Project Lingua

Project Lingua, or just Lingua is an online translation community formed in the end of 2006^[1] with the goal of translating articles from the global citizen media project Global Voices Online from English into other languages, opening lines of distributed^[2] communication between bloggers across the world. The project currently translates into tens^[3] of different languages, and incorporates an active team of hundreds of volunteer translators and translation editors. Along with the Cucumis project and the Wikipedia's own translation projects in every language, such as the Wikipedia:ECHO, Lingua is considered one of the largest volunteer-based online translation communities in the world.^[4][1][5][6]

Project Lingua

Formation	Dec 2006
Purpose	Open lines of communication with non-english speaking bloggers by translating articles from Global Voices Online
Area served	Global
Official language	Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Aymara, Bangla, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Czech, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Farsi, French, Filipino, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Kurdish, Korean, Malagasy, Macedonian, Nubian, Odia, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Santali, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tetum, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Yorùbá
Parent organization	Global Voices Online
Website	globalvoices.org/lingua

Origin of the Project

Lingua began as a community-based initiative by Taiwanese blogger Portnoy Zheng,^[7] who started translating Global Voices articles into Chinese as early as September, 2005.^[7] This initial idea became a project of its own at the Global Voices Summit in December 2006, where it was given the name "Lingua".

The first official Lingua sites, launched by June 2007, were Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Bangla, Farsi, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. The project has since grown rapidly in size and scope. Global Voices is translated in all the top languages used on the internet but also include under-represent and indigenous languages, such as Aymara.^[8] Translators apply via the Translation Application Form.^[9]

As of April 2025^[update],^[10] Global Voices is available in the following languages:

Active sites	Dormant sites
Arabic[11]	Albanian[12]
Aymara[13]	Amharic[14]
Bangla[15]	Bulgarian[16]
Chinese (Simplified)[17]	Burmese[18]
Chinese (Traditional)[19]	Catalan[20]
Dutch[21]	Czech[22]
Esperanto[23]	Danish[24]
Filipino[25]	Farsi[26]
French[27]	Hebrew[28]
German[29]	Hungarian[30]
Greek[31]	Igbo[32]
Hindi[33]	Kazakh[34]
Indonesian[35]	Khmer[36]
Italian[37]	Korean[38]
Japanese[39]	Kurdish[40]
Macedonian[41]	Odia[42]
Malagasy[43]	Polish[44]
Nepali[10]	Swahili[45]
Portuguese[46]	Swedish[47]
Punjabi[48]	Tetum[49]
Romanian[50]	Turkish[51]
Russian[52]	Urdu[53]
Santali[54]	Uzbek[55]
Serbian[56]
Spanish[57]
Ukrainian[58]
Yorùbá[59]

Collaborations

Lingua has content-sharing/partnerships (formal and informal) with news sites and other online organizations, such as:

• Arabic: Al Jazeera Talk^[60]
• Bangla: Biborton Bangla^[61] (news/entertainment site, literary magazine)^[62]
• Chinese: China Times, Memedia ("Strawberry")^[63] (news site), Peopo^[64] (Taiwanese citizen news site hosted by the Taiwan Broadcasting Service)^[65]
• Italian: Agoravox Italia,^[66] Rainews24,^[67] La Stampa^[68]
• French: Rue 89, Cucumis, Rezo.net^[69]
• Portuguese: Mozambican newspaper A Verdade^[70][71]
• Spanish: Canal Solidario,^[72][73] Periodismo Ciudadano,^[74] El Colombiano^[75]

Lingua has also partnered with like minded organisations to provide translations. In August 2012, Lingua launched a collaborative effort to translate the Declaration of Internet Freedom^[76] providing the text in 31 languages.