Andrew Dunbar schreef:
--- cookfire cookfire@softhome.net wrote:
If topo in Italian means both mouse and rat. Then it should be a word with two definitions. One will translate into mouse, the other will translate into rat.
Rubbish! Spanish "ser" and "estar" both **translate to** English "be". That doesn't mean that English "be" has two definitions. Italian "topo" doesn't **mean** "mouse" or "rat" - those are foreign words. Italian "topo" means a group of rodents of a particular type of appearance, just as Italian "sorcio" does. Just as Japanese "nezumi" does.
I seriously cannot believe that you believe these languages must have 1:1 mappings. I especially can't believe that you want to force languages into trying to fit this expectation. You speak more than one language - think about this!
If this distinction was not made initially, the split will have to be performed afterwards.
Please read about translation!
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Hi Hippietrail,
You are right. In the case of ser/estar the distinction will have to be made as a comment near to the translations to Spanish (and probably Portuguese). It wouldn't make sense to try to divide them in two meanings. The model of the database or xml-schema that we are going to come up with needs to take these cases into account and it will have to provide in a way to add them. If you check the schema I made, you will see that there is room for comments in the Meanings and the Dictionary tables, so I did think of this. It all needs to be tested though. Maybe we should make an inventory of some of the entries where we expect problems and try it out. What I proposed is something to to be able to move faster. It doesn't have to be the final solution. The question is: do we want to make it easier to open up the Wiktionary content and is there a willingness (from developers and WikiMedia and from the contributors) to do it properly?
Polyglot