Hi,
Maybe somebody here will have an idea about this problematic issue.
See this discussion:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761
(Click "Show older changes" to see all the comments.)
Briefly, the name of the Central Kurdish language (code ckb) is currently
shown as "کوردیی ناوەندی". If I understand correctly, this may be a correct
translation of "Central Kurdish" into Central Kurdish, but at least some
speakers don't like it. The people who edit the Wikipedia in question are
asking for "کوردی", which is just "Kurdi".
It does appear as the autonym in CLDR,[1] but CLDR is not necessarily a
reliable source.
The name in CLDR in some other languages is something like "Kurdi Sorani",
and it's also mentioned in Ethnologue as one of the possible autonyms.
Furthermore, some of the people who participate in the discussion at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761 are not opposed to calling it
"Kurdi Sorani", but others are loudly demanding only "کوردی".
My own consideration for being reluctant about calling it only "کوردی" is
that there is another Wikipedia in a Kurdish language, with the code ku.
(Arguably, it should be changed to kmr, but that's a topic for another
discussion.) That language's name is written as "Kurdi". Both of these
languages can be written in the Latin and in the Arabic alphabet, although
ku is more commonly written in Latin and ckb is more commonly written in
Arabic. Having two languages with the same name—albeit in a different
script—may be confusing and misleading for a reader who needs to choose.
That's why labeling ckb as "کوردی سۆرانی" ("Kurdi Sorani") looks like the
safest option to me, but not everybody there agrees with this.
One of the most interesting comments[2] on the discussion about changing
the name gives several examples of other websites, which use "کوردی" and
"Kurdi" in the language selector, and says that the Latin-script name
points to what would be "ku" in Wikipedia, and the Arabic-script name
points to what would be "ckb". I don't know any Kurdish language, but I do
know the Arabic alphabet, and the texts in these websites do seem different
enough, and not just the same language in different alphabets. Furthermore,
at least one of them tags the versions as ckb and ku using the HTML lang
attribute. If this is indeed a practice on several other websites in these
languages, then I _guess_ I'll be OK with doing it on Wikipedia as well,
but I decided to try to run this by the Language committee first, just in
case.
Does any of you have an opinion about this?
Thanks!
[1]
http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/31/by_type/locale_display_names.language…
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761#3387578
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hi,
It looks like a very long-awaited may be coming to Wikimedia projects soon:
search results from other languages will be shown.
It happens very frequently that people search in language X while looking
at a Wikipedia in language Y. For example, they search in Russian while
looking at the English Wikipedia. Currently it fails, because search is
limited only to one language.
For years I have been raising this issue with the Foundation's management,
and it looks like this is going to be addressed.
Wikimedia's search team (also known as Discovery) has already enabled
showing results from other Wikimedia projects near the search results, for
example showing results from the English Wikisource in the sidebar of the
search results of the English Wikipedia. It is now experimenting with
showing results from other languages.
Currently it looks like the prioritized languages will be the same as the
languages that are suggested by UniversalLanguageSelector, namely the
language of the browser and the operating system, previously clicked
languages, and languages found by geolocation. This may be tweaked in the
future.
Note that this is not being developed by the Language team in the
Foundation, but by the Search team.
You can read more about it at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/explor…
and there's a demo at:
http://sistersearch.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?search=~rainbow&title=Special:S…
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hi all,
First of all, your work is being appreciated.
That being said, I have been grinding my teeth a little bit over the
discussions going on at this page on your talkpage on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_committee#Request_for_launchi…
It is not so much the outcome of the process that is somewhat worrying me,
but the fact that it is apparently hard for people to see what's going on.
While this mailing list is apparently open, it is not transparent in a
practical sense what the committee decides, when it decides and how it
decides. People can read this list, but what they really are looking for is
a short committee statement on the outcome.
As I understand it, StevenJ81 has been doing some of this in a personal
capacity, to the best of his abilities summarizing what's going on here.
I can't really tell you how to conduct your business of course, but I would
like to ask you to consider whether you could summarize decisions in a few
lines of text in a quotable manner, when the committee comes to a
conclusion. That way it is clear to everyone a discussion is closed, and
that arguments were considered. Who then copies that statement to meta (one
of you, or Steven), is another matter.
This is the first time in a long while I had a closer run-in with your
committee's work, but that will be the case for most of the people who make
an application. I hope that for their sake, you will consider my
suggestion.
Kind regards,
Lodewijk (Effeietsanders)