On 7/29/2011 11:06 AM, Wjhonson wrote:
Yes of course translating documents "has been practiced in academia for a very long time."
We however are not a first publisher of translations. We are an aggregator of sources. That is the point of RS. We don't publish first.
Translating a quotation from a foreign-language source in a Wikipedia article is functionally no different from translating the contents of a Wikipedia article in one language to create an equivalent Wikipedia article in a different language. The latter is an utterly routine and fairly common practice (though I'm not suggesting that any Wikipedia article *needs* to be based on translations this way). Obviously translation needs to be done with care, just like synthesizing source material to write an article requires care. And some people may be better at one or the other, so it may be possible to improve on the work as Mark describes, as long as the original also remains available, as it should.
Stretching a guideline about using reliable sources to the point that it conflicts with unobjectionable standard practices suggests that the guideline is being stretched too far. Even the most reliable sources do not need to be treated like some people treat the Quran, as if it's inappropriate to render them in any language but the original. That's a religious belief, and in a religious context I fully respect that people may believe such things, but in the context of writing Wikipedia articles, our beliefs about the sources we use should not be religious, they should be based on analysis and editorial judgment.
--Michael Snow