Wikipedia talk:German-English translation requests

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gryffindor (talk | contribs) at 14:25, 23 January 2006 (→‎how do you translate [[Gemeinderat]]?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

deutsche Germanistin

Someone suggest a better translation for deutsche Germanistin than "german germanist". thanks -Lethe | Talk 09:06, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

That depends on the article and the context (after all, the above is the literal translation, and something like "female german language academic" is kind of ludicrous) ; e.g., if it's part of a biography, I would opt for something like "...after having studied germanistics.." From which article is this problem? Lectonar 09:13, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say german linguist, but depends on context--Fenice 09:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
yes, but per definitionem , germanistics (and romanistics etc.) is more than just linguistics Lectonar 09:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

the article in question is Käte Hamburger -Lethe | Talk 09:45, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

I would leave out "German" completely, because it is quite obvious she was German: she was born there, lived there ("immigrated" to Sweden) and died there - the context makes it clear she's German. If you want to stress that she was a German citizen, it could be added in another sentence, like: "Being a German citizen, Hamburger established her international status ...etc."--Fenice 09:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's it :) , although in this case, I for one see nothing wrong with the german germanist, apart from the alliteration Lectonar 09:59, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I had a similar problem at Büdingen, Hesse: the original German said something about a Gymnasium mit Turnhalle and I just couldn't quite bring myself to translate that Gymnasium with gymnasium. --Angr/tɔk mi 21:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Translation request from German template

As the German to English translation requests are now on a separate page, I've added a template that points back to this page: -

rather than the general template: -

[[{{{pg}}}]]

The original article is in .

on the basis that someone following the link in the general template will be brought to a page where the German to English requests are no longer listed. Valiantis 18:12, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Another template

I made a template based on {{1911}} that we can slap on translated articles: Template:German. It still needs some tweeking, but I'm not well endowed in the coding dept. --Tydaj 16:56, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Me neither and Help:Template is not written in English or German :).
However, I've made a few amendments to the template as set out below. Obviously revert or change them as you see fit!
You've used :de:{{NAMESPACE}} as the parameter. This will point just to :de: (or to :de:Template: :de:Wikipedia: etc.). If you use :de:{{PAGENAME}} it will point to the correct page as long as the German page has the same title as the English page. This is fine for most articles on people, but won't work for most other articles. I don't know how to get past this point myself.
To set a date (that won't change) you need to specify a parameter (in the form {{{1}}} in the template itself and then add a 'pipe' to the template tag on the page where you use it thus: - {{German|[[September 8]] [[2005]]}} or {{German|September 8 2005}}. (I think the former is preferable as it means that individual users see the date as either September 8 or 8 September dependent on how they have their preferences set). I don't think there is a more elegant way of doing this as this is the method used for Template:Cleanup-date.
Good idea for a template though.
Thinking about it further (and noting I forgot to sign my last comment!) you could add the name of the German article as a parameter too thus:-
''This article incorporates text translated from [[:de:{{1}}|the corresponding German Wikipedia article]] as of {{{2}}}''.
You'd then have to form the template tag thus - {{German|Woraufmandeutenwill| [[September 8]] [[2005]]}}. Of course, by the time you've written that you could have just typed the text out 'long hand', so I hope there's another solution... Valiantis 21:29, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe if there was some way to "tap into" the articles interwiki? --Tydaj 00:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

164 articles. How to order the mess?

Is it just me or are there too many articles listed on this page? I would love to contribute, but I am just confused at the mass of articles.

I really don't mind having a long backlist, but 164 articles? (Yes, I used a calculator). I don't know how many people are working on this project, but I really don't think there is 164 people here who do translations. Have a look at Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week. There is 90 people, but they only translate one article per week. This seems to be more realistic. Here is my suggestion: Limit the articles that are currently worked on to one per category. There is no need to have 79 biographies here at once. Move all other articles to a candidate subpage, like Wikipedia talk:German-English translation requests/biography. If the listed article of the category is finished (meaning translated, checked and cleaned up), it is removed and the next is chosen.

Good suggestion? -- Mkill 23:54, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, I don't think this here is a real project, so I couldn't say much about the participants (there are some users who are fairly active (Gryffindor, Valiantis,myself to a lesser degree); I took the time some weeks ago to go through the requested translations, and especially in the biographies section found some where a german article to translate didn't even exist. Most of those were from User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg, who doesn't really seem to understand English (or German either, because I tried to contact him). I also think that some of the requested articles have already been translated, but no one took the bother to weed them out. Lectonar 08:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the page is relatively hard to navigate (though I did make some improvements a couple of months ago). As Lectonar says, unlike Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week this isn't a project as such, it's an offshoot of Wikipedia:Translation into English that was hived off as there were so many German to English requests. If you have a look at that page, you will see that this page is more organised (by category) than the articles there - but most languages have far fewer requests than German. The idea of the page is for people to list articles in de:Wikipedia that they think should be ported over to the English Wikipedia. If there were only one article per category I would probably do less translations as I tend to only translate the stuff that appeals to me. I suspect others work the same way (hence, some articles that get listed are translated in days, others have been sitting here for months). 62.25.96.183 15:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC) This unsigned comment was by me Valiantis[reply]

I am open to other ideas. Some other ways to improve usability:

  1. make a "translation of the week" subpage and list it on the top of the other articles
  2. Set a maximum time limit. Suggestions that don't find a translator within three months will be moved to Wikipedia talk:German-English translation requests/Rejected
  3. turn the two biggest unfinished groups on this page, jewish biographies and family name disambiguations, to a project of their own.

-- Mkill 17:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So you would like to make this a project? Go ahead and be Bold, but I think your second propositon should be omitted (no one will ever look at a page with a subtitle "rejected" again, so no chance imho of getting attention to this after being sorted out), as some articles took a long time to get translated at all (see Charlotte von Mahlsdorf), and we don't want to rush the people interested in translations (there aren't that much anyway); after all, wikipedia is not paper. Lectonar 08:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Expect me to be bold soon, but we're still brainstorming. -- Mkill 19:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what others have said here. I've been working on Kurt Tucholsky recently - it was started by User:SteveW in April. I'm now on a break but will get back and do some more when I have time (if someone else hasn't done it). It shouldn't be marked as "rejected" just because it hasn't been translated. Saint|swithin 11:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In the meantime I've cleared up a bit and moved the biographies to their own page Saint|swithin 21:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In truth, I'm not sure boldness is called for. I'm unclear what would be the advantage in terms of adding new material to the English Wikipedia of reducing the number of translation requests on this page. I don't think the page is more difficult to navigate than (for example) WP:CFD. Whilst I take Mkill's comment that s/he is put off contributing by the number of possible translations in good faith, I'd suggest his/hers is a minority opinion. I'd be put off contributing if there were only a small number of articles and none of them were of interest to me. Valiantis 19:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a he, I don't think I look so female on my userpage :) Anyway, I tried to start a discussion because I felt something could be done better, and I won't be bold unless people start to support my ideas. I thought this was clear, so I didn't write it explicitely. -- Mkill 03:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Mkill's feeling is so unusual. I also find the page length annoying. It was worse before, though, and it's now better to navigate than the German equivalent. I wouldn't want to stop anyone from listing an article here, even if one or two people have listed so many articles on minor topics or which are just stubs in the German wiki that it is hard to find the articles which would really boost the English wiki if translated. (I know, who am I to say which articles are important or not? :-))
But I think it would be a great idea to have a translation of the week, if anyone wants to start it up. How does it work? Do you all vote for the one you think should be translated? And then who gets to translate it - how do you stop everyone from working on it at the same time and getting annoyed when they then discover someone else was two seconds faster? Saint|swithin 07:23, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
At the spanish translation of the week they do vote for it (here); why not do it the same way? (obviously they don't see a problem with multiple users working at the same time...--Lectonar 10:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It's worked pretty well, and there is a lot more good material in German.
Two ways to keep it from being a mess: (1) Don't everybody always start translating the first section. (2) If you plan to translate a whole section, start by making a quick, timestamped edit indicating at the top of that section that you are working on it, and would everyone else please stay out of it for an hour or so. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

References

Hi,

I would like to ask whether there is a consesus on how to flag articles translated from German / how to implement the references from there. So far, I have used/ seen used three methods - which is the "agreed" one ? :

  • (1) Insert the sentence: "This article incorporates text translated from the [[corresponding German Wikipedia article]] as of some date." at the beginning of the article (e.g. Antiqua-Fraktur-dispute)
  • (2) Insert "This article draws heavily on the [[corresponding article]] in the German-language Wikipedia." in the References section (e.g. Peter Harry Carstensen)
  • (3) Copy the References across and add the German Wikipedia article as another reference (see for example Almira or Defensive wall)

Any thoughts ? (^ written by me without signature ACH 14:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Definitely a strong consensus against the first option: hat-text is for purposes like disambiguation. Whatever you do, it belongs in the references section.
(2) and (3) are by no means mutually exclusive. I don't know if there is a strong consensus, but I suggest the style of featured article Paragraph 175, the references section of which begins:
Much of the content of this article comes from the equivalent German-language wikipedia article (retrieved September 30, 2004). The following references are cited by that German-language article:
… and then lists the references cited in the German article. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a good plan. However, do you then add any references which do not appear in the German article before the said sentence ? Good to hear an opinion, anyway . ACH 21:32, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

how do you translate Gemeinderat?

Question: what is the correct translation for Gemeinderat. At the moment I interlinked municipal council, but not too sure... Gryffindor 02:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm.. The Oxford-Duden Dictionary translates it as local council, but since that's a redirect to Local government in the United Kingdom, that's clearly not the right place to link Gemeinderat to. --Angr (tɔk) 09:21, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand municipal council is specifically about France, so that's not right either. I guess you'll just have to write Gemeinderat and then link to that from the German. --Angr (tɔk) 09:25, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about if you write "local council" or "Gemeinderat (local council)" but link it to States_of_Germany#Further_subdivisions as that is where "Gemeinde" is described? Saint|swithin 11:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can't we just expand on the current municipal council article (maybe add a note or link in the local council, and add more information about German, Austrian and Swiss Gemeinderäte? because when I thought of the word "municipal council", I certainly was not thinking of France. I mean Gemeinde = municipality, right? see Gemeindebau. I was also orientating myself by the article Distribution of seats in the Austrian Landtage, where it also talks about municipal council. I guess we could have an article called "Gemeinderat", but since this is the English-language Wikipedia, I'd rather try first with a translation to make it easier for non-German speaking users... Gryffindor 11:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The translation should, without doubt, be municipality council; however, you'd have to explain how it differs from other uses of the term. —Nightstallion (?) 11:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with municipality council will be that of size of the community concerned. Gemeinde (the word is the same as in parish) is anything from a village of 200 people to a city of 2 Millions. One will, however, rather think of small communities (and use the word "Stadtrat" for a big city and hence translate Stadtrat with municipality council). That is why the term local council is probably more appropriate. --Olaf Simons 11:29, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ok, "municipal council" or "municipality council"? Gryffindor 11:47, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am no native English speaker. My latin makes me feel that municipium will be something urban, whereas Gemeinde will be anything from village to more (that's why I opted for local council).
Muret-Sanders has (for Gemeinde) municipality, rural commune, parish, local authority, community. I think that as each country has a different system, and they can't really be compared like that, it's perhaps more appropriate to have one article per country describing the way things are organised, rather than trying to squeeze all systems to fit with English names. Saint|swithin 11:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, this is more complex than I thought. Just got a note on my talk page from anon I quote ""Municipal council". 66.238.96.53 11:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)". thank you anon, would be nice to explain a bit more though... I send an email to the Gemeinderat of Vienna, I'm waiting as well to see what they say. Maybe someone could also ask around? Gryffindor 11:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll say it again: The only correct translation must be municipal council. Yes, it's a fact that municipal councils range from representing 200 people up to 1.8 million; that's just how the system works in Austria. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 19:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine, but if there's going to be an interwiki link between de:Gemeinderat and Municipal council then they have to be on the same topic. --Angr (tɔk) 19:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mh. Got a point there, aye. —Nightstallion (?) 21:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Und jetzt? Gryffindor 01:44, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Municipal" certainly suggests an urban settlement to me; that is the sense in which it is normally used in British English. A village could not have a municipal council (though it might have a parish council). I think Saintswithin is correct in suggesting that each country should have a separate article; IMO there is nothing wrong with having an article called Gemeinde on the English Wikipedia which could describe the role of the Gemeinde in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In articles this could be glossed if necessary. Gemeinderat could then be translated as "council of the Gemeinde - if readers are unsure what a Gemeinde is, they need only click on the link. This is more accurate than trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all translation which may mislead readers. (For example, if reference is made to the municipal council of the little village of Irgendwosdorf, readers may assume that this is a town of at least moderate size as that is what the term "municipal" implies to them). Valiantis 04:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, and any suggestions to Bezirksrat, Bezirksvorsteher, Stadtrat, Klub, Klubobmann, Bundessprecher, Bundesvorstand, and Rotationsprinzip? Really appreciate your help folks. Gryffindor 14:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]