Viktor Horvath wrote:
well, here we disagree. To me, an encyclopedia article and a translation are inherently different. The one's a definition and rather a science, the other one rather an art. Just because one thing works, you can of course *try* it with other things, too, but you can't possibly say: It *will* work.
I don't think the determination of what goes into an encyclopedia article is a "science" in that sense. It's as much of an "art" as finding a good translation.
Did you ever do a translation of a *belletristic* work? You see, with technical articles, it would be probably no problem to agree on a simple, understandable translation. With literature and philosophy, it's impossible. There are strict translations, free translations, congenial translations. While on each of these fields people can collaborate and cooperate, they're as different as rock music and classical music, or as Dutch painting of the 16th century and Picasso. And every style has its right to exist! You can't judge which is the best one, as you can't find an objective winner between music styles. It's just a matter of taste. That's the genial thing about art. At least in my opinion. Whereas an encyclopedia article should contain only checkable facts, and you can well discuss about facts.
I agree with you to *some* extent, but I think the point is: collaboration works well when people have a clear, objective and agreed upon goal. At wikipedia, for example, we have a shared understanding of what it means to have a neutral encyclopedia article. That same kind of shared undersatnding is going to be necessary for a wiki translation project to be successful.
This is not about saying that some style has no right to exist. If someone wants to do a translation of Shakespeare into Japanese haiku, hey, great, I hope they produce a great work of art. And if a group of people can come to a shared understanding of what that means, such that they can work together on it productively, that's great too.
But then they should *within that context*, work on a *single* collaborative version, and make it conform to the stated goal as well as they can, rather than doing 100 scattered random diffuse separate works. Do you see what I mean? This is elian's point about what makes wiki work.
Well, I don't blame someone if he doesn't want to do so or has no time. I have no time either, at least not at the moment, as I have lots to do for other free projects... I just hoped to find someone who is also fascinated by an idea like this. You're right, starting is better than waiting... but, if I had to start something now and had enough time, I'd probably try to patch the Wiki source or do the whole thing manually by coordinating people in good old mailing lists like in the times before...
:-)
I think that's great.
--Jimbo