estd No of Collaborators

10-50 Collaborators ()

Financial Potential

$0–1M Potential ()

Impact Breadth

Affects 100K-10M people ()

Impact Depth

Moderate Impact ()

Impact Positivity

Probably Helpful ()

Impact Duration

Impacts Lasts Decades/Generations ()

Uniqueness

Somewhat Unique ()

Implementability

Implementable with Effort ()

Plausibility

Logically Sound ()

Replicability

Easy to Replicate ()

Market Timing

Good Timing ()

Project Type

Content

Project idea submitted by u/idea-curator-bot.