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

[Thomas Morton]

For what it is worth....

I think this approach exists on en.wiki on the premise that by using foreign
sources with no independent translation available:

a) It makes it easier to push a POV or miss-interpretation via that source
(because other editors are generally not able to understand it)
b) There is more potential for mistakes or miscomprehension - for example if
editors resort to using Google translate (not at all uncommon)

I for one consider this much akin to cracking a nut with a sledgehammer -
but I can see the reasoning behind it. It would be interesting to see a
working group dedicated to looking into ways to approach the "foreign
language source" issue.

English Wikipedia is pretty bad at considering foreign language sources. But
I have seen other language projects which appear worse still at accepting
them... and it is worse than just a language issue - often it feels like a
case of people thinking "well that culture is not the same as ours, so not
likely to be as reliable". (I criticise myself here too for this thinking,
even when I try to avoid it!)

I can never help feeling that this is often the core of our cultural
centrist bias (for all Wikipedias). Way before I learned my first foreign
language, back when young and naive, I believed that most  countries were
functionally the same as mine, just with different words. My first trip the
to US disabused me of this notion. I have never been hot-shot with languages
but always make a point, now, of learning at least a little of the native
language of wherever I travel - because the difference you see when using
that language is insane.

Anyway; the point is that we are in an interesting position to help advocate
this amazingly different cultural views to each other. Does anyone have idea
to address these issues of centrism and lack of trust in other cultures? I
think this would be a really interesting thing to explore!

Tom

On 29 July 2011 19:31, Michael Snow <wikipedia at frontier.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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