"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly."
german translation: "Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, veröffentlichen Sie jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, öffentlich."
That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be handled in a multilingual project:
* Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules * Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the Foundation wiki as the official policy * Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture, country or project. They may translate the english version word by word but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they prefer. * Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english version is the valid one.
In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.
The german privacy policy at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity and readability.
If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style doesn't allow me to do so.
greetings, elian
On 11/30/05, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly."
german translation: "Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, veröffentlichen Sie jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, öffentlich."
That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be handled in a multilingual project:
- Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules
- Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the
Foundation wiki as the official policy
- Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the
essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture, country or project. They may translate the english version word by word but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they prefer.
- Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english
version is the valid one.
In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.
The german privacy policy at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity and readability.
If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style doesn't allow me to do so.
I like the idea, because I believe we need to pay more attention to those "cultural differences". And I am not for literal translations either, because
However, where possible, I really think we should make the translations of policies as "official" as possible, especially for things as important as the privacy policy.
I would hate us to fall in the GFDL pit of having one unintelligible policy in English and arguing that it was the only valid one. For some languages (unfortunately not for all), we probably have enough people with the skills to make sure the policy has the same core meaning as the English one, that it takes into consideration the specificities of one language and/or culture. If it can be approved by the relevant people and made official, all the better. Creative Commons did it... if anyone else, I think *we* can do it too. ;-)
But still, I think your idea is a good one, and should be adopted widely.
Best,
Delphine -- ~notafish
Oooops. missing part of a sentence.
On 11/30/05, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea, because I believe we need to pay more attention to those "cultural differences". And I am not for literal translations either, because...
...because those, as you pointed out, do not take into consideration concepts, ideas, core values that a language carries, and even sometimes possible interpretations due to the language that would change the meaning entirely.
However, where possible, I really think we should make the translations of policies as "official" as possible, especially for things as important as the privacy policy.
I would hate us to fall in the GFDL pit of having one unintelligible policy in English and arguing that it was the only valid one. For some languages (unfortunately not for all), we probably have enough people with the skills to make sure the policy has the same core meaning as the English one, that it takes into consideration the specificities of one language and/or culture. If it can be approved by the relevant people and made official, all the better. Creative Commons did it... if anyone else, I think *we* can do it too. ;-)
But still, I think your idea is a good one, and should be adopted widely.
Delphine
-- ~notafish
Being on a wikiholiday (really I *am* on holidays), digging a pile of mails when I was on another forced holiday, I reached to this mail (for your information: due to machine trouble, I had no access to the Net from 05/11/24 till a certain day of last December)
I agree generally with Elian and Delphine, while I am not sure if we can say in all cases English is the only valid version, even assuming it would be so in most cases. Among all proposed things, I support the part we need a policy for translation. I think we would do better works within a more shared and clarified scheme based on well-definied ideas.
I feel our activities for multilingal audience supported by many goodwill translators but I am not sure what kind of ideas we who is engaged in translation and/or coordination are now sharing and not. That is partly because I proposed to have an open meeting of translators.
If the Foundation, as an organisational body, expresses its ideas how the translation of its official statement is expected to work, for instance, I assume it would be helpful for both translators and coordinators. It could be a sort of mission statement rather than policy. Or not. Or we need both. I myself feel we need both - mission statement of translators as grand design and policy which would be considered in implementations/particular translating works.
I would like to know what you all - responsible people / translators / people of the community either English native or not - think about such necessity to have officially defined documents about translation/realisation of multilingualism.
On 11/30/05, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Oooops. missing part of a sentence.
On 11/30/05, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea, because I believe we need to pay more attention to those "cultural differences". And I am not for literal translations either, because...
...because those, as you pointed out, do not take into consideration concepts, ideas, core values that a language carries, and even sometimes possible interpretations due to the language that would change the meaning entirely.
However, where possible, I really think we should make the translations of policies as "official" as possible, especially for things as important as the privacy policy.
I would hate us to fall in the GFDL pit of having one unintelligible policy in English and arguing that it was the only valid one. For some languages (unfortunately not for all), we probably have enough people with the skills to make sure the policy has the same core meaning as the English one, that it takes into consideration the specificities of one language and/or culture. If it can be approved by the relevant people and made official, all the better. Creative Commons did it... if anyone else, I think *we* can do it too. ;-)
But still, I think your idea is a good one, and should be adopted widely.
Delphine
-- ~notafish _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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