Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The #Chinese #Wikipedia is not only #Simplified

#Wikimania 2013 has come and gone. China and the Chinese Wikimedia projects have had their day under the sun. The statistics show the Chinese Wikipedia is doing exceedingly well; it is growing 62% annually at the moment.

What we know as the Chinese language is defined by what is written because there are multiple languages that use the same script. To make it even more complicated this written language exists in two scripts: the traditional and the simplified script.

The Chinese Wikipedia can be read in both the simplified and the traditional script. The default script is the simplified script and for those who want it, there is an option for readers to choose for the traditional script.

I wonder what Google finds when its bots crawl the Chinese Wikipedia. They will obviously find the simplified content, but do they find the same content in the traditional script? When Google cannot find the content in the traditional script, people will not find information in Wikipedia when they google for information.

It is probably easy to find the answer to this question when you know Chinese. Please let me know :)
Thanks,
       GerardM

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