What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all. What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into? I think that you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German, French and Spanish for example. There is a difference between this French spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico. There are special characters used to write the languages. Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers. The language should be easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I dont know how. It may require a special keyboard and software. The head of the modern language department of a large German university may be fluent in several languages and able to teach about subjects from the Kavala to Xenophons Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with submarines, ships, or airplanes. The translator should be a native speaker thoroughly familiar with the subject of the article and may choose to write his own article instead of translating the existing article. I find no objection to including articles written or translated into Icelandic, Hungarian, or any other language even though there would be few readers. Readers need to know where to find them Merritt L. Perkins
On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 00:11:07 -0400, Merritt L. Perkins mlperkins3@juno.com gave utterance to the following:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all. What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into?
You will find a list of the languages that wikipedians consider important enough to have devoted time to at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_coordination
I think that you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German, French and Spanish for example. There is a difference between this French spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico. There are special characters used to write the languages. Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers. The language should be easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I don’t know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
The various language wikis are mainly contributed to by native speakers, who usually have the appropriate language version of their OS, but there are IME's available for CJK writing systems for English windows, for example. We have Chinese students living with us, and believe me, they are just as fast at communicating by typing as English is. (Each glyph takes about 5 keystrokes to enter, but often represents an entire word.
I find no objection to including articles written or translated into Icelandic, Hungarian, or any other language even though there would be few readers. Readers need to know where to find them
Include? You will find articles in those languages in the appropriate wikipedias, therefore it is extremely easy for readers to find them. THe main page of every wikipedia has links to all the others, and when there are equivalent articles on a topic in other languages, these are also interlinked. I find your post curious - it seems as though you are contributing to this list without having actually explored the wikipedia site to discover how it works.
on 8/26/03 10:37 PM, Richard Grevers at lists@dramatic.co.nz wrote:
I find your post curious - it seems as though you are contributing to this list without having actually explored the wikipedia site to discover how it works.
Yes, Merritt L. Perkins' posts do seem remarkably "born yesterday".
Merritt, Is there some explanation for this?
Fred
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all. What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into? I think that you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German, French and Spanish for example. There is a difference between this French spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico. There are special characters used to write the languages. Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers. The language should be easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I don’t know how. It may require a special keyboard and software. The head of the modern language department of a large German university may be fluent in several languages and able to teach about subjects from the Kavala to Xenophon’s Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with submarines, ships, or airplanes. The translator should be a native speaker thoroughly familiar with the subject of the article and may choose to write his own article instead of translating the existing article. I find no objection to including articles written or translated into Icelandic, Hungarian, or any other language even though there would be few readers. Readers need to know where to find them Merritt L. Perkins
timewarp much? all this stuff is already happening!
on 8/26/03 10:11 PM, Merritt L. Perkins at mlperkins3@juno.com wrote:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages.
I'm sure Jimbo means what he says, but yes, Wikimedia aspires to a version in any language anyone wants to work on.
There are so many obscure
languages that you cannot expect to include them all.
It is possible that no one will ever come forward to work on encyclopedias in some languages. I would expect some relatively rarely used languages to be used though, perhaps for cultural reasons, for example it is easy to imagine a gaelic wikipedia or a Cherokee Wikipedia
What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into?
We don't actually do that although folks who work on a wikipedia in any language could translate articles if they wish.
I think that
you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German, French and Spanish for example.
We have a Wikipedia in low German already, The Netherlands one.
There is a difference between this French
spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico.
It is likely that French speaking Wikipedians will choose to have one French Wikipedia, but the possibiltiy arises for a second French Wikipedia, perhaps a Cajun one? Or simple French?
There are special characters used to write the languages.
Yes but there almost any imaginable language in included in the unicode system.
Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers.
Good examples of Wikipedias which might happen when those folks discover Wikipedia in any numbers, The Basques are rather nationalistic, Maori presumably have both specialized interests and a desire to preserve their language, Manxmen and Manxwomen might take an interest in resurrecting the language.
The language should be
easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I dont know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
It does require software but that is easily available. The Apple system X has it, for example. I have seen pictures of special ideograph keyboards but I don't think they are in general use.
The head of the modern language department of a large German university may be fluent in several languages and able to teach about subjects from the Kavala to Xenophons Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with submarines, ships, or airplanes.
While it is fun to learn about and write articles on subjects one is unfamiliar with, it is not expected of anyone.
The translator should be a native speaker thoroughly familiar with the subject of the article and may choose to write his own article instead of translating the existing article.
Yes, although one may write in a language one is only learning (sure to lead to lots of extra learning) or about a subject one wishes to learn more about or is just curious about (also likely to lead to some extra learning).
I find no objection to including articles written or translated into Icelandic, Hungarian, or any other language even though there would be few readers. Readers need to know where to find them
That's white of you. Links to the Wikipedias in other languages are on the main page of Wikipedia.
Merritt L. Perkins
Fred
On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Fred Bauder wrote:
I think that
you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German, French and Spanish for example.
We have a Wikipedia in low German already, The Netherlands one.
I think the Lower Saxon one (nds:) would be what I call low German.
Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers.
Good examples of Wikipedias which might happen when those folks discover Wikipedia in any numbers,
Actually, the Basque one is not a good example of one that might happen, because it already has (although it is kind of moribund), see http://eu.wikipedia.com
The language should be
easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I dont know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
It does require software but that is easily available. The Apple system X has it, for example. I have seen pictures of special ideograph keyboards but I don't think they are in general use.
Arabic exists, Chinese does, Korean and Japanese. We are beyond this person's limits already.
Andre Engels
Fred Bauder wrote:
on 8/26/03 10:11 PM, Merritt L. Perkins at mlperkins3@juno.com wrote:
There is a difference between this French
spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico.
It is likely that French speaking Wikipedians will choose to have one French Wikipedia, but the possibiltiy arises for a second French Wikipedia, perhaps a Cajun one? Or simple French?
We've already done quite well in accomodating British and American English in one Wikipedia. Contrariwise the Yugoslavs have chosen to have separate projects for languages that are not very different. Each group has to sort that out for itself
There are special characters used to write the languages.
Yes but there almost any imaginable language in included in the unicode system.
I can't use it to write Egyptian hieroglyphics. :-(
Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers.
Good examples of Wikipedias which might happen when those folks discover Wikipedia in any numbers, The Basques are rather nationalistic, Maori presumably have both specialized interests and a desire to preserve their language, Manxmen and Manxwomen might take an interest in resurrecting the language.
The number of readers doesn't matter; we should probably be more concerned with the number of writers. The readers will follow.
The language should be
easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I dont know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
It does require software but that is easily available. The Apple system X has it, for example. I have seen pictures of special ideograph keyboards but I don't think they are in general use.
There's no need to make enterring the special characters easier for someone who will never use them anyway. I'm sure that a computer literate Arab has no problem enterrring text in his own language.
The head of the modern language department of a large German university may be fluent in several languages and able to teach about subjects from the Kavala to Xenophons Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with submarines, ships, or airplanes.
While it is fun to learn about and write articles on subjects one is unfamiliar with, it is not expected of anyone.
I wouln't normally expect someone from a modern language department to write about the mentioned topics.
Ec
On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 01:15:59PM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
We've already done quite well in accomodating British and American English in one Wikipedia. Contrariwise the Yugoslavs have chosen to have separate projects for languages that are not very different. Each group has to sort that out for itself
Y'know, if Americans used Cyrillic and British Latin ... On the other hand what is "Bosnian" Wikipedia for ...
At 12:11 AM 8/27/03 -0400, Merritt Perkins wrote:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all. What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into? I think that you should choose languages that would have many readers.
Because of how Wikipedia works, we have encyclopedias in the languages that volunteers want to work in.
High German, French and Spanish for example. There is a difference between this French spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico. There are special characters used to write the languages. Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers. The language should be easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I don't know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
We already have Arabic and Chinese Wikipedias. I certainly can't support any approach that rules out two of the most-used languages on the planet.
Merritt, I think one problem is that you haven't been around long and haven't really grasped that we're an international community, as opposed to a single organization that 'decides' things like this in a centralized manner.
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages.
Yes, I mean exactly that.
There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all.
Well, I suppose that there are living languages that are spoken by so few people that the creation of a Wikipedia in that language will not be practical. But if several hundred thousand people speak a language, then there is no reason for us not to support them. Indeed, if only a few hundred people speak a language, and if someone wants to write in that language, then we should support that.
What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into?
The different languages are not mere translations of each other. Translation is but one tool for the creation of content, and I think that in practice it is not the easiest nor most often used.
I think that you should choose languages that would have many readers.
I think it's the wrong way to think about it to suppose that we should 'choose' based on 'readers'. The right way to look at it is that writers may choose to write whatever they want to write, in whatever language Wikipedia they want to write about.
For some background, please look at:
http://de.wikipedia.org http://es.wikipedia.org http://jp.wikipedia.org
and of course there are many other fine examples.
--Jimbo
Merritt L. Perkins wrote:
What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure languages that you cannot expect to include them all.
So long as there are speakers, there are people who can potentially write an article.
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