How Wikipedia Works

Chapter 15. 200 Languages and Counting

So far we’ve concentrated on the English-language version of Wikipedia, but Wikipedias have been created in over 250 languages, each representing its own individual community and unique collection of content. A common assumption is that articles in the other Wikipedias are basically translated from English, but this couldn’t be more misleading: These sites all create their own content with translations only playing a minor role. Taken as a whole, the Wikimedia projects count as one of the most comprehensively multilingual and global projects on the Internet today.^[32]

The English-language Wikipedia is the largest site, but other Wikipedias are also impressively large: Fifteen of the other-language editions ...