[Wikipedia-l] Differences between languages (Was: Press release : Logo putsch on the FrenchWikipedia !)

[Toby Bartels]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ruimu wrote:

>>In theory, each wp entry should be the perfect translation of the same entry
>>in any language, don't you think ? (IMO encyclopedic goal is to try to reach
>>universalism.)

>Consider an article on the [[Statue of Liberty]], which was a gift
>from France to the United States.  Both articles will state that fact,
>and give some details, but the French language article might quite
>naturally and properly say more about some of the particularly French
>aspects of the story.

I'm not sure that people are in as much conflict as they think.
Contrast these items:

* Given the various proclivities of the writers on [[en:]] and [[fr:]],
  we would naturally expect [[fr:Statue de la Liberté]] to have
  more info on the French aspects than [[en:Statue of Liberty]].
  This is the way things would probably develop, and it's perfectly OK.

* Whatever may be written on [[fr:Statue de la Liberté]]
  about the French aspects, anybody that rewrites that information
  for [[en:Statue of Liberty]] is doing a good thing.
  If it's good for [[fr:]], then it's good for [[en:]], and vice versa.

You can continue to make subtler contrasts along these lines.
For example, when do you break a new article
[[History of the Statue of Liberty in France]]
because too much has been written on the French aspects
for the main article?  Different languages will do this differently,
but in the limit of increasing depth of Wikipedia's coverage,
they will both do something like this eventually.  And so on.

One may say that all languages are headed forthe same goal
but that we expect each language to follow a somewhat different path.
When we are all finished with all of the perfect encyclopedias,
then they may well all be perfect translations of each other.
But of course, we will never be finished!!!  It's potential vs actual.


-- Toby