[Wikipedia-l] Translating the Five pillars

[Berto 'd Sera]

Hoi!

I group two answers into one, to make it quicker.

> We would not expect it being taken over by a more
> specific group pushing a point

What worries me is the number of "We would not expect..." structures implied
in "Free encyclopedia" from a western POV. Many of them are not going to be
that obvious for those who are not western users.

I speak from personal experience, as westerner who relocated to an eastern
country. The number of "implicit concepts" that simply do NOT hold when
moving to another culture is pretty big. It's nobody's fault/will, it simply
happens. 

> there is the danger that some people might assume that everything
> _not_ written on that page is explicitly allowed... 
Yes, if you do not state that what counts is the "spirit of the law" and not
the letter. But as soon as you quote the "spirit of the law" you're back to
trans-cultural fuzziness. It's not an easily solved problem and it will
probably have to be confronted by means of a series of approximated moves.

I'm afraid that the further from an "implicit western POV" you get the
longer your explanation shall be. Translating words is easy; broadcasting a
complex relation system in a few words may be simply impossible when words
do not carry along similar semantic networks.

Too bad that any time we fail to explain what we mean we later have to
assert our western POV by means of brute force; since our real motivation
remains unknown the only image we're going to project to the outside world
is absolutely colonial in its nature. 

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html