Scríobh Mark Williamson:
Yes, I tried it. So what?
So, it means that there seems to be a technical way of doing these things, which most of the Chinese-speaking people on this list agree is either adequate, or close to being adequate. Lets just look at what has been said thus far:
- Most Chinese people who understand "Traditional" can also read/write in "Simplified". This does not necessarily apply in reverse, however. - There appears to be an automated technical way to translate from one system to the other, albeit one that occasionally mucks things up. - Most zh-language Wikipedians are in favour of a unified system. - There doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to split the project except, well, you. - I believe official policy is that splitting Wikipedias for nationalistic/patriotic reasons is that it doesn't happen. See the Brazilian/Portugese debate that pops up every now and then for what happens.
Based on these opinions that have been put out over the past few days, I think it's obvious that the action that has been taken is the correct one. I've no idea of the quality of your submissions, but if they're good, why not port them over to the unified Wiki (under a seperate page, if necessary, ie: [[Topic]] and [[Topic (Traditional)]]. As far as I can see, nothing has been deleted yet, and numerous tools have been pointed out in the discussion that would make it an automated process.
- Craig Franklin
------------------- Craig Franklin PO Box 764 Ashgrove, Q, 4060 Australia http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art, and Culture.
Scríobh Mark Williamson:
Yes, I tried it. So what?
So, it means that there seems to be a technical way of doing these things, which most of the Chinese-speaking people on this list agree is either adequate, or close to being adequate. Lets just look at what has been said thus far:
"most of the Chinese-speaking people"? You mean yuanml, shizhao, fuzheado? All primarily users of Simplified.
- Most Chinese people who understand "Traditional" can also read/write in
"Simplified". This does not necessarily apply in reverse, however.
No, you have it backwards. Most people born with Simplified can also read and write in Traditional. But not the other way around.
- There appears to be an automated technical way to translate from one
system to the other, albeit one that occasionally mucks things up.
The same can be said for machine translation between any two given languages.
- Most zh-language Wikipedians are in favour of a unified system.
The *majority*, not most. And guess who forms this majority mostly? Simplified users.
- There doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to split the project except,
well, you.
...who has voiced their opinion on this list thus far. And it *does* appear we have some Chinese speakers on this list at least who are wanting to stay neutral but have said things in my favour.
- I believe official policy is that splitting Wikipedias for
nationalistic/patriotic reasons is that it doesn't happen. See the Brazilian/Portugese debate that pops up every now and then for what happens.
Nationalistic/patriotic reasons? These languages use TWO DIFFERENT WRITING SYSTEMS. They don't have just minor grammatical and terminology differences every once in a while like pt-br and pt-pt. (actually, they have almost no grammatical differences, but they have plenty of terminology inconsistencies)
Based on these opinions that have been put out over the past few days, I think it's obvious that the action that has been taken is the correct one. I've no idea of the quality of your submissions, but if they're good, why not port them over to the unified Wiki (under a seperate page, if necessary, ie: [[Topic]] and [[Topic (Traditional)]]. As far as I can see, nothing has been deleted yet, and numerous tools have been pointed out in the discussion that would make it an automated process.
Numerous = 1. I have pointed out that simple interwiki'ing will not work because of article titles and because of the fact that many of the articles with Traditional titles already exist, yet they are partially or fully in Simplified. This means that such articles would have to be sorted through manually.
Jin Junshu/mark
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:11:11 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
"most of the Chinese-speaking people"? You mean yuanml, shizhao, fuzheado? All primarily users of Simplified.
It's obvious you've not spent time on ZH, otherwise you would know I am not a simplified Chinese user. My user page there since February 2004 has a message in traditional characters, my system of choice. Shizhao (yuanml) has been very patient to explain things so far, and I have held off writing any response to you other than "Dialogue with the ZH community," hoping you'd engage in friendly cooperation. I hope you will.
- There appears to be an automated technical way to translate from one
system to the other, albeit one that occasionally mucks things up.
The same can be said for machine translation between any two given languages.
Wikipedia is a human-oriented wiki. The task at hand is different than purely automated machine translation. That should be clear by now that this allows a different approach to the problem.
...who has voiced their opinion on this list thus far. And it *does* appear we have some Chinese speakers on this list at least who are wanting to stay neutral but have said things in my favour.
Not exactly what I'd call "support" for the cause. Most users in the ZH community see the value of keeping the critical mass together, at least for now, given its small size.
Nationalistic/patriotic reasons? These languages use TWO DIFFERENT WRITING SYSTEMS.
This is incorrect. Both simplified and traditional use the same logogrpahic "writing system", the differences are an issue of glyphs. As others have said, a relatively small subset of characters have been changed to make writing and learning simpler, and there are problems with many-to-one mappings. However, let's make this clear:
Traditional vs. simplified is one issue. Another whole issue is vocabulary, idioms and usage in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, United States, PRC (and provinces within), etc. They are largely orthogonal. They are more alike than dissimilar, so there is value in keeping them together, and finding a technical solution for managing the differences using methods that are less disruptive than a full fork.
Node, there is no doubt you are a smart guy, and your schooling has served you well. But consider this a case of learning how to work with others and the community, something that is much harder to learn. Thanks.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
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