On 6/7/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
This seems like a strange position to me.
It doesn't make any sense to me either, and it seems to directly contradict this exchange:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Jimbo responded:
In general, no, but there are many complications of course relating to ISO language codes, dialects, languages, etc.
Anthere responded:
Imho, it is not acceptable at all. We try to reach people in their mother language or at least a language they handle very well, but we should not provide different content based on any other specificity such as nationality, religion, political view point and such. By definition, since we try to stick to neutrality, the content provided should fit all.
Angela responded:
No it isn't. I agree with what Jimmy, Anthere, and others have already written in reply to this.
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Jimbo also writes "Anyway, if we were going to use a constructed meta-language, obviously it would be Klingon or Toki Pona. ;-)" This presumably was a response to "Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world." This might point to some of the confusion, as my statement had NOTHING to do with constructed languages. I was thinking more along the lines of Wikipedia after the invention of the [[babel fish]].
If everyone in the world could write to everyone else in the world and be understood, would there still be a need for multiple language Wikipedias? Is Jimbo saying that yes, there would? If so, I'd LOVE to see some of the "many times in the past" he's talked about this, because it makes absolutely no sense.
Anthony
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
What does "neutral with regard to culture" mean? Let's look at a scale of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself on:
1. Every WP is a certified translation of every other 2. Every WP is not a translation of every other, but such a situation is recognised as being good, and efforts to improve synchronisation are encouraged 3. Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as I alluded to. 4. Significant deviations in emphasis and coverage are allowed, to match the interests of the readership. For example, a history of the 20th century for en WP would focus much more on the two world wars than it would for languages of countries that weren't involved in them. All information is still welcome, but may be moved into subarticles as appropriate. 5. WPs can remove or trim information that is judged "irrelevant" to its readership, such as removing 36,000 articles on French communes and leaving only the top 20 French cities. 6. WPs can deliberately suppress information for cultural reasons, such as not mentioning the Tianenmen Square massacre on zh WP or referring to an independent country as merely being a "territory" of another if the relevant government is claiming that it is (in the face of international agreement to the contrary).
I think we probably sit around 4. Further refinements to this scale welcome.
Steve
FWIW, the Dutch and German language Wikipedia editors have developed their own processes and policies which at some points differ substantially from those of the English language Wikipedia. Even the best of translations of quite a few articles on these wikis would never survive (intact or at all) on the English Wikipedia.
(Presumably other language wikis have done the same but I've edited only these three.)
Arie [[User:Avb]]
Hi -- I came across this comment on the mailing list -- do you have any specific examples?
Cheers
Ben Yates
On 6/8/06, Arie van Buuren arie2@tien.biz wrote:
FWIW, the Dutch and German language Wikipedia editors have developed their own processes and policies which at some points differ substantially from those of the English language Wikipedia. Even the best of translations of quite a few articles on these wikis would never survive (intact or at all) on the English Wikipedia.
(Presumably other language wikis have done the same but I've edited only these three.)
Arie [[User:Avb]]
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
What does "neutral with regard to culture" mean?
It means that everyone from every culture has an equal voice in determining the content of every Wikipedia article. We don't tell someone their opinion is to be disregarded because they come from a different culture. [[Wikipedia:Consensus]] means the consensus of everyone, not just the consensus of a certain culture.
Let's look at a scale of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself on:
- Every WP is a certified translation of every other
- Every WP is not a translation of every other, but such a situation
is recognised as being good, and efforts to improve synchronisation are encouraged 3. Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as I alluded to.
I still think that example is contrived. Some of what you're saying I'd say falls under "translation". But as for actual differences in what constitutes a personal pronoun, as opposed to merely translational differences, I'd say the English Wikipedia should *already* cover the topic in all languages, if necessary disambiguating the article.
In fact, we already do this to some extent. See [[French personal pronouns]]. I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest. In fact, I think it'd be better.
- Significant deviations in emphasis and coverage are allowed, to
match the interests of the readership. For example, a history of the 20th century for en WP would focus much more on the two world wars than it would for languages of countries that weren't involved in them. All information is still welcome, but may be moved into subarticles as appropriate. 5. WPs can remove or trim information that is judged "irrelevant" to its readership, such as removing 36,000 articles on French communes and leaving only the top 20 French cities. 6. WPs can deliberately suppress information for cultural reasons, such as not mentioning the Tianenmen Square massacre on zh WP or referring to an independent country as merely being a "territory" of another if the relevant government is claiming that it is (in the face of international agreement to the contrary).
I think we probably sit around 4. Further refinements to this scale welcome.
Steve
I think the exercise is rather futile. The ability to effectively communicate among even just the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active" is a long way off. That said, I'd say 2, 3, and 4 are all true. And, sadly, the first half of 5 is true too, at least on the English Wikipedia.
My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement (the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the project than I do. I see it as significant that Wikipedia is generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages. I thought it was significant that Jimbo called Wikipedia "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." But now he seems to be implying that it wasn't (I still think maybe he misinterpreted me, though).
Anthony
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It means that everyone from every culture has an equal voice in determining the content of every Wikipedia article. We don't tell someone their opinion is to be disregarded because they come from a different culture. [[Wikipedia:Consensus]] means the consensus of everyone, not just the consensus of a certain culture.
That must be a prescriptive statement, rather than a descriptive one.
In fact, we already do this to some extent. See [[French personal pronouns]]. I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest. In fact, I think it'd be better.
Me too, I think I made that comment on that talk page a few months ago. But I think also that [[Personal pronoun]] would be remiss if it didn't say "such as 'she' in English" or whatever. You could have examples from several languages on an equal footing, but no examples from English would be wrong.
I think the exercise is rather futile. The ability to effectively communicate among even just the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active" is a long way off. That said, I'd say 2, 3, and 4 are all true. And, sadly, the first half of 5 is true too, at least on the English Wikipedia.
Right, and a non-notable journalist or minor personality is much more likely to survive AfD if they're from New York rather than Bangalore or Tashkent. It's just the way it is.
My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement (the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the project than I do. I see it as significant that Wikipedia is generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages. I thought it was
Hmm. I notice that people in one Wikipedia actually cite other Wikipedias. "Source: French Wikipedia article". If it's "one encyclopaedia" that would be like citing page 530.
I like the fact that there are parallel versions, but I wish that Wikiproject:Echo was a lot stronger in getting good articles translated into the other WPs. Speaking for myself, it's a hell of a lot easier to translate an article from French WP than to write it from scratch...
Steve
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement (the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the project than I do. I see it as significant that Wikipedia is generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages. I thought it was significant that Jimbo called Wikipedia "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." But now he seems to be implying that it wasn't (I still think maybe he misinterpreted me, though).
Because obviously, it is impossible that Anthony could have misinterpreted me. :)
For what is it worth, I think that questions of language and culture are subtle and deep. Perfect machine translation would of course be useful -- only Anthony could manage to find the straw man argument that anyone who thinks that language distinctions are important and relevant might also think that machine translation would not be _useful_.
I think we sit somewhere around 4 on Steve Bennett's scale, but moreso, I think that is about where we ought to sit, perfect machine translation or not.
--Jimbo
On 6/8/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
For what is it worth, I think that questions of language and culture are subtle and deep. Perfect machine translation would of course be useful -- only Anthony could manage to find the straw man argument that anyone who thinks that language distinctions are important and relevant might also think that machine translation would not be _useful_.
You stated that "For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so."
If you weren't talking about machine translation, then what did you mean? Imagine that we would want to do what?
I think we sit somewhere around 4 on Steve Bennett's scale, but moreso, I think that is about where we ought to sit, perfect machine translation or not.
--Jimbo
And I'd say that "We try to reach people in their mother language or at least a language they handle very well, we should not provide different content based on any other specificity such as nationality, religion, political view point and such."
Anthony
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/8/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
For what is it worth, I think that questions of language and culture are subtle and deep. Perfect machine translation would of course be useful -- only Anthony could manage to find the straw man argument that anyone who thinks that language distinctions are important and relevant might also think that machine translation would not be _useful_.
You stated that "For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so."
If you weren't talking about machine translation, then what did you mean? Imagine that we would want to do what?
Peanut gallery chiming in here: It looks like Jimbo is saying machine translation would be a very useful tool for building Wikipedia, but we would not want to reduce Wikipedia to merely being a single repository of information automatically kept in sync by machine translation.
In other words: Machine translation as a tool == good. Machine translation as a model for interwikipedia relations == bad.
And I'd say that "We try to reach people in their mother language or at least a language they handle very well, we should not provide different content based on any other specificity such as nationality, religion, political view point and such."
So an article about sport should discuss in equal measure sports popular in anglophone countries, and sports we've never heard of, but that have massive popularity in certain populous African countries? What does your philosophy say about the Georgia/Georgia question (is Georgia a country in the former USSR or a US state?) What does "different content" mean? Given three articles A1, A2, A3, is having A1 the main article pointing to A2 and A3 as sub articles the same thing as some other arrangement?
Is it ok if a link at the top of [[President]] at en directs people to [[George W Bush]], while a link at the top of [[Président]] at fr directs people to [[Jaques Chirac]]?
These aren't rhetorical questions - what's ok, what isn't?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
Is it ok if a link at the top of [[President]] at en directs people to [[George W Bush]], while a link at the top of [[Président]] at fr directs people to [[Jaques Chirac]]?
Well this one seems like an easy "definitely not" to me!
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Is it ok if a link at the top of [[President]] at en directs people to [[George W Bush]], while a link at the top of [[Président]] at fr directs people to [[Jaques Chirac]]?
Well this one seems like an easy "definitely not" to me!
I would disagree. The "dablinks" Steve seems to be referring to are metadata that just happens to be included in the article text for lack of a better technical solution. Without looking at the actual articles in question, I'd say a link at the top of [[en:President]] that says in effect "If you came here looking for [[George W. Bush]], he's thataway." would be perfectly reasonable if readers of that particular project in fact with some frequency do so (which I find plausible enough).
(Sorry for the sesquipedalian sentence.)
Note: This post is a long ramble about not much.
On 6/8/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I would disagree. The "dablinks" Steve seems to be referring to are metadata that just happens to be included in the article text for lack of a better technical solution. Without looking at the actual articles in question, I'd say a link at the top of [[en:President]] that says in effect "If you came here looking for [[George W. Bush]], he's thataway." would be perfectly reasonable if readers of that particular project in fact with some frequency do so (which I find plausible enough).
As things turn out, this is not currently the case. However, I note that [[President]], while being one of our more "internationally balanced" articles, still has an excessive US bias: There is a whole paragraph on electoral colleges in the US, while most other countries don't get more than their name mentioned. There is another paragraph beginning "The head of a university or non-profit corporation, particularly in the United States of America, is often known as president." A paragraph on the fact that the head of the mormons is known as the president...I doubt very much this would be interest to anyone reading the hypothetic Urdu version, for instance.
In fact most of the article is centred around the US and France, with a bit of Spain. For a Wikipedia article, that's not too bad, and is a good start. But it's certainly skewed in favour of providing more information on topics likely to interest anglophone (and in particular, American) readers.
Is this bad? To me, not particularly, though other information on other countries, perhaps including the presidential referendum in Australia, would have been welcome.
Steve
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Note: This post is a long ramble about not much.
On 6/8/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I would disagree. The "dablinks" Steve seems to be referring to are metadata that just happens to be included in the article text for lack of a better technical solution. Without looking at the actual articles in question, I'd say a link at the top of [[en:President]] that says in effect "If you came here looking for [[George W. Bush]], he's thataway." would be perfectly reasonable if readers of that particular project in fact with some frequency do so (which I find plausible enough).
As things turn out, this is not currently the case. However, I note that [[President]], while being one of our more "internationally balanced" articles, still has an excessive US bias: There is a whole paragraph on electoral colleges in the US, while most other countries don't get more than their name mentioned. There is another paragraph beginning "The head of a university or non-profit corporation, particularly in the United States of America, is often known as president." A paragraph on the fact that the head of the mormons is known as the president...I doubt very much this would be interest to anyone reading the hypothetic Urdu version, for instance.
In fact most of the article is centred around the US and France, with a bit of Spain. For a Wikipedia article, that's not too bad, and is a good start. But it's certainly skewed in favour of providing more information on topics likely to interest anglophone (and in particular, American) readers.
Is this bad? To me, not particularly, though other information on other countries, perhaps including the presidential referendum in Australia, would have been welcome.
Steve
Personally, as an American, I'd be more interested in presidents of countries other than the US. More specifically, it'd be interesting to me to read what the world as a whole considers the most important information about presidents. If I wanted to read specifically about the [[President of the United States]] (a topic about which I already know plenty), I could always go to that article.
And like Raphael, I'd be very interested in reading about things like [[terrorism]], [[George W. Bush]] and [[United States]] in non-English versions of Wikipedia. Are there other avenues of getting some of the same information? Sure, though none of them would provide precisely the same information (what does this particular slice *of Wikipedians* think is an appropriate article). Many of the other avenues would require significantly more work to answer a particular question. And many of the other avenues would introduce their own particular bias.
Anthony
Hello all,
Brion's note about this weeks HMTL table fix going in made me wonder if there shouldnt be short one-line banner message to let people know. Maybe its already in teh works, but I havent seen any other usage of bannerspace in a while (other than the funding drive). A page describing how to help out would work too.
And since this is primarily a site for editing editable stuff, and there are plenty of other things to focus people on, why perchance not use the bannerspace for other Fixit tasks as well?
Things that come to mind are the things I see all the time:
* Self-refs ~ "for more on this topic" * In-text external links (usually with a self-ref) * Overuse of headers + tiny lede paragraphs
* Excess whitespace
Blah blah. -Stephen
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
HTML table fix? Can you explain?
Mgm
On 6/9/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello all,
Brion's note about this weeks HMTL table fix going in made me wonder if there shouldnt be short one-line banner message to let people know. Maybe its already in teh works, but I havent seen any other usage of bannerspace in a while (other than the funding drive). A page describing how to help out would work too.
And since this is primarily a site for editing editable stuff, and there are plenty of other things to focus people on, why perchance not use the bannerspace for other Fixit tasks as well?
Things that come to mind are the things I see all the time:
Self-refs ~ "for more on this topic"
In-text external links (usually with a self-ref)
Overuse of headers + tiny lede paragraphs
Excess whitespace
Blah blah. -Stephen
Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 6/9/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
And since this is primarily a site for editing editable stuff, and there are plenty of other things to focus people on, why perchance not use the bannerspace for other Fixit tasks as well?
Because people don't like banners. They take up space and seeing the same message several thousand times becomes tiresome.
On 6/9/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Because people don't like banners. They take up space and seeing the same message several thousand times becomes tiresome.
Could similar logic for the "You have new messages" be employed? That is, once you've clicked on the relevant link, it goes away?
Steve
On 6/9/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/9/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Because people don't like banners. They take up space and seeing the same message several thousand times becomes tiresome.
Could similar logic for the "You have new messages" be employed? That is, once you've clicked on the relevant link, it goes away?
I don't know any way to do this within the current software and I suspect it would still anoy people.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Let's look at a scale of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself on:
- Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or
expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as I alluded to.
I still think that example is contrived. Some of what you're saying I'd say falls under "translation". But as for actual differences in what constitutes a personal pronoun, as opposed to merely translational differences, I'd say the English Wikipedia should *already* cover the topic in all languages, if necessary disambiguating the article.
In fact, we already do this to some extent. See [[French personal pronouns]]. I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest. In fact, I think it'd be better.
The difficulty with to pronouns, or pronominal adjectives is often in their usage. For example, French adjectives agree with the word they describe, while English adjectives agree with the subject of the sentence.
"He took his watch" = "Il a pris sa montre" - It could be his own or another person's, unless the context requires, "Il a fait attention." "He took her watch" = "Il a pris sa montre" - The translation remains the same. The fact that it was a female's watch is losat.
Translating back requires a review of the context.
To take it further, our concepts of parts of speech derive directly from our Indo-European (notably Latin) prejudices about language. It is misleading to think that other languages would have similarly applied the same terms in describing their own languages.
Ec
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/7/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
This seems like a strange position to me.
It doesn't make any sense to me either, and it seems to directly contradict this exchange:
The similarities are just as accidental as the differences.
If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
I reject the syllogism that absence of accidentality implies intention. The English Wikipedia is as neutral as the converged thoughts of its participants, but so are all the others.
Jimbo also writes "Anyway, if we were going to use a constructed meta-language, obviously it would be Klingon or Toki Pona. ;-)" This presumably was a response to "Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world." This might point to some of the confusion, as my statement had NOTHING to do with constructed languages. I was thinking more along the lines of Wikipedia after the invention of the [[babel fish]].
I think that the native Esperanto speakers would have a hard time keeping up. :-) I have no background on this "original plan", though I suspect that the idea would flatter the esperantists.
If everyone in the world could write to everyone else in the world and be understood, would there still be a need for multiple language Wikipedias? Is Jimbo saying that yes, there would? If so, I'd LOVE to see some of the "many times in the past" he's talked about this, because it makes absolutely no sense.
Your hypothetical premise here is unrealistic
Ec
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting. I honestly thought about paying a translator to do it.
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting.
Me too. In fact, if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I can imagine lots of reasons why we'd want to do so.
Anthony
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting. I honestly thought about paying a translator to do it.
Why would you translate the Wikipedia article? Wouldn't it be more interesting to choose a more biased source? If you're just curious on a middle-eastern perspective, Al Jazeera is a good place to read in English.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting. I honestly thought about paying a translator to do it.
Why would you translate the Wikipedia article? Wouldn't it be more interesting to choose a more biased source? If you're just curious on a middle-eastern perspective, Al Jazeera is a good place to read in English.
I certainly know Al Jazeera and http://www.archive.org/details/mosaic but IMHO the news reports of a media networks are far less interesting than a "public Wikiconsensus" on "generic" topics like Islam, 9/11, Terrorism, Israel, etc. Apart from being exciting, those translations whould show how culturally biased Wikipedia actually is.
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I certainly know Al Jazeera and http://www.archive.org/details/mosaic but IMHO the news reports of a media networks are far less interesting than a "public Wikiconsensus" on "generic" topics like Islam, 9/11, Terrorism, Israel, etc. Apart from being exciting, those translations whould show how culturally biased Wikipedia actually is.
Yeah, but there are so many factors that lead to the way a wikipedia article is the way it is, and cultural bias is only one of them. The expertises of the authors, controversialness of the topic, general interest in the topic, etc all have a huge part to play. You could end up comparing an article written in the spare time of two retired academics against an article bitterly fought over for months by leagues of "pro" and "anti" editors, being forced to source every edit.
The exercise would have some merit. But if you simply want to understand "The Arab world's point of view", there are better ways.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I certainly know Al Jazeera and http://www.archive.org/details/mosaic but IMHO the news reports of a media networks are far less interesting than a "public Wikiconsensus" on "generic" topics like Islam, 9/11, Terrorism, Israel, etc. Apart from being exciting, those translations whould show how culturally biased Wikipedia actually is.
Yeah, but there are so many factors that lead to the way a wikipedia article is the way it is, and cultural bias is only one of them. The expertises of the authors, controversialness of the topic, general interest in the topic, etc all have a huge part to play. You could end up comparing an article written in the spare time of two retired academics against an article bitterly fought over for months by leagues of "pro" and "anti" editors, being forced to source every edit.
Well, the controversialness of the topics I mentioned and the general interest in them are probably high in both cultures, so I wouldn't expect any of those articles be written only by two editors. OTOH the POVs of the administrators can/probably have an disproportionate weight on the bias as well.
Raphael Wegmann wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting. I honestly thought about paying a translator to do it.
Charged as those terms might be, that is not where the translation difficulties are going to be. Islam can be any religion based on the Qur'an, and can include a wide range of practices, both moderate and extremist. "Terrorism" as a word transcends language, because the debste over just what terrorim is will remain similar in any language.
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Ray Saintonge sagte:
Raphael Wegmann wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not, they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very exciting. I honestly thought about paying a translator to do it.
Charged as those terms might be, that is not where the translation difficulties are going to be. Islam can be any religion based on the Qur'an, and can include a wide range of practices, both moderate and extremist. "Terrorism" as a word transcends language, because the debste over just what terrorim is will remain similar in any language.
I didn't think about translation difficulties, instead I thought about cultural bias. I am pretty sure, that there are *major* differences between the arabic and the english language version of those articles.