Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI
developed for a wiki.
For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for
major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before
wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki
Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing
from English at all. They
have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate
all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that
you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English"
spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time.
If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal
translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become
incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context
jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in
their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't
there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make
one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable.
There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The
evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as
"Marossé" in piemontese, because that's
the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it
has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that
it's
some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm.
I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm
practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I
become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse
trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning.
It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of
effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net
trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had
acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How
will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much
translate with the verb you'd use to
"Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound.
It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a
distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a
slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single
note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with
wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the
xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck
says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these
animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local
languages (mid-sized
official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they
gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English
speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it
generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of
English words that are
drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they
are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that
frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails
and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any
foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees
these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native
speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the
word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often
do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors.
I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes
too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who
have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants".
A
litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The
correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the
interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate
"from Italian English to
English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the
communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that
request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be
expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both
to your language AND
English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to
absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British
English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language
aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities
of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original
research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't
words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is
necessary find the form
of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is
the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of
the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made
original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original
research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original
research in one of these languages that language must have a term for
"original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that
language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
>In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages
>or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we
>can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able
>to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know
>it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new
>words and in the process change the language in order to write an
>encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
>
>
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry
for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile."
Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able
to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new
terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who
normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our
newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The
resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but
only by people who do not exist.
Ec