[Foundation-l] Push translation

Tue Jul 27 06:39:18 UTC 2010

Shiju Alex,

Stevertigo is just one en.wikipedian.

As far as using exact copies goes, I don't know about the policy at
your home wiki, but in many Wikipedias this sort of back-and-forth
translation and trading and sharing of articles has been going on
since day one, not just with English but with other languages as well.
If I see a good article on any Wikipedia in a language I understand
that is lacking in another, I'll happily translate it. I have never
seen this cause problems provided I use proper spelling and grammar
and do not use templates or images that leave red links.

I started out at en.wp in 2001, so I don't think it's unreasonable to
call myself an English Wikipedian (although I'd prefer to think of
myself as an international Wikipedian, with lots of edits at wikis
such as Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Navajo, Haitian and Moldovan). I am
not at all in favor of pushing any sort of articles on anybody, if a
community discusses and reaches consensus to disallow translations
(even ones made by humans, including professionals), that is
absolutely their right, although I don't think it's wise to disallow
people from using material from other Wikipedias.

Google Translator Toolkit is particularly problematic because it
messes up the existing article formatting (one example, it messes up
internal links by putting punctuation marks before double brackets
when they should be after) and it includes incompatible formatting
such as redlinked templates. It also doesn't help that many editors
don't stick around to fix their articles afterwards.

-m.

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> really? It's a) not
>> particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to
>>
>>> English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in
>>>
>> nature.
>>
>
> Very much true. Now English Wikipedians want some one to translate and use
> the exact copy of en:wp in all other language wikipedias. And they have the
> support of Google for that.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:52 AM, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> "The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and
>> written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any
>> such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.' - really? It's a) not
>> particularly well-written, mostly and b) referenced overwhelmingly to
>> English-language sources, most of which are, you guessed it.. Western in
>> nature.
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 3:43 AM, stevertigo <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > I would like to add to this that I think the worst part of this idea
>> > > is the assumption that other languages should take articles from
>> > > en.wp.
>> >
>> > The idea is that most of en.wp's articles are well-enough written, and
>> > written in accord with NPOV to a sufficient degree to overcome any
>> > such criticism of 'imperial encyclopedism.'
>> >
>> > Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Nobody's arguing here that language and culture have no relationship.
>> > > What I'm saying is that language does not equal culture. Many people
>> > > speak French who are not part of the culture of France, for example
>> > > the cities of Libreville and Abidjan in Africa.
>> >
>> > Africa is an unusual case given that it was so linguistically diverse
>> > to begin with, and that its even moreso in the post-colonial era, when
>> > Arabic, French, English, and Dutch remain prominent marks of
>> > imperialistic influence.
>> >
>> > Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> > > This is well suited for the dustbin of terrible ideas.  It ranks right
>> > > up there with the notion that the European colonization of Africa was
>> > > for the sole purpose of civilizing the savages.
>> >
>> > This is the 'encyclopedic imperialism' counterargument. I thought I'd
>> > throw it out there. As Bendt noted above, Google has already been
>> > working on it for two years and has had both success and failure. It
>> > bears mentioning that their tools have been improving quite steadily.
>> > A simple test such as /English -> Arabic -> English/ will show that.
>> >
>> > Note that colonialism isnt the issue. It still remains for example a
>> > high priority to teach English in Africa, for the simple reason that
>> > language is almost entirely a tool for communication, and English is
>> > quite good for that purpose.  Its notable that the smaller colonial
>> > powers such as the French were never going to be successful at
>> > linguistic imperialism in Africa, for the simple reason that French
>> > has not actually been the lingua franca for a long time now.
>> >
>> > > Key to the growth of Wikipedias in minority languages is respect for
>> the
>> > > cultures that they encompass, not flooding them with the First-World
>> > > Point of View.  What might be a Neutral Point of View on the English
>> > > Wikipedia is limited by the contributions of English writers.  Those
>> who
>> > > do not understand English may arrive at a different neutrality.  We
>> have
>> > > not yet arrived at a Metapedia that would synthesize a single
>> neutrality
>> > > from all projects.
>> >
>> > I strongly disagree. Neutral point of view has worked on en.wp because
>> > its a universalist concept. The cases where other language wikis
>> > reject English content appear to come due to POV, and thus a violation
>> > of NPOV, not because - as you seem to suggest - the POV in such
>> > countries must be considered "NPOV."
>> >
>> > Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org> wrote:
>> > > I'm surprised to hear that coming from someone who I thought to be a
>> > > student of languages.  I think you might want to read an
>> > > article from today's Wall Street Journal, about how language
>> > > influences culture (and, one would extrapolate, Wikipedia articles).
>> >
>> > I had just a few days ago read Boroditsky's piece in Edge, and it
>> > covers a lot of interesting little bits of evidence. As Mark was
>> > saying, linguistic relativity (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) has been
>> > around for most of a century, and its wider conjectures were strongly
>> > contradicted by Chomsky et al. Yes there is compelling evidence that
>> > language does "channel" certain kinds of thought, but this should not
>> > be overstated. Like in other sciences, linguistics can sometimes make
>> > the mistake of making *qualitative judgments based on a field of
>> > *quantitative evidence.  This was essentially important back in the
>> > 40s and 50s when people were still putting down certain
>> > quasi-scientific conjectures from the late 1800s.
>> >
>> > Still there are cultures which claim their languages to be superior in
>> > certain ways simply because they are more sonorous or emotive, or
>> > otherwise expressive, and that's the essential paradigm that some
>> > linguists are working in.
>> >
>> > -SC
>> >
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