[Foundation-l] Wiki Translations of Greek/Roman/XYZ classics

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Viktor Horvath wrote:
> well, here we disagree. To me, an encyclopedia article and a translation 
> are inherently different. The one's a definition and rather a science, the 
> other one rather an art. Just because one thing works, you can of course 
> *try* it with other things, too, but you can't possibly say: It *will* 
> work.

I don't think the determination of what goes into an encyclopedia
article is a "science" in that sense.  It's as much of an "art" as
finding a good translation.

> Did you ever do a translation of a *belletristic* work? You see, with 
> technical articles, it would be probably no problem to agree on a simple, 
> understandable translation. With literature and philosophy, it's 
> impossible. There are strict translations, free translations, congenial 
> translations. While on each of these fields people can collaborate and 
> cooperate, they're as different as rock music and classical music, or as 
> Dutch painting of the 16th century and Picasso. And every style has its 
> right to exist! You can't judge which is the best one, as you can't find 
> an objective winner between music styles. It's just a matter of taste. 
> That's the genial thing about art. At least in my opinion. Whereas an 
> encyclopedia article should contain only checkable facts, and you can well 
> discuss about facts.

I agree with you to *some* extent, but I think the point is:
collaboration works well when people have a clear, objective and
agreed upon goal.  At wikipedia, for example, we have a shared
understanding of what it means to have a neutral encyclopedia article.
That same kind of shared undersatnding is going to be necessary for a
wiki translation project to be successful.

This is not about saying that some style has no right to exist.  If
someone wants to do a translation of Shakespeare into Japanese haiku,
hey, great, I hope they produce a great work of art.  And if a group
of people can come to a shared understanding of what that means, such
that they can work together on it productively, that's great too.

But then they should *within that context*, work on a *single*
collaborative version, and make it conform to the stated goal as well
as they can, rather than doing 100 scattered random diffuse separate
works.  Do you see what I mean?  This is elian's point about what
makes wiki work.

> Well, I don't blame someone if he doesn't want to do so or has no time. I 
> have no time either, at least not at the moment, as I have lots to do for 
> other free projects... I just hoped to find someone who is also fascinated 
> by an idea like this. You're right, starting is better than waiting... 
> but, if I had to start something now and had enough time, I'd probably try 
> to patch the Wiki source or do the whole thing manually by coordinating 
> people in good old mailing lists like in the times before...

:-)

I think that's great.

--Jimbo