[Foundation-l] Candidate statements

[habj]

Actually, I think a translation that equals "financial reserve" is as good
as can possibly be expected considering the circumstances. Any candidate who
uses many words and/or concepts that the average native English speaker does
not know well enough to give a somewhat decent explanation of, will when
translated yield some half-good and some outright wrong stuff. That is IMHO
natural, especially since we are in most cases not talking about
professional translators - but even in printed books one often can find the
most amusing translation mistakes. I expect the result of the translations
to various languages to vary. Work load also plays a part in how refined
translations will become.

As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes are typically
impossible to translate. One has to make up a new joke - not recommended in
this context - or leave it out. Some of the statements had words in them
linked to the corresponding articles on English Wikipedia. Some of those
exist in Swedish, others do not. Linking to the sometimes small and
sometimes bad articles on the subjects in Swedish Wikipedia was hardly the
effect the author was searching for.Linking to articles in English in a text
that is supposed to the Swedish translation really shows that the candidate
only has the English-speaking voters in mind.

If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and avoid jokes at all
cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
possibilities to use the full scale of their language? Well, that is what
one does in a room where there are many non-native speakers so... maybe,
although the thought is not entirely appealing. There are ways around it,
though. Oscar very cleverly linked to Wikipedia articles in several
different languages; it was obvious that I should let the links remain as
they were., and there is no bad message to a user of any language.

I am sorry if it seems like I especially targeted Improv here. I was
certainly not trying to do that! Several candidates used the word endowment,
and his explanation on why he wanted to establish this endowment is what
helped me the most in determening its meaning in context.  Asking the
candidates to explain things might be a good idea, I never thought of that.
I regularly consulted - besides my dictionary plus the Wikipedias and
Wiktionaries - my boyfriend, who is a native English speaker and interested
in languages, the English speaking Wikipedia IRC channels (with varying
result, for instance the people I spoke to in #wikimedia immediately thought
of university colleges when they heard the word endowment; the context given
did not make them change their mind), and #wiktionary (generally with better
result than the wikipedia channels).

If you want to make a good impression on the non-English speakers, write a
statement that can be translated. OTOH, since the English speakers are the
majority of the voters I guess it does not make much of a difference for the
outcome of the election. I don't suppose it will be possible to see how the
voters from different projects voted? Not even the bigger ones?

/habj