How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? I mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or "what goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out what they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any explanation anywhere--I haven't.
Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than "encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects which would be helpful?
Also, think about the various languages which make use of expressions--due to the human nature, I expect all languages do--, and think how helpful such a (successful) project would be for people around the world trying to find out information about this and that obscure expression in some language. Bells and whistels included a la Wikipedia, as in cross-referencing languages, historical periods, you know the drill, I won't go into that.
What do you think?
--Gutza
Gutza wrote:
How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? I mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or "what goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out what they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any explanation anywhere--I haven't.
Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than "encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects which would be helpful?
While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for Wikipedia categories?).
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for Wikipedia categories?).
-Mark
Well, Mark, I actually have a problem with markup in Wiktionary, hope this doesn't get personal. :)
I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy (gal) said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done. But it's waaaay too English-centric, Wiktionary tends to become a good English-to-anything dictionary if successful in the long run, but it's a shame that it's nothing-to-English in return, due to lack of formalized markup. I personally never followed (nor even found) any discussion on the topic, but since there are a lot of intelligent, knowledgeable people involved in all of Wikimedia's projects, I expect I'm not raising a new issue here.
What I'm trying to say is that Wiktionary will probably have to go through some major (hopefully automated) markup changes in the mid-ling run in order to support arbitrary language-to-language dictionary searches, whereas "Wixpression" or whatever it would be called, if accepted as a new project at all, is not suitable for such treatment because expressions are generally not translatable 1:1, as words tend to be. Also, while "red" in English is simply translated to "rouge" in French, "bring it on" in English needs to be explained /in English/ first, and only then, optionally, in French. Therefore I think these should be two separate projects.
--Gutza
Gutza wrote:
I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy (gal) said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done.
Wow. I'm really not the only one who thinks that? :-)
OK, here are my major problems with Wiktionary:
* English-centric (as has already been said) * not automated enough. Linking from [[biscuit]] (an English word) to [[Keks]] (a German word) should automatically add a link from [[Keks]] back to [[biscuit]]. A lot of identical formatting/layout should be automated (perhaps have a template automatically show up in the edit window when you try to edit a not-yet-existing page?). * too crowded in places. [[e]] should not contain all its meanings in hundreds of different languages on a single page.
My suggestions for major improvement would be:
* wait for MediaWiki to support multi-language projects within a single Wiki. This is already in the plans for Wikipedia. Once that is done, you can have one page [[e]] in Spanish, another [[e]] in Italian, etc.
* add more options to the MediaWiki software to customise the appearance and behaviour, including:
* * allow for the inter-wiki links (which should really be called inter-language links once it's a single wiki) to be displayed in a completely different fashion, i.e. instead of: _dansk_ | _dansk_ | _Deutsch_ | _English_ | _English_ | _Français_ at the top and bottom, display them as a dominantly visible list only at the bottom: == Translations == * Dansk: _kiks_, _biskuit_ * Deutsch: _Keks_ * English: _biscuit_, _cookie_ * Français: _biscuit_
* * allow for automatic reciprocal adding of inter-language links
* make one major change of policy/aim/goal. I think it is completely redundant and futile to try to define (explain the meaning of) all words of all languages *in* all languages. I think a word should only be defined in its own language, and if you want its meaning explained in another language, then you should really look up its translation in that other language. There are just so many things on Wiktionary that are language-independent (e.g. the translations for each word, or pronunciation written in IPA) that duplicating it hundreds of times seems really dumb.
So far are my ideas.
Timwi
On Jan 6, 2004, at 7:48 PM, Timwi wrote:
- make one major change of policy/aim/goal. I think it is completely redundant and futile to try to define (explain the meaning of) all words of all languages *in* all languages. I think a word should only be defined in its own language, and if you want its meaning explained in another language, then you should really look up its translation
in that other language. There are just so many things on Wiktionary that are language-independent (e.g. the translations for each word, or pronunciation written in IPA) that duplicating it hundreds of times seems really dumb.
The trouble arises here when exact translations aren't available. If I want to know what 'guba' means in Hoobiflitz, I'd look up guba, translate to English (via inter-lang link), and read the definition. But 'guba' (let's say) doesn't have an exact English translation, so there's no appropriate English definition to link to. Here it's most effective to explain the definition of 'guba' in English. I think there may be a better way to set up inter-language links to allow for this. And if I had a good idea for it, I'd really have a point.
Peter
--- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show
Peter Jaros wrote:
The trouble arises here when exact translations aren't available.
I don't think that's a problem at all.
If you know Hoobiflitz well enough to appreciate the subtleties of the language, then you can just read the definition of guba in Hoobiflitz.
If you don't, then you wouldn't be able to appreciate the subtle implications of a word anyway, so a few suggested translations can give you the general idea.
Besides, several inaccurate translations often give you a more accurate picture of a word's meaning than a single inaccurate translation. Suppose, for example, the three possible translations for guba were "offer", "sale", "promotion". The combination of the three gives you more information than each single one. What I'm getting at here is that having a list of well-chosen translations is as good as a definition.
Timwi
Gutza wrote:
Delirium wrote:
While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for Wikipedia categories?).
-Mark
Well, Mark, I actually have a problem with markup in Wiktionary, hope this doesn't get personal. :)
I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I guess some guy (gal) said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done. But it's waaaay too English-centric, Wiktionary tends to become a good English-to-anything dictionary if successful in the long run, but it's a shame that it's nothing-to-English in return, due to lack of formalized markup. I personally never followed (nor even found) any discussion on the topic, but since there are a lot of intelligent, knowledgeable people involved in all of Wikimedia's projects, I expect I'm not raising a new issue here.
What I'm trying to say is that Wiktionary will probably have to go through some major (hopefully automated) markup changes in the mid-ling run in order to support arbitrary language-to-language dictionary searches, whereas "Wixpression" or whatever it would be called, if accepted as a new project at all, is not suitable for such treatment because expressions are generally not translatable 1:1, as words tend to be. Also, while "red" in English is simply translated to "rouge" in French, "bring it on" in English needs to be explained /in English/ first, and only then, optionally, in French. Therefore I think these should be two separate projects.
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
The idea of other language Wiktionary projects has come up repeatedly. At this stage I find "Wixpression" completely useless, or at best premature. There has always been an intent to have Wiktionaries in other languages, and once they are functional it will be a lot easier to co-ordinate them with the English project and with each other. But instead of seeing Wiktionaries in other languages, all I see is complaints. If the whiners went ahead and started Wiktionaries in the language of their choice we would all be further ahead.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here are the results: 1. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n 2. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD 3. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress 4. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel 5. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel 6. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul 7. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86 8. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight 9. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush 10. http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A
There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate for automated parsing: * No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist). * No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because they don't contain any proper translations. * No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volapük to English (note there is no mention of Balul at http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist). * No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective languages for which translations are available.
What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind?
--Gutza
In message 3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro, Gutza gutza-xe8bB7KpE7GhKNWrAYCRhA@public.gmane.org writes
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here are the results:
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A
There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate for automated parsing:
- No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist).
- No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because
they don't contain any proper translations.
- No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volapük to English (note
there is no mention of Balul at http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist).
- No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective
languages for which translations are available.
What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind?
Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations...
Arwel Parry wrote:
In message 3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro, Gutza gutza-xe8bB7KpE7GhKNWrAYCRhA@public.gmane.org writes
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. [...] Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind?
Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations...
Ok, maybe I didn't get the concept across really well. You are aware that we didn't get to that point in history where we humans all lay back and expect automatons to do all the work for us, right? Writing a parser to create the proper cross-links between definitions in the English Wiktionary and other languages' Wiktionaries would not be expected to result in complete dictionaries for all other languages.
But the same happens with human contributors: you happen to know that "glas" has those two meanings, but some other contributor may not. Some other contributor may write the "glas" article in the Welsh Wiktionary and only include the first definition. If you happened to come across that article, you might add the other definition as well.
I don't see why we need that human contributor at all if "glas" were to be found on the English Wiktionary article on "sky blue", for instance. Not to mention that if "glas" also showed up on "grass green" then both definitions would be available for the Welsh "glas", using a smart automated parser.
In any case, the point is not to expect the automated parser to result in a prefect any language to any language dictionary, but rather to do what automated things tend to do today: make our lives easier, as in creating a reasonable basis for other Wiktionaries, as well as keeping things in sync.
Just my 2c, Gutza
On Thursday 08 January 2004 05:53 am, Gutza wrote:
Arwel Parry wrote:
In message 3FFD1664.3070803@moongate.ro, Gutza gutza-xe8bB7KpE7GhKNWrAYCRhA@public.gmane.org writes
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. [...] Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind?
Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations...
Perhaps the most famous example would be "libre" and "gratuit" mapping onto the english "free". I agree with Gutza nonetheless that automation would be a good idea. The overwhelming majority of words can be translated into most languages one-to-one (ie. no ambiguities). This would save us a lot of work. And for the few cases where there are problems, they can be corrected by hand.
Best, Sascha Noyes
On Jan 8, 2004, at 9:43 AM, Sascha Noyes wrote:
On Thursday 08 January 2004 05:53 am, Gutza wrote:
Arwel Parry wrote:
Well, for example if you were translating to/from Welsh, the word "glas" is normally used to describe the colour of the sky, however it is also used to describe the colour of grass. "Llwyd" usually means "grey" but it also has "bluey" connotations...
Perhaps the most famous example would be "libre" and "gratuit" mapping onto the english "free". I agree with Gutza nonetheless that automation would be a good idea. The overwhelming majority of words can be translated into most languages one-to-one (ie. no ambiguities). This would save us a lot of work. And for the few cases where there are problems, they can be corrected by hand.
Take, specifically, the Spanish 'libre', the English 'free', and the French 'gratuit'. Without care, one might end up saying that since sp:'libre' means en:'free', which means fr:'gratuit', sp:'libre' also means fr:'gratuit', which is of course wrong. The transitive property does not always apply to language. Here out little automaton friend might run into difficulty, even if he *is* only aiming to "make our lives easier".
Peter
--- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show
He is in a CONSTANT state of edit war with just about efverybody on every article he works on, and he has added Hephaestos and Angela to Problem Users. This has gone far enough.
RickK
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
Gutza wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The last thing that Wiktionary needs is a listing of automated translation. Of course the English Wiktionary is "English-centric". What else did you expect? It is first a dictionary, and only secondly a book of translations. Still, to choose one example and say that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the words of two languages represnts a totally naïve view of language.
Really? Here's what I tried: clicked on "Random Page" 10 times. Here are the results:
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronunciaci%C3%B3n
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%92%AD
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Mayoress
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Bijutel
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Decibel
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Balul
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%86
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Airtight
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Brush
- http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%9A
There is not a single one hit in the ten above which isn't appropriate for automated parsing:
- No. 1 would be reverse translated from Spanish to English (note that
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Pronounciation doesn't exist).
- No. 2, 3, 7 and 10 would be completely skipped in parsing because
they don't contain any proper translations.
- No. 4 and 6 would be reverse translated from Volapük to English
(note there is no mention of Balul at http://wiktionary.org/wiki/January, and http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Jeweller doesn't exist).
- No. 5, 8 and 9 would be properly translated to the respective
languages for which translations are available.
What would be wrong with this? What counter-examples do you have in mind?
Most of the above have their own problems. 1. Spanish. It at first seems like a simple matter of using the cognate "pronunciation", but in Law it can also mean "publication". Coming back from English there is also the usage at a wedding where the parties are "pronounced husband and wife" 2. An elder brother. Not all languages have special words to differentiate between an older and younger brother. Just because there is no translation there now, does not mean that it will never be added. 3. Are we talking about a female mayor, or the mayor's wife. 4. Two meanings are given: the jeweller (or jeweler in the U.S.) and his shop. How do we determine which is meant. English does not have a proper single word for the latter. At least French has "bijoutier" and "bijouterie" 5. This is the most stable of the lot because it is defined by international standards. 6. Probably stable. Names of months usually are unless we are talking about diferent calenders, which would be stretching the issue even for me. 7. This one relates to pennants or streamers, or even flags, but not in the sense of national flags. 8. The literal meaning seems obvious, but one still has to allow for the more metaphorical, as in "The lawyer had an airtight case." 9. The ordinary meaning might seem easy enough, but a brush in an electric motor would not be translated the same way. 10.It can mean a cloth for carrying a baby on one's back, or as a verb to "tie" or "bind"
So this leaves me with only two out of ten where one does not run into ambiguities. This is far too much ambiguity for automated translations to be a viable option. As US President Kennedy once said, "I am a jelly doughnut".
Ec
Delirium wrote:
While this certainly seems useful, I'm not sure it can't be incorporated within Wiktionary itself instead of starting a new project. Some paper dictionaries include some idiomatic phrases in them already, so this isn't completely unusual. So I'd say just go ahead and add them to Wiktionary, though perhaps some sort of meta-markup on Wiktionary would be useful to categorize these sorts of things (perhaps the same sort of meta-markup being discussed for Wikipedia categories?).
I generally agree that this type of thing is fine on Wiktionary. I also believe that some kind of meta-markup will be be needed on Wiktionary. Nevertheless I would like to see some kind of such scheme up and working on one single project so that we can get the bugs out before the scheme is adopted on other projects.
Ec
Gutza wrote on <wikiEN-L>:
How about a Wikipedia "documenting" expressions in various languages? I mean, try googling around for "bring it on" (~542,000 matches), or "what goes around comes around" (~98,500 matches)--and try finding out what they /mean/. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find any explanation anywhere--I haven't.
Now I'm aware such a topic is more "dictionary-like" rather than "encyclopedia-like"--I guess that's the first objection which comes to mind, although we already have a Wiktionary--, but is Wikimedia's purpose to only support encyclopedic projects, or to support projects which would be helpful?
Also, think about the various languages which make use of expressions--due to the human nature, I expect all languages do--, and think how helpful such a (successful) project would be for people around the world trying to find out information about this and that obscure expression in some language. Bells and whistels included a la Wikipedia, as in cross-referencing languages, historical periods, you know the drill, I won't go into that.
What do you think?
Some of this has been happening on Wikipedia already.
I tried to write a brief summary for this post, but it was impossible; you might read [[en:Let's Roll]], [[en:Talk:AKFD]], and of course [[en:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (slogans)]] to see why. But you have to look at edit history and see things in dynamic context, and that is literally ''impossible'' now.
Suffice it to say that allowing [[Bring it on]] to be an article on the English Wikipedia (I don't know about the other wikis) produces an irreconcilable conflict between NPOV and good taste.
However ...
On Wiktionary, one ''expects'' page titles to be words or phrases. By default, they are mentions rather than uses, if you like. If Wiktionary can accept phrases (I don't see why not, but I don't know), then Wikipedia authors can write "[[Fred Phelps]] paraded [[anti-gay slogan]]s, most famously [[wiktionary:AIDS Kills Fags Dead|]] at the Sheppard's funeral" on [[Matthew Sheppard]] without worry.
In any case, the history and usages of phrases in a worthy topic for Wikimedia to cover, if Wikimedians can find a tolerable format to discuss even the loathesome ones.
-- Toby