On 3/13/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Because they are motivated by a burning hatred for anything "Russian",
including Cyrillic.
Mark
I feel that's a very inaccurate representation of the Romanian point of view
on this proposed transliteration. What must be understood is that Cyrillic
is controversial for Romanian simply because of historical context. This
can't be discounted, and I think people should a bit more sensitive to this
issue. It doesn't compare with Devanagari for English or, say, Arabic script
for Swedish. But the point is that even those Wikipedias would never be
accepted.
In any case - Mark seems to believe that Romanians have a "burning hatred"
for anything Russian, including Cyrillic. This is definitely not the case.
Rather, the writing of Romanian in Cyrillic is something that is not
performed by any Romanians, bar a series of people who declare themselves
ethnic Moldovans in an unrecognised state. For that reason, implementing a
conversion script touches on people's sensitivities. The Latin script is a
link that Romania has to the rest of the Western world. Using a Cyrillic
script that would be treated on par with Latin implies a sort of Cyrillic
hegemony for most of Romanians and Moldovans, and serves as a painful
reminder for the times when people in the Moldovan SSR were forced to learn
the language using Cyrillic characters.
For that reason, I think if there really is demand for such a project, then
a new subdomain should be set up for it.
Overall, however, I think Wikipedia needs to develop a script policy, not
only a language policy. So far, we have got by on this half-hearted notion
of "script doesn't matter, we only have Wikipedias for languages". However,
there are many grey areas:
* The Kurdish Wikipedia uses both Arabic and Latin script, but there is no
conversion. This, IMO, is quite a messy approach. Either have two separate
Wikipedias (there's nothing wrong with that), or imply automatic conversion.
* The Tatar Wikipedia uses the Latin script, which is non-official, yet
there is no content at all in Cyrillic. There is no clear policy on this
(ideally, conversion should be implemented).
* Automatic conversion is messy. For example, the Serbian Wikipedia
continues to be Cyrillic-default, and one must switch to Latin everytime (
i.e. when a link is clicked from a Latin page, it still takes you to the
Cyrillic version). AFAIK, pages also can't be edited in Latin. I presume
this is the case for the Chinese WP as well.
Don't get me wrong, automatic conversion is a potentially very powerful
process that can solve a lot of POV disputes regarding script. At the time,
however, it is technically imperfect. Meanwhile, kudos to Vikimedija SCG,
who are doing a *great* job in promoting the Serbian Wikipedia. You guys are
an example.
Ronline