Wikipedia talk:Translation

Translation of literary titles

Do we have policy on the random translation to English by Wikipedians of foreign film titles, for example, where articles are created under such names rather than under the original titles? Wouldn't we be taking liberties along the lines of Wikipedia Invention by creating an article about a movie called "Violence" when the Swedish title is Våld and it has only ever had that name IRW? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:33, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

That isn't a matter of WP:MADEUP, which deals with creating articles about made-up things. It's simply that the title is wrong. An article about a film that hasn't been assigned a title in English (if you've established that it hasn't been), if otherwise valid, should be moved to its original title. The original title should be used in the body of the article as well; a literal translation can be given in the lead sentence. In addition, the redirect that now appears under the original article title should probably be taken to RFD if there's no evidence that the film has ever really been known by that in reliable sources. Largoplazo (talk) 16:39, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing basically. Still a bit confused. Follow-up questions:

1. Couldn't a film which does not exist, e.g. a Swedish film called Violence at least liberally be considered a made-up (non-existent) thing?
2. How would one go about establishing the fact that a film hasn't been assigned a certain title?

Best wishes --SergeWoodzing (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Wasn't clear if you were talking about foreign film names as the title of an article, or mentioned in the course of some other article. If it's an article title, then the applicable portion of title policy would be WP:Article titles#Foreign names and Anglicization. Mathglot (talk) 17:34, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, but I thought I wrote here quite clearly about foreign film titles (above). Do we create articles on English Wikipedia and name the articles with otherwise unknown translations we have done ourselves of foreign film titles, or do we use the original foreign-language title of the film? WP:Article titles#Foreign names and Anglicization covers exonyms and such, but does not cover film titles or books. If a French book, known only in France, Canada and Haïti, is called La Vie, do we create an article about it on English Wikipedia and call the article Life or The Life, as we please, though the book is not known anywhere by that name?. I hope this is clear enough now. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 10:22, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

WP:CRITERIA and WP:COMMONNAME should cover this; as an example where an "original title" is the article title, see L'Atlantide (1932 film): there seems to be no commonly used English title for it, so the original title is used. Lectonar (talk) 10:44, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, that's what I thought. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but you aren't being clear. If a film doesn't exist, then how does the matter even arise of whether the title given to the fake film is an English translation of a nonexistent non-English original title that the nonexistent film doesn't have because it's nonexistent? If you're saying that there's an actual film whose title isn't in English and the problem is that someone listed it under a made-up title, then the film is not made up, it exists. These are two different, and unrelated, cases. Which one are you inquiring about? If it's the former, then the title of the article is irrelevant: the article is subject to deletion whether its title is in English or Laotian or nothing more than 85 dollar signs. If it's the latter, my answer's above. Largoplazo (talk) 11:24, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Film exists, and is notable for an article, but not under a made-up title in English. Film "La Vie" can exist with title in French. Film "The Life" might not exist as so titled even if someone creates an article by that name for the film "La Vie". Marilyn Monroe existed under her original name and her later name. A woman exactly identical to her under the name of Vermalia Schmidleft did not exist even if someone calls her that on Wikipedia claiming that she was Marilyn Monroe. What isn't clear? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:50, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

If a valid article was created under a title that is wrong for whatever reason (whether made up, based on a misunderstanding, not the best title under WP:COMMONNAME), we move it to the appropriate title. We don't call the article "made up" and delete it.

If an article already exists under the correct title, then the article may be deleted as a duplicate article under WP:CSD A10. However, if it includes content that would be suitable for the original article but that the original article doesn't already contain, it ought to be merged into the original article. Largoplazo (talk) 16:48, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

English translation for international sailing race

is there anyone that could translate the following page on an international sailing race into English? https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Gascogna Silverinhos (talk) 09:37, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi. This isn't the place to request translations. See the options given on the project page that this talk page belongs to, specifically the part at the shortcut WP:TRANSLATETOHERE. Largoplazo (talk) 14:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Handling templates from the source language article

Is there anything to be said about dealing with the templates in articles one plans to translate from another language's Wikipedia (for example, whether Wikimedia has tools for that, or recommendations for going about it) and, if there is, is this page a good place to say it? Largoplazo (talk) 01:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Largoplazo:, this type of issue has long been on my back burner. I also don't know where the right venue is (possibly WP:Request template, if that's is a solution]]), but since we're both here, we might as well start here.

First of all, can you clarify if you are talking about templates in foreign wikis that have equivalents here, perhaps under a different template name? Or, do you mean templates in other languages that don't exist here? The latter case is one of my pet peeves when doing translation, and I just took one baby step to resolve that for French translators.

French articles, especially about historical topics, often use the fr:S- template to indicate centuries, which are usually expressed in Roman numerals in French (but rarely in English). We'll probably never catch up with the insane number of century templates in French, but I struck a blow for fr→en translators by creating template {{Nth century}} just now, and adding a redirect to it from {{S-}}, which is the same name as the French template, and also defined it as "subst only". This means that anyone translating a French article littered with French "S-" templates (like fr:Liste des chronologies thématiques or fr:6 septembre), no longer has to deal with it: they can just port it over and forget about the templates, instead of having to find and replace them all. Where before, every occurrence would've give you a red-linked S- all over your English article, now it just properly indicates the text that ought to be there: eg., {{S-|XVIII}} → 18th century, and because of the "subst" setting, AnomieBOT will come around within a few hours and subst it, leaving "18th century" in the text, and no trace that there was ever a template there.

If this is something that has bothered you as well when doing translations, then it probably bothers lots of others. I think this could be the germ of an idea that would benefit translators from multiple languages, and we should think how to manage it, and where. I'm thinking of a subproject, or Task force, where we'd maintain lists of the "pet peeve templates" by language, and then figure out which ones could be dealt with in some way. Perhaps a subset could be dealt with in the way I just did for French {{S-}}, by defining them here, then making them disappear as subst-only. We should probably start by figuring out what the greatest offenders are, and if there's any pattern across languages, or if it's pretty individual.

Let's start hyper-local: what are your biggest "pet peeve" templates when translating? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:42, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

{{,}} hands down Elinruby (talk) 05:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately, the French stick that between contiguous references. Unfortunately, we can't usurp the existing {{,}} template in en-wiki, which has another use (it leaves a middot character), so we're limited to just removing the ones from the French articles we copy from. But if that's your worst pet peeve, you're in luck because it's pretty easy to eliminate them with a global replace in most offline editors. Mathglot (talk) 08:28, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Avoid machine translation

There is a discussion here about updating the Avoid machine translation section of Help:Translation. Participants in this project may be interested as Help:Translation was spun out of this page. TSventon (talk) 12:59, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I am proposing merging Help:Translation into this page because it appears to have the same scope, and could therefore benefit from consolidation to focus/centralize our editorial energy. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

For background, Help:Translation was split out in 2021 by PBS as explained at Wikipedia talk:Translation/Archive 4#Move to the Help workspace. TSventon (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Sdkb I agree that makes sense as the help page is mostly policy which was originally this page. TSventon (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Another page, even if slightly redundant, makes absolute sense in Help workspace. It is simply there to help newcomers find their way around. Lectonar (talk) 10:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

The other page would be redirected here if merged. Redundant project pages are bad — they increase the maintenance burden (neither of these two is very good) and confuse newcomers who get overwhelmed by the number of possible places to read help. Sdkb ^talk 13:37, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I am a newbie at translation tools on WP, you - Sdkb - are probably not. I am good enough in several languages to translate well (e.g no native speaker of English, but can discuss even some linguistics in it; did several translations "manually"at WP), but not used to this environment and not yet successful with it's translation tools.

I tried to use them, and didn't succeed yet to finish, and publish, the translation with translation tool yet. I think draft of my translation got discarded in the end, because it wasn't published too long when I was trying to make tool work to the end. I am rereading the instructions before trying again now, and intend to document how I didn't succeed if it should happen again. I also need to reread help files in target language (next intended translation is from English article, and the next from German).

From my point of view, current contents of wikipedia:translate and help:translate articles are not only significantly different, they address different topics. You (Sdkb) address economy, and ease of keeping contents of both articles consistent with your proposal, I am showing you the problem of usefulness of them to a newbie - and I think this priority is higher.

Different topics addressed:

• Wikipedia:translate is addressing mostly what you can do when you need (e.g. how request or propose a translation), or want to help with, a translation, and what to do if an existing translation is not yet adequate (e.g. .how to mark it by appropriate template).
• Help:translate addresses how to do the translation (e.g. what policies to keep in mind to adhere to, and how to find, enable, and use the translation tool etc.). That is the piece I think I'll need most at the moment.

Again, from my point of view, if the articles get merged, those two primarily different scopes should be easily found (by a newbie, not only it's editor).

If they are not merged, the preamble (of both current articles) should clearly show this difference (and I'd currently prefer that; might change my mind after next - hopefully successful - try at translation with WP translation tools). Also, in how to translate (current help:translate) should probably be addressed what is in common and what is the difference between sandbox and draft space (I'd feel much more comfortable to experiment with translation tool in sandbox first; the concept of draft space is not even mentioned in (either) current (en) translate article (if draft space exists, the fact is a no-brainer for an old hand, and pure guesswork for a newbie). Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 03:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

@Marjan Tomki SI, I agree with you that they have a different scope, but I don't really see any harm in putting them together. We can then work on making the page more easily understandable for editors new to translation. Have you had another try at using the translation tools since you made this comment? How did it go? Can you share what points you feel are most confusing? -- asilvering (talk) 00:17, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

• Hadn't had time yet to get to Wikipedia (and mostly to comp at all) till last week or so. In July I did water rescue (and relevant first aid and CPR) training (and passed examinations). That was pretty involved for previous month (almost all comp. time was on that subject too), because parts of my knowledge were pretty outdated.

Last year I lost a friend and sailing colleague to drowning at sailing and wanted to know if anything else could be done for him to survive, and when I was offered this courses I accepted and did my best to learn as much as possible, and also pass that experience (why he got breathing blocked, and lost consciousness at all; we seem to have done everything possible, and seemingly more after, but was not enough) to teaching staff and methodologists to hopefully improve general courses of swimming so that what happened to him would be less probable in similar situations.

I'm currently mostly working on repairing some damage on club sailboats which I also neglected for last month or so, so I am mostly still of comp, and I'll let you know here when I can return to WP, and translations, again.

• Regarding the subject of no harm in putting both sides together: I think that's disputable.

It reminds me of putting computer and operating system's general description (which should describe necessary functions and facilities offered, so reader gets the idea what is to be, or can be, or should not be... done with that) and detailed reference manual (which would focus on when, and how to do (or not do) any of those things in detail. And I haven't even mention the part - User Guide - that goes between those two.

My experience (both as a novice and as a teacher, where in both functions I strove for no failures, and absorption of complete knowledge wherever wanted and possible) from several areas (from informatics through general problems solving to sports) is that those different levels are best kept separate (and targeted to type of audience).

• For a novice at anything, I try to detect the plateau (when her or his info buffer in the brain is full), and send him or her to do something else for a while (including have a meal, and/or to sleep the problem over). After sleeping over the subject matter is usually consolidated, things not understood get clear etc.

If I were persisting after plateau was reached, time and effort would be wasted. Even more seriously, if a novice is overwhelmed with details, (s)he usually looses patience, and interest in the subject, or even develops aversion to the subject, which is IMO (almost always) something of the worst a teacher can do to a pupil.

• But if the subject is structured in an interesting way for a beginner, then the detail an experienced but casual user might need to get quickly reminded about, might take unnecessary time and effort to find.

So, targeted themes are often useful, and sometimes necessary, even when there is redundancy. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@Sdkb Having thought about this a bit more, I think it would be better if we moved most of what is in the Help version back to this page, and made the Help version more newbie-friendly. That would distinguish the two more clearly and make them both useful, I think. This isn't an idle suggestion; I'm happy to get to work on WP:HOWTRANS with that in mind, and I've started a talk page thread to that effect. -- asilvering (talk) 17:16, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Asilvering, I see the thread Help talk:Translation#Improving guidance for newbies that you started, which did not attract any replies, nor any activity at Help:Translation. Now what? Maybe start over, or maybe reboot the original request; pinging @Asilvering, Sdkb, TSventon, PBS, and Marjan Tomki SI: Mathglot (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Add missing ping: Lectonar. Did I miss anyone else? Mathglot (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I was definitely relying on someone replying about it to remind me that I'd said I was going to do that. I still think it's a good idea to have two separate pages, one that's more "here are the policies" and one that's a more newbie-friendly guide. I don't think I'll have the time to get to it this month since it's peak academic chaos time. -- asilvering (talk) 02:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for ping; as I wrote above, I come to comp (and internet) rarely, so it was luck I saw this already.

On my to-do list there are several articles to be translated from German to Slovenian, but as it can be seen it was several months since I tried - unsuccessfully (and should try to find if I left myself notes what I tried and what the problems were). I have also set a number of {{ill}} links in sl articles, which also call for translations (from English, German, Italian...).

As I wrote, before retirement I was living from informatics (including creating and updating manuals for tools and procedures, and training people to do things), and had several levels of documentation for that. E.g.:

1. General description: what something - a system, component... - does (or at least is intended to do: functions and facilities...), what components it has and how are they related - essential for acquiring (or not) optional components
2. Reference manual (all commands with all options etc. - what you can do and how you request it - when you know what you want to do and are just missing details).
3. User's guide (recommended ways how you can go about tasks, and why)
4. Technical manual (limitations of the systems and components etc., error messages and recovery and maintenance procedures)

The list is not exhaustive. It was information about same thing, but for different uses (or users). Even same users at different times needed different access when just trying to recall a parameter value, or when trying to recall the reason why not to do a particular procedure in particular situation. So called "step by step" books were possibly useful for total newbies without a teacher that can answer questions, but pretty useless as reference or user guide materials. On the other side, reference manuals and user guides should anyway be understandable to newbies as well, but that is not an easy task (and usually called for authors remembering being newbies, and also testing with newbies).

Managing such is not trivial and might be above capabilities of volunteers, but example above could clarify why putting everything in one article might not always be optimal.

Up to now

I don't recall to having succeeded to make (and save) a single translation yet, but I didn't yet find time to go thoroughly about that). Several months have passed between tries, so I don't recall details, but following hints and help (that I found up to hen) didn't help me succeed yet.

Hopefully, if tomorrow I succeed to leave four club sailboats I was working on this week operational, I'll try one of translations from to-do list again and report what happened (I hope I made, and expect I'll find, documentation on past tries, and add about new tries (hopefully with more success). If I don't succeed (creating and saving a translation) again, let me know where to discuss what I understand wrong; if I succeed, documented differences between past unsuccessful and successful tries should help improve info for newbies. And of course, when I'll be at it, any help would be welcome.

But if there would be problems (with or around those sailboats), I'm not sure when I'll be able to continue here. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:29, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Support – I don't see any way to easily distinguish WP:Translation from Help:Translation for a user looking for one of them other than a name change to both, and even then, the difference seems artificial. The hatnotes help, but are a stopgap and simply illustrate further that users are likely to show up at the wrong place. Conceivably I would change my !vote if we renamed them to:

• WP:Translation procedures, requests, where to find articles to translate, licensing, and collaboration, and:
• Help:How to translate foreign Wikipedia articles into English.

Then again, that reality check points ouit the futility of renaming, and would just make things worse. Just merging the two and calling it by either of the two one-word titles, with the section names of the merged article clearly getting the user to the information they want regardless whether they came there for the what or the how is easy and fairly simple to carry out. The original proposal is the best solution; I urge users to support it and carry it out. Mathglot (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I am on Asilverings side here...I see a net plus in having 2 pages: one for "policy", and one a bit teahouse-like. Is the need to merge so dire as to make it absolutely necessary to pour much sweat into this? Fwiw, only experienced users will notice that we have some redundancies in the pages. Lectonar (talk) 07:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Leaving aside the question of whether the distinction between the pages could be more sharply delineated, is there any less reason to maintain them as two separate pages than there is with any other Help: page and its corresponding Wikipedia: page? Example: Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines and Help:Talk pages. Largoplazo (talk) 17:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

In principle I like the idea of a help page that is user friendly, like Help:Talk pages, but I don't think that the current "help " page achieves that. Hence I support a merge at present, but would also support a better help page for translation. TSventon (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

In general, I disagree with Largoplazo partly because WP:TALK is a guideline and WP:Translation is not and so the situations are not analogous, but that only scratches the surface and hopefully I'll get back to that with more detail. But for now, I just wanted to chime in to agree with TSventon. I also am a big believer in helpful pages that are friendly and welcoming, especially to someone doing something for the first time (kind of like H:YFA is intended to be) and we don't really have that currently for translation. So, yes to merge at present (let's recall that it always was just one page, until split a few years ago), perhaps to be followed by creation of a better help page that would be better targeted at first-timers, if someone wants to take that on. In that case, I think we would have to define scope carefully, so as not to duplicate the current muddled situation, but I think that could be done. Mathglot (talk) 19:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I made some improvements at Help:Translation mostly to see what we have there and improve it organizationally, and wrote up my conclusions at Help talk:Translation#Reorg without rewrite. Mathglot (talk) 00:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)