[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia again

[Stephen Forrest]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:29:22 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:

> I mean technical terms can be tricky, because essentially no one knows
> what one technical term should be translated into Cantonese. And in a
> topic that is very technical (which does come out often in an
> encyclopedia), that will make reading and understanding difficult.

This is an issue with many small Wikipedias.  I suspect that many
speakers of African languages would use some European language (often
the former colonial one) for discussion of technical topics.  Writing
about such topics in their own language may be unnatural and require
frequent coining of new terms.  Yet precedent suggests that this
wouldn't be an impediment to granting a Wikipedia to such a language,
if it were requested.  By extension, it probably shouldn't be an
impediment to a Cantonese Wikipedia.

Steve