Re: [Bug-gne]I...l stuff

[Tom Chance]

> - We should think about translating not only
> alnguage but also units. 
> This would could be done automatically. (Conversion
> from miles to 
> kilometers e.g.)

How about we just provide a conversion utility? As
opposed to trying to integrate this into all of the
articles. Would be a good project for somebody to try
in Perl or PHP or something...


> - What do we do about puns or other things that
> can't be translated?

There's nothing you can do about these. Just rely on
translators doing a good job and make them mark peices
they don't understand as cultural references or
something similar. The only way to get around them is
to have a list of editors/translators that
editors/translators themselves can use, with
nationalities on, so translators/editors can ask
different people for help with a particular phrase.


> - How do we handle linked articles? Links should
> also be language 
> specific, because it is not neccessary to explain to
> a german that the 
> word kindergarden is from german.

Make the article IDs contain the language as well, so
article 12345 becomes 12345en, or something similar.
When you search, you can search for a specific
language, and when you want to reference an article
you put in its UID and so the link will contain the
language.


> - What do we want to do about the country stuff? Not
> every country is 
> accepted by every other country. So how to adress
> this in a translation? 
> Or stuff that has to be changed very much because
> the reader of the 
> translation otherwise doesn't get the meaning?

Well if a Chinese person translates an article which
talks about Taiwan, then they can just talk about it
as a state of China or something. They don't have to
recognise it as a nation state, and any other country
problems won't be too big a problem. Afterall, by not
recognising Taiwan or Afghanistan as nations, authors
are only offering opinions in the end, not a fact.



> It would also help the first
> author to get a 
> structure for his article.

No two articles can be completely structures in the
same way. Beyond having a title, synopsis and body,
articles will always have different layouts (think of
a political essay being structured in the same way as
a review of a book or as an explanation of zero-point
energy). So we can't really ask for a particular
structure, only that articles are in some way
structured.


> It would also be a good thing to have something like
> a translation 
> guide, to help people to translate from languages in
> which they are not 
> perfect to their first language.

That would be good. We will need a lot of "help files"
that are clearly written to make sure users can make
good articles and use GNE to the best of their
ability. Hmm.

Tom Chance

=====
"True security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated 
individual effort - Fyodor Dostoyevsky"

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