Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
For my part translation is a secondary function of a dictionary. Documenting the history of a word, citing quotations that support uses of the word, and commentary on the usages of a word are more interesting and important. I recently did a little of this to raise awareness of the divergence of [[gourmand]] in English and French. I find our present software essentially adequate for the task.
Gerard has been talking about his Ultimate Wiktionary for a long time, but so far I have not seen examples of what Gerard's Wiktionary will look like, how it will work or how it will be editable. Perhaps if he presented more concrete examples attitudes could change.
I agree. As I have said ... probably many times now, 99% of Wiktionary articles are stubs.[1] Taking these as a model for a stricter dictionary format may relegate the "Ultimate" Wiktionary to the status of a mere glossary. But without even having had a mock-up of what the product will look like or how it will work, noone can tell. A lot of the work for this is apparently being done by a small few behind closed doors, which is not very encouraging at all.
*Muke! [1] And having five thousand one-word translations attached to each won't make them any less stubby.