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List:       wikien-l
Subject:    Re: [WikiEN-l] Category translation
From:       Minh Nguyen <mxn () zoomtown ! com>
Date:       2006-06-06 22:26:29
Message-ID: e64vel$uu2$1 () sea ! gmane ! org
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:> On 6/6/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray@gmail.com> wrote:>> On \
06/06/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal@inbox.org> wrote:>>>>> That brings up another, \
longer term, to-do for categories: they should>>> be language independent.  For \
instance [[Marie Curie]] is in de: and>>> en: (they happen to have the same title, \
but even if they don't they>>> are linked via interwiki links).  [[Kategorie:Pole]] \
is linked to>>> [[Category:Polish people]].  So there should be no need to \
categorize>>> Marie Curie twice (multiply by the actual number of languages which>>> \
have a Polish people category and an article on Marie Curie).>> Hmm... it won't work \
well.>>>> Basdically, there is no hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel>> \
relationship, there's no single "meta topic" which manifests itself in>> specific \
articles in different languages. For some things, like>> people, it does appear so; \
for others, it'll break down.>>> I don't understand that.  Interwiki links are the \
hard and fast> en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship.  Are you unaware of iw links,> \
or am I misinterpreting what you're saying?  Maybe you could give an> example?> >> \
This is partly due to the incomplete nature of the project, but also>> because \
different language communities - which, especially for>> languages like German and \
Polish, represent individual and reasonably>> distinct cultures in a way that en: \
doesn't - will naturally have>> different emphasis, there'll be different levels of \
coverage and>> different approaches to fragmenting articles.>>>> Let's say, oh, \
[[History of Country]].>>>> In one language, this might be a single article. In \
another,>> time-divided articles (overview; ancient history; history to 1500;>> 1500 \
to 1900; modern history). In a third, it might be a thematic>> divide (political \
history; religious history; military history;>> overview).>>>> What combination of \
categories would work best for *all* of these pages?>>> So are you simply talking \
about coverage, then?> > For those situations where we *don't* have an article on the \
same> topic in multiple languages, we don't have an interwiki link, and we> wouldn't \
link the categories.> > The situations where we *do* have coverage in multiple \
languages, of> the same articles and of the same categories, it doesn't make much> \
sense not to share information.> > I think the latter situation is much more \
widespread than the former.> Not just people: people, places, events, years, \
fictional works,> scientific concepts, etc.  Hitting random page a couple dozen times \
I> don't see any articles which *shouldn't* exist across all language> Wikipedias, \
and many of them already *do* exist across a number of> them.> > Jimbo and others \
have also made it clear that any cultural distinction> between different language \
Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes> against the intention (this in the context \
of which languages should> have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well).  We \
don't have a> British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both> \
understand each other well enough to communicate.  If it were> *possible* to \
automatically translate all articles into every language> while keeping the content \
the same, we'd do so.  It just isn't, at> least not with current technology.> > OTOH, \
interwiki links already give us the automatic translation in> terms of category \
information.  Yes, there will probably be some> article titles and category titles \
which don't translate well, but> that's the exception and for those few titles we \
wouldn't have any iw> links anyway. "United Kingdom" and related terms have presented \
a bit of a problem with the Vietnamese Wikipedia in the past. Whereas English has \
articles on "United Kingdom", "Great Britain", "England", etc., Vietnamese doesn't \
                have terms that correlate 1:1. We have:
*"Vương quốc Liên hiệp Anh v�  Bắc Ireland" for "United Kingdom"
*Its shortened form, "Vương quốc Anh", which is literally translated "Kingdom of \
                England" but is used to refer to the UK as a whole or to England, \
                Wales, and Scotland
*"Đảo Anh" (Island of England) or "Đảo Britain" for the island of Great Britain
*"Anh" for England proper
We've oscillated between which interwiki links we apply to "Vương quốc Anh", for \
example; for now, it's linked to "Kingdom of Great Britain" at the English Wikipedia, \
meaning that all our UK-related articles have just one set of interwiki links for \
now. But that also means that our interwiki links aren't entirely accurate, and we \
have to note the differences in terminology in our articles, since the interwiki \
                relations we've made don't reflect actual usage in Vietnamese.
-- Minh Nguyen <mxn@zoomtown.com>AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn@myjabber.net; Blog: \
http://mxn.f2o.org/ _______________________________________________WikiEN-l mailing \
listWikiEN-l@Wikipedia.orgTo unsubscribe from this mailing list, \
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