Andrew Dunbar schreef:
In case anybody is interested, Umberto Eco has recently published a book on this type of thing: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297830015/026-9357729-1057214 This is where I got the mouse/rat/topo example from. I can provide quotes if necessary.
Now I really am interested in making things easier on Wiktionary. I just want to make sure people understand what's possible and what isn't and what we need to be very careful with.
The only kinds of translations which will be transferable between different language Wiktionaries are those with standardized definitions. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
- Atomic element symbols
- Scientific species names
I'm sure there are others but besides these rare cases each and every term has to be inspected very care- fully.
This is for the translation section. Most other sections are independent of translation: pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms, derived & related terms, see also.
Let me apologies for soundy argumentative etc in earlier emails. If at least our current major contributors don't understand the true nature of translation and carelessly copy and paste, a lot of damage could be done to Wiktionary which will be very slow to repair.
"mouse" and "rat" are not special cases and they are not even difficult examples.
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Hi Hippietrail,
I see what you mean, and it is true that we should be careful before transferring translations from one Wiktionary to an other. But don't you think less errors will happen if a larger group of people will be able to see and correct one version of translations? Each from their own viewpoint/background and with an interface in the language of their choice? Now all the Wiktionaries are 'parochial' and if one takes something from one to another, then somebody else changes/corrects this, it is probably never going to be changed in the Wiktionary where the content came from in the first place. The same is true when something gets changed in the original Wiktionary after the transfer has happened. This change/correction will never get notified to the second Wiktionary. In an integrated system, they could be marked 'fuzzy' to indicate something has changed, meaning that things have to be checked again. I agree that this has to be given a lot of thought to set up though.
Polyglot