Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-02/Disallowing translations for English inflected forms

Disallowing translations for English inflected forms

 * Voting on adding this paragraph to WT:ELE, as a separate paragraph after the paragraph starting "Translations" and before the one starting "The":"English inflected forms will not have translations. For example, will not, as it is the plural and third-person singular of . In such entries as have additional meanings, these additional meanings should have translations. For example, the noun should have translations, but the present participle of  will not."


 * Vote starts: 00:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Vote ends: 23.59, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Vote created: Mglovesfun (talk) 12:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Discussion:
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] WT:Beer parlour
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] User talk:Stephen G. Brown
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2011-02/Disallowing translations for English inflected forms

Support disallowing translations for English inflected forms

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. —Ruakh TALK 20:16, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Bequw → τ 01:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Daniel. 01:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC) Per myself from WT:BP. --Daniel. 01:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. Alternative spellings too should not have translations. --Vahag 01:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If one has reason to, an alternative spelling can be changed into a definition. So your proposal is fine as long as we consider that translations are allowable for alternative spellings in cases where any distinction between the spellings (in meaning, region, etc.) is claimed. This seems to me to be more a matter of practice than of principle. DAVilla 19:38, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. Though we didn't write policy, I remember having this conversation years ago. DAVilla 19:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Ultimateria 03:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support  straightforward, no? -- Prince Kassad 18:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support I hope that we can be sufficiently flexible in implementing this to allow for the rational exceptions that Anatoli mentions. DCDuring TALK  17:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support < class="latinx" >Ƿidsiþ 17:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 6) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support because, in the general case, providing a translation makes no sense: there is no 1-1 correspondence between grammatical features of languages. Even when there is one, providing a translation would sometimes be misleading. An example: if a singular word is translated by a plural in a language, a (singular) associated verb should be translated by a plural form, and giving a translation might be misleading in this case. Lmaltier 18:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose disallowing translations for English inflected forms

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  —Stephen (Talk) 12:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  in the current form. I'm all for lemma to be the first priority but what do we do with translations for broken, men, tired, all -ing, -ed adjectives, nouns more commonly used in plural, etc? For many languages there is no way to find out what the inflected form would be based on context. The translation themselves should link to the lemma form with the alt= tag. The English adjectives, for examples may not be the lemma for forms of Japanese and Korean predicative adjectives, e.g. Japanese  - "to get tired" is lemma for  - "tired" and Korean  "beautiful" has lemma  - "to be beautiful". If the translations for non-lemma forms are going to be deleted without moving to the lemma forms, finding the proper lemma forms of the target language, then I strongly oppose. --Anatoli 03:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We will be keeping [[broken]] and [[tired]], since those are lemmata. Regarding your Japanese and Korean examples: we're not proposing any requirement that the listed Japanese and Korean translations be Japanese and Korean lemmata, only that they be translations of English lemmata. —Ruakh TALK 03:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I gave J/K as an example of how English and FL non-lemmas could be linked properly, e.g. the translation of the English non-lemma am (form of "to be") to be linked to Hindi ("to be"), instead of the current . The current proposal doesn't describe what inflected forms would be "outlawed" to have translations. --Anatoli 03:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The vote mentions this issue giving the noun 'building' as an example. Broken, tired, frustrated, interested (etc.) won't lose their translations anymore than 'sheep' would lose its translations because it's the plural of 'sheep'. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:07, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * SemperBlotto's response below also reflects my opinion on this - discourage - yes, forbid - no. We are being too harsh at times with casual contributors and their work, who may not come back. If a person decides to add a translation for a inflected form into a language I know nothing about and I can't fix it, I won't delete it either. Besides, knowing how the inflected form is form in a language can be useful, many red links never get blue and lemma FL entries may never get declensions, conjugations, plurals, etc. I personally often find it difficult to figure out broken plural forms of many Arabic nouns, if I don't have a good dictionary handy and the noun doesn't fall into regular plural group. --Anatoli 21:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose they should be discouraged, but not disallowed. SemperBlotto 17:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Care to elaborate what this would actually mean? Perhaps on the talk page rather than here. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:05, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose Venere 15:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Abstain with respect to disallowing translations for English inflected forms

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol abstain vote.svg|20px]] Abstain Dan Polansky 16:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC) I agree that most inflected forms should not be translated. However, I am not confident I support the proposed text. For one rather minor thing, it uses "will" where it should be using "should", "shall", or "must"; actually, it uses a mixture of "should" and "will" in one sentence. More importantly, I am afraid there could be some repercussions of the text's admitting no exceptions, but this concern remains hypothetical, and does not suffice for me to oppose. --Dan Polansky 16:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The will is my doing, so let me explain. The preceding and following paragraphs of ELE include such text as "In entries for foreign words, only the English translation is given" and "Each division is separated" and "The boxes are each headed", all using statements of fact rather than should. (Granted, they use present tense, not will, but that doesn't seem to be what you're objecting to.) This proposal used may until because may sounds optional. Should is used in the proposal for the translations that are allowed/encouraged, simply because will sounds like it's an absolute must that the entry have those translations; in fact, though of course they're encouraged, the entry is valid without them. While the proposal could easily use does/do (as surrounding paragraphs of ELE do) or shall or must (though not IMO should, which also sounds optional), will works, too. (I know you said this is a minor point, but I wanted to clear it up.) &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not quite convinced, but thank you for the explanation anyway. It is good to know that the use of "will" was a result of a delibreate decision. --Dan Polansky 17:07, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) [[Image:Symbol abstain vote.svg|20px]] Per Atitarev (21:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)). &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Decision

 * Passes 11-4-2 (73.3%) DAVilla 03:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)