The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that
language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are
fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions
on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche
and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to
have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by
themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on
your "rules"?
Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about
totally clearing from english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it
would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of
metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface
to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms
to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language,
does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a
new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with
neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes
they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an
example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed.
Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l