« Return to Thread: Why no formalized collaboration between Wiktionaries?
Re: Why no formalized collaboration between Wiktionaries?
by Gerard Meijssen-3
::
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Hoi,
When you intend to make a Wiktionary and have it include all words of all
languages and, have wiktionaries in all the languages that ask for one, you
have a situation where every project aims to do exactly the same thing and
without collaboration between the projects you have extreme inefficiency. It
is also not feasible to have all these projects be of the same standard and
only a few projects are usable.
Dividing dictionaries in either mono-lingual or translation dictionaries is
historically correct. However with the Internet and with the massive
collaboration and the mashing of resources that is now possible, it is a bit
of a simplification. Also the sad reality of Wiktionary is that it is
inherently useful for looking things up by people. Thanks to the massive
effort to standardise data it becomes possible to extract data from
Wiktionary. This is what enhances the potential of Wiktionary enormously.
OmegaWiki is inherently able to reuse data because of the way the data is
stored. OmegaWiki is able to provide the same information in many languages.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@...> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > One issue is the project works in a different way, it is not possible
> > to simply transfer Wiktionary contents into it. To embrace omegawiki,
> > we'd have to phase out Wiktionary in its current state. I think
> > omegawiki as Wiktionary 2.0 is a controversial idea among many
> > Wiktionarians, though I can't give you any more details on that.
> >
> > A unified multilingual project could make progress far more quickly.
> > That omegawiki is based on WikiData also makes it more flexible and
> > useful (as part of the semantic web, for researchers, for end-users,
> > for contributors, &c.) Also, because users from different languages
> > aggregate together, correctness of spelling and definition is more
> > likely.
> A lot of this depends on your philosophy of dictionaries. Are they
> descriptive or prescriptive? Translating dictionaries tend very heavily
> toward the prescriptive, directed toward efficiently solving the very
> real problem of rendering a text in one language into a readable text in
> another language. But translations taken from translating dictionaries
> will at best seem stillted, and often misleading unless you have fully
> explored the subtleties of both languages. That is not particularly
> efficient.
>
> A top level single-language dictionary is built on descriptive
> historical principles in that it is evidence based. And, as much as in
> Wikipedia should be citing sources for usage. To the extent that a
> dictionary describes words in its own language it should always strive
> for a depth that is unachievable in a translation dictionary. A wise
> literary translator must be aware of the subtleties, preferably of both
> languages, but especially of the target language.
>
> The problem for Wiktionary is how best to merge these conflicting
> tendencies.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l@...
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>_______________________________________________
Wiktionary-l mailing list
Wiktionary-l@...
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
When you intend to make a Wiktionary and have it include all words of all
languages and, have wiktionaries in all the languages that ask for one, you
have a situation where every project aims to do exactly the same thing and
without collaboration between the projects you have extreme inefficiency. It
is also not feasible to have all these projects be of the same standard and
only a few projects are usable.
Dividing dictionaries in either mono-lingual or translation dictionaries is
historically correct. However with the Internet and with the massive
collaboration and the mashing of resources that is now possible, it is a bit
of a simplification. Also the sad reality of Wiktionary is that it is
inherently useful for looking things up by people. Thanks to the massive
effort to standardise data it becomes possible to extract data from
Wiktionary. This is what enhances the potential of Wiktionary enormously.
OmegaWiki is inherently able to reuse data because of the way the data is
stored. OmegaWiki is able to provide the same information in many languages.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@...> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > One issue is the project works in a different way, it is not possible
> > to simply transfer Wiktionary contents into it. To embrace omegawiki,
> > we'd have to phase out Wiktionary in its current state. I think
> > omegawiki as Wiktionary 2.0 is a controversial idea among many
> > Wiktionarians, though I can't give you any more details on that.
> >
> > A unified multilingual project could make progress far more quickly.
> > That omegawiki is based on WikiData also makes it more flexible and
> > useful (as part of the semantic web, for researchers, for end-users,
> > for contributors, &c.) Also, because users from different languages
> > aggregate together, correctness of spelling and definition is more
> > likely.
> A lot of this depends on your philosophy of dictionaries. Are they
> descriptive or prescriptive? Translating dictionaries tend very heavily
> toward the prescriptive, directed toward efficiently solving the very
> real problem of rendering a text in one language into a readable text in
> another language. But translations taken from translating dictionaries
> will at best seem stillted, and often misleading unless you have fully
> explored the subtleties of both languages. That is not particularly
> efficient.
>
> A top level single-language dictionary is built on descriptive
> historical principles in that it is evidence based. And, as much as in
> Wikipedia should be citing sources for usage. To the extent that a
> dictionary describes words in its own language it should always strive
> for a depth that is unachievable in a translation dictionary. A wise
> literary translator must be aware of the subtleties, preferably of both
> languages, but especially of the target language.
>
> The problem for Wiktionary is how best to merge these conflicting
> tendencies.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l@...
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>
Wiktionary-l mailing list
Wiktionary-l@...
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
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