[Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists

Tue Oct 28 11:10:21 UTC 2003

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 12:26:44PM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Peter Gervai wrote:
> 
> >Well I hope it's okay then if I expect everyone to resolve issues in
> >Hungarian language, since I only understand English and Hungarian?
> 
> You're certainly permitted to post to wikipedia-L in Hungarian.
> But as a practical matter, of course, it may not do much good.
> However, if you post in both English /and/ Hungarian,
> then some other person that knows Hungarian better than English
> would be better off.  So if such a person might exist,
> then certainly do both!

Logical result would be that we need lists for every languages, and persons
who translate every message from one to another. What if I want to talk to
someone speaking French, but I know only Hungarian? I write Hungarian,
naturally, someone translates it to English, some other one translates it to
Esperanto (because he refuses to accept any other possible target langauge)
and some last one translates Esperanto to French. Then comes a reply, which
is translated to ....

*scream*

No, I cannot imagine any possible multilingual discussion. English is the
common language here, I expect it to be used when global matters are
discussed. Local messages to be directed to local lists. If someone's brave
enough, s/he could translate/summarize back and forth...

> >Akkor ezennel javaslom, hogy Wikipédia editor csak vérszerz?déssel lehessen
> >valaki, teliholdnál egy fekete kakast áldozva. Ha valaki nem ért egyet, azt
> >jelezze. Ha mindenkinek jó, akkor egy hét múlva bevezethetjük. :-)
> 
> This I don't understand, of course, since I don't know Hungarian.

Well go, and try to find a translation. I wonder how i18l speaking advocates
going to get the meaning and reply it. ;->

> But if, hypothetically, you also know French, and posted both,
> then I would understand you much better, even without the English.

Reality is that I speak Hungarian and English. I get some German words, but
close to nil. No French, no Esperanto, Lojban, Volapük or whatever imaginary
language exists out there... (but hey, let's make lojban the official
language. I'm sure the traffic would become manageable! :-))

> I post only in English not because I think that English is the best,
> but because English is the only language that I can write in
> without taking an inconveniently long time to look things up.

Same here. I don't care if someone writes a french translation in their
email as long as they maintain its english translation. I hate to watch
esperanto or french discussions (or they may be even recipes, who knows?)
without any clue what's it all about. But it's not a big problem right now,
I bear with deleting 2-4 mails a day.

> Even Esperanto, terrible language that it is. ^_^

I think it doesn't really matter if someone can use it to communicate. (I
personally liked the idea of lojban, even I don't seem to grasp it, but
people use it to communicate, so it's okay.)

grin