I take this theme up since it is not only a Ultimate Wiktionary problem ... it is an actual problem for many minor languages.
When there are several possibilities to write a word within a language these should be treated on an equal level. No-one may ever discriminate one of the possible spellings. The important thing is that if these different spellings can be attributed to a ceratain "branch" it should be done. Those who cannot be classified just receive the general language classification. Gerard will be able to explain this better I suppose, but bein on his way to wikimania I am not so sure if he has time to explain.
Anyway: I am a translator for EN-DE and IT-DE now we have a pretty weird situation with German. There was a spelling reform that in a first place was adopted by all federal states and this year in autumn the new spelling should have become the only valid one... now in Germany these decisions are not taken centrally by the federal government in Berlin, but by the ministries for education and culture of the single federal states. Some of these federal states, among them Bavaria, will not accept the deadline of this year in autumn, but accept old and new writing. It is a funny situation for my job, since it could mean that a customer tells you that he wants the old spelling or the new spelling depending on where he lives and what he prefers or in most cases they will not even bother how things are written, since many don't even know the new spelling rules ... it is really a strange situation: imagine someone in Bavaria translates a text - legally he/she may use whatever ortography he/she likes - if the customer lives in a state where the old ortography is not valid anymore this can lead to a bad surprise.
But let's talk about minor languages. We have some difficulties on the nds wiktionary - people think that the only way to write correct is following the Sass ortography. Some days ago I had a longer telephone conversation with one of the directors of the Institut für niederdeutsche Sprache (institute for nds) - he explained that there are at least six different acknowledged ways of writing nds and if we go to details 200 to 400 ways of writing (including also dictionaries from around 1920 etc.) can be defined - so accepting only one way of writing is a discrimination to my opinion. They all need to be accepted - the important thing is that there is a distinction from one to the other. How we could achieve this - in the actual wiktionary signing all non classified words just with nds. Words that can be classified receive nds-ABC, nds-DEF, nds-SASS, nds-xyz. So not only the single term is to be classified, but also the definition (if possible) - if it is not classified there's simply no reference to a certain class.
We have a similar situation for Sicilian - it can be subdivided at least into the different provinces, but even more detailed if one wants. The stange thing is: there never was any discrimination, never any struggle, some discussions, yes, but no-one ever tried to impose "one possibility of writing a word" as the ultimate one.
Now the next problem is: if we follow the wiki-way and it comes to a vote: if people who are convinced that ABC is the only way of possible writing start up with a project and after some time create the vote they all normally vote for that writing, but is there a real majority? What if there are institutions that know more about that and these are just not being considered since people are tooooo fond of one way of writing, don't think about democracy and don't think about the damage they would do to their own language an culture excluding all other possibilities?
What happens to people who would like to contribute if a two huge ressources are starting to be non-democratic?
What happens to the language of a country/region if only one way of spelling is considered and all the otheres are discriminated?
What happens to the culture in this case?
Even if many will not agree, I am convinced that this situation can be compared to some african languages where culture is being lost since people don't study in their own language, but only in a foreign language. Language transmits culture, language transmits feelings and so much more ... it is not possible to exclude existing language (or better spelling) to favour a particular one only because that is the beloved one for some people.
Going back to UW: for us every spelling that is correct has its right "to live" - and so it will be there. If there are more possibilities: you will find them - no discrimination. UW is there not only for the big languages - I see it as a very particular chance for minority languages since using it at a certain stage we will be able to create even a papiamento-zulu glossary - something no editor would ever think about. Something that will make the culture of many of those small cultural groups live on.
Ultimate Wiktionary maybe is a particular name - maybe with another name there would have been less problems ;-) but be sure: it is only a name - it came out in a conversation, since for some language combinations it will really be the ultimate solution since otherwise it would have been very likely that some languages where we now only have approx. 100 terms would never have had the possibility to have an own place to grow and cultivate their glossaries.
Often there were loads of discussions with colleagues, people involved in the localisation and language industry, institutions and whatever ... we did not just say: let's do it in some way - this "let's do it in some way that we do not need to do the same work over and over again" for me started on 31 august 2004 - almost a year now. Before that I already worked on finding a solution for a glossary repository in many languages - when I found wiktionary I thought: this is near to what I want, but I missed the interchangeability - I could not create a DE-FR combination on the Italian wiktionary ... interwiki-links then were a step ahead, but it still was not what I imagined. And then came that day when I noted the first templates on it.wiktionary.org ... it was the beginning of an amazing adventure - maybe the most incredible one I can imagine for people working with languages. Things went ahead - hours and hours of discussion, of sorting out, of talking with people ... I suppose many of you cannot even imagine what it means to reach almost a dream dreamt by many linguist over and over again - for years and years ... or maybe it would be better to say decades.
We are almost there: this comunity is part of it - isn't that great? Isn't only the thought to be part of a language and culture preserving project that allows completely new results exciting? Many of us (and I am not talking about people working on wiktionary) think so - why do you think so many colleagues answer to a simple mail to a mailing list of translators where I asked for co-operation for Wikimania? Those people know my postings (I often write about wiktionary and ultimate wiktionary - to the lists and on my blog). We are on a right way - it is not an easy way - of course there will be problems to solve, but it will be fun to solve them.
Hmmm ... now this mail became much longer than I really wanted ... it is time to go to bed ... tomorrow I have the last day to finish my translation works and the day after wikimania starts ... and I don't know what expects our team of translators.
Well, I don't write often, but when I start it is hard to stop.
Ciao and have a great time!
Sabine
***** Sabine Cretella Translations IT-DE, EN-DE s.cretella@wordsandmore.it skype:sabinecretella Meetingplace for translators. http://www.wesolveitnet.com
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