Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a wiki. For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English" spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time. If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable. There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that it's some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm. I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning. It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use to "Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound. It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that are drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors. I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants". A litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English to English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language AND English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original research in one of these languages that language must have a term for "original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec