Cross-Lingual Friendships in the Wikisphere: When Urdu Wikipedia Met the World Through Translations

This blog revisits collaborations that began a decade ago, exploring how the questions they sought to answer remain relevant, resonant, and worth emulating today.

Cross-Lingual Collaboration on Wikipedia: Urdu Wikipedia’s Engagement with Ukrainian, Hebrew, and Chinese Communities through English Wikipedia as a Translation Interface.

The above paper was orally presented at Maulana Azad National Urdu University during the Two-Day National Seminar on “Translation and Transformation: Exploring the Intersections of Language, Culture, and Society,” held on 25–26 March 2026.

The seminar was conceived as an academic platform to critically examine the evolving role of translation in an increasingly globalized and multilingual world. It emphasized that translation is not merely a linguistic activity, but a complex cultural and social process involving the interpretation of meaning, negotiation of identities, and engagement with power structures across societies.

Within this context, Urdu Wikipedia’s cross-lingual collaborative efforts—particularly its engagement with Ukrainian, Hebrew, and Chinese communities through English Wikipedia as a mediating interface—were highlighted as exemplary models of volunteer-driven knowledge exchange and cooperation, offering practices that can be adapted and emulated in similar multilingual and intercultural contexts.

When Editing Became Diplomacy

There are moments in the Wikimedia journey when editing stops feeling like a solitary activity and begins to resemble a quiet form of diplomacy. Between 2016 and 2019, I witnessed such moments unfold—when contributors from entirely different linguistic worlds found ways to collaborate, not despite their differences, but through them.Urdu, written in Nastaliq script, shares little visual or structural similarity with Ukrainian (Cyrillic), Hebrew, or Chinese. Direct collaboration might have seemed unlikely. Yet, what connected these communities was not linguistic similarity, but a shared commitment to knowledge. And unexpectedly, English Wikipedia became the meeting ground.

English Wikipedia as a Bridge, Not a Barrier

In each of these collaborations, English Wikipedia functioned as a neutral interface—a working surface rather than a dominant centre; editors did not need to know each other’s languages but a shared reference article (typically in English), a commitment to accurate and responsible translation and common understanding of Wikipedia’s norms and policies.

This created an indirect but effective workflow, which was not perfect but inclusive- most importantly – it worked!

• Ukrainian → English → Urdu
• Hebrew → English → Urdu
• Chinese → English → Urdu

2016: The Ukrainian–Urdu Beginning

The first collaboration began with conversations at Wikimania and later took shape through interactions at Wiki Conference India 2016. Discussions with Ukrainian Wikimedians represented by Nataliia Tymkiv, led to a simple but powerful idea: what if we wrote about each other’s cultures?

Nataliia Tymkiv in green dress; the author standing next to Asaf Bartov in red shirt. Image by the author during Wiki Conference India 2016, CC-by-SA 4.0.

This led to a one-month collaboration where Urdu Wikipedians explored Ukrainian topics such as Jamala, Oleksandr Usyk, the Red Forest, and Ukrainian cinema, while Ukrainian editors engaged deeply with Urdu literary figures like Mirza Ghalib, Muhammad Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and Saadat Hasan Manto.

A simple visual representation of this exchange can be seen here:

_“Hello!” text in both Urdu and Ukrainian languages; Image in Public Domain by the author. _

What stood out was not just the content created, but the spirit behind it. Urdu editors received books like Awesome Ukraine through Wikimedia Ukraine, while Ukrainian participants were introduced to translated Urdu poetry by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on behalf of the Urdu Wikipedia community. Knowledge was exchanged – but so was cultural respect. While Ukrainian Wikipedia, encouraged and supported by Wikimedia Ukraine and Nataliia attracted 10 users, for Urdu Wikipedia it was a novel adventure, attracting only four users – the author, Ibne Zia, Arif and Dr. Cenjary. A total of 44 articles were created (424,638 bytes), and 6 articles expanded (adding 38,235 bytes) during the process.

2018: “Peace Spirits” and the Urdu–Hebrew Dialogue

“Dove peace” icon uploaded by User:Teetaweepo in 2010 under the CC-by-SA 3.0 license on Wikimedia Commons was used as an icon for “Project Peace” Collaboration between Urdu-Hebrew Wikipedians in 2018.

By 2018, the model had matured into a more structured initiative. The Urdu–Hebrew collaboration, titled Project Peace Spirits, brought together around 25 editors and resulted in 239 articles. It introduced tools like Fountain for tracking contributions and relied entirely on volunteer coordination – without institutional funding. Agha Bukhari and Faisal Anas emerged as the topmost contributors for the event on the Urdu Wikipedia, while Hammad Saeed was the principal event organizer.

What made this collaboration particularly significant was its context, communities that rarely interact politically found common ground through knowledge creation. Wikipedia became a neutral space – free from geopolitical tensions – where participation replaced polarization.Recognition also evolved: instead of physical rewards, contributors received barnstars. Digital, simple, but deeply meaningful.

2019: Scaling Up with the Chinese – Urdu Collaboration

If 2016 was experimental and 2018 was structured, 2019 was expansive.The Chinese – Urdu collaboration involved 37 participants, produced around 240 articles, and added nearly 2 MB of content. In this project, Tahir Mahmood and Faisal Anas were the key contributors and Hammad Saeed and Mohd Shuaib adjudicated the event. The same model persisted – English as interface, mutual translation, and volunteer coordination – but the scale suggested something more important: this was no longer an exception, it was becoming a pattern.

What These Collaborations Really Demonstrated

Looking back, the numbers are impressive – but they are not the most important takeaway- what matters more is what these efforts quietly revealed. While language could be a barrier, it’s not a dead end, and even without direct linguistic overlap, meaningful collaboration is possible. Volunteer communities can build global knowledge networks without funding or institutional pressure – driven purely by shared purpose.And perhaps most significantly, Wikipedia can function as a form of cultural diplomacy – not through policy, but through participation.

A Personal Reflection

For me, as someone deeply engaged with Urdu Wikipedia, these collaborations reshaped what the platform represents.Wikipedia is often described as an encyclopedia. But in moments like these, it becomesA space of translation, meeting point of cultures and aliving, evolving archive. And perhaps most importantly, a place where strangers – separated by language, geography, and history – choose to understand one another.

Looking Ahead

The real question today is no longer whether such collaborations are possible. The question is whether they can become a sustained and intentional part of the Wikimedia Movement. Because if they do, they hold the potential to reduce global knowledge inequalities, amplify underrepresented cultures, and strengthen the very foundations of open knowledge.

And maybe – quietly, incrementally – they can help bring the world a little closer together.

This reflection builds on my ongoing work on multilingual collaboration, including discussions inWikified Friendships and the Wikisphere (2026).