[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[Michael Snow]

On 7/29/2011 11:06 AM, Wjhonson wrote:
> Yes of course translating documents "has been practiced in academia for a very long time."
>
> We however are not a first publisher of translations.  We are an aggregator of sources.
> That is the point of RS.
> We don't publish first.
Translating a quotation from a foreign-language source in a Wikipedia 
article is functionally no different from translating the contents of a 
Wikipedia article in one language to create an equivalent Wikipedia 
article in a different language. The latter is an utterly routine and 
fairly common practice (though I'm not suggesting that any Wikipedia 
article *needs* to be based on translations this way). Obviously 
translation needs to be done with care, just like synthesizing source 
material to write an article requires care. And some people may be 
better at one or the other, so it may be possible to improve on the work 
as Mark describes, as long as the original also remains available, as it 
should.

Stretching a guideline about using reliable sources to the point that it 
conflicts with unobjectionable standard practices suggests that the 
guideline is being stretched too far. Even the most reliable sources do 
not need to be treated like some people treat the Quran, as if it's 
inappropriate to render them in any language but the original. That's a 
religious belief, and in a religious context I fully respect that people 
may believe such things, but in the context of writing Wikipedia 
articles, our beliefs about the sources we use should not be religious, 
they should be based on analysis and editorial judgment.

--Michael Snow