Talk:Talysh studies

Talysh studies
is for a few very common terms that merit existence for translation purposes even though they're SoP. This however is not even close to common. I don't see any value in having this or Dravidic studies, Mongolian studies, and so on. -- Liliana • 08:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:37, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Deleted (even the translations were all red links) SemperBlotto (talk) 10:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to say that isn't just for very common terms, but for any terms that have idiomatic translations. I hope that one day, every term in every language will appear in a translation table, even if the English term it is a translation of is not idiomatic.  21:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm... I just now added no. What translation table shall we put that in? —Angr 21:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well... in that case we'd have to make an exception because it isn't translatable into an English equivalent. 22:00, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I certainly don't hope for that. It's what Matthias Buchmeier seems to advocate, including English terms that have one word translations in any language. This is very problematic for agglutinate language such as German, such as . You essentially end up with a load of humorous yet valid entries just because the term can be expressed as a single word in another language. And of course, translation is a subjective matter so such entries would get moved about, then reverted, then moved again, all legitimately because of a legitimate difference of opinion. The current system, about a billion times better, is to split the link when the English term is unidiomatic. And of course, people won't look up unidiomatic terms to see if they have unusual translations! I wouldn't look up entertainment magazine to see if there's a German translation, for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I also don't feel any pressing need to include, , or (in the case of modern languages at least) /&#8203;/&#8203; terms in our translation tables. —Angr 22:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * To Angr: That sounds a bit arbitrary though. Would we include a word from 1450 under Middle Dutch, but not a word from 1550 under Modern Dutch, even though neither is used or understood today?
 * To Mglovesfun: I agree that is problematic, but that is just a subset of the cases. There are also words that have no significant morphological complexity, but have a single meaning that is expressed as a phrase in English. While I do believe it would be a bit silly to have a translation entry just for that one term, it's quite possible that there are many more we don't know about. Perhaps we should have a CFI-like set minimum amount of idiomatic translations, and a page like 'Citations' that we can put translations in without having to create an entry. After all, it would be a shame if language learners trying to say a certain thing could not figure out how to do so because there is no way to find a translation. 22:58, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It would make sense to include poetic translations for poetic entries though. I feel like the translations should try to have the same tone as the term they translate. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 08:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * To CodeCat: if someone wants to know how to say X in Middle Dutch, then the word from 1450 is useful to them. If someone wants to know how to say X in Modern Dutch, then the word from 1550 is not useful to them. We should only list the word currently used. But the archaic word should be listed at the Modern Dutch entry as a synonym that's marked, so someone who clicks through to the modern word will still find a reference to it. I agree that if the English word is poetic, it's okay to list poetic foreign words in the translation table. —Angr 09:47, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It sometimes ticks me off when I see normal translations of poetic words. I almost think poetic words should have only poetic translations otherwise it's misleading. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 10:17, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * But if someone wants to know how to say something in 16th century Dutch? That is, not Middle Dutch but not Modern Dutch either, something in between? The way languages are commonly divided by period is largely arbitrary, and we shouldn't presume that our users would want to look up words by the same criteria. Personally I would find 16th or 17th century Dutch words very useful especially when trying to write something like a fake document of an explorer in the days of Abel Tasman or Willem Barentsz. Granted, being a Dutch speaker myself, I'd use an 17th century-21st century Dutch dictionary, but it would still be useful to English language students of Dutch from that period. 13:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Do English language students study 17th century Dutch without learning Modern Dutch? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:20, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think we can be everything to everybody. Adding archaic words to translation tables would bulk them up and make it harder for our common users to use them, and I'm hard pressed to see that we will ever produce the practical equivalent of an English to 16th century Dutch dictionary. In theory, knowing 16th century Dutch should make it possible to use the Dutch Wiktionary, which should support that much better. (And as Wikitiki89 says, who studies 17th century Dutch without knowing modern Dutch?)--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:02, 6 October 2012 (UTC)