Anıl Şerifoğlu (talk) 17:32, 15 December 2023 (UTC)While I just came back from a personal hiatus and don't really had time to prepare anything fancy, I thought that I might as well start an Senate Hall on the subject of translation as soon as possible so that I'm not harassed by Dani and Imperators in the coming months. If I'm again to wait for the right moment to start this SH, I might NEVER get to do it and I'm supposed to do this since November 2022. So, buckle up and let's go!
Introduction
As myself a native user of the devil's tongue that is the French language, I came not to be interested to the concept of translation by myself... oh no... translation decided to go ahead, get acquainted with me at a young age and proceed to bully me ever since. An experience most likely shared by non-native English American speakers whenever they attempted to assemble and organize information about our favorite fictional universe. The french version of the original Star Wars movie would provides quite a few examples of this: Darth Vader becomes Dark Vador, Alderaan get turned into Aldorande (and later into Aldérande, both phonetic adaptation of the original), the Clone Wars get turned into the "Guerres Noires" (literally: black wars; most likely for lip sync), C-3PO and R2-D2 get turned into Z6-PO and D2-R2 (???), etc. Some were corrected since, but others (like the Sith titular of "Dark") are now an integral part of the French Star Wars experience. But with each new media published came new translation wanderings. In recent years, efforts were made through the initiative of Lucile Galliot, herself translator and now director of collection for Pocket (french editor in charge of most Star Wars novels), to improve the situation. Still, it's not hard to understand why I came to prefer working for an English encyclopedia rather than a French one...
But before jumping right in the middle of the many issues that translation still hold over us, I think it's necessary to put everyone on the same wave length with some linguistics 101. Language (and its field of study: linguistics), is far from a simple matter entirely. Even in our contemporain societies submitted to a standardized linguistic system, such as American English, variations (dialects) of denotation and connotation of the meaning (semantics/semiotics) of words and sentences are ever present and evolving. Depending on the sender and receiver and their own backgrounds, such as socioeconomics (sociolects), cultural (ethnolects), geographical (geolects) or time period (chronolects), meaning can change. Simply observe teenagers speaking in a group, and you'll have a good example of a sociolect. You might even have experienced this on Discord ^^ . This is to say that in a single language, communication and understanding can be tricky, and it's very likely that all of you experienced exchanges where someone said "Oh, I didn't thought you meant it like that" or some variation of this.
Even in closely related languages like British English and American English, things can get confusing. Try asking a british and an american to "bring me the chips on the first floor" and they will look for different items at different places. Now, imagine that there is not just one language, but thousands. Yes, thousands, as in more than seven thousands living languages (look it up)! And speakers from those various languages thought it would be interesting to interact and communicate, and even consume cultural production created by each others. Crazy notion, right?! Chaos is sure to emerge from this, as would have the Babel tower myth. Hence the need for translators (or learning the language yourself, but that's not the subject here).
As I tried to convey earlier the idea that language itself is a beast on its own, it should be apparent, especially if like me you're using a different language than your own native language, that translators have a particularly difficult task to handle, by having to conciliate two (or more) linguistic systems, each with their own vocabulary, meaning, and quirky denotations and connotations, and producing something that must be truthful to both the original language and the translated language, while trying to preserve reader comprehension, eventually leading to inevitable conflicts. This inspired the Italian expression "Traduttore, Traditore" (translator, traitor), which put the emphasis that translation will inevitably leads to treason of the original work. In French, we also have the expression "belle infidèle" (literally: beautiful unfaithful) when the translation take aesthetic liberties, either to respect the original poetic value of a work, or by introducing a new aesthetic form within the translated text. Translator also have to be careful not to introduce too much of their own interpretation of the work and personal background into the work itself, for example in the context of academic translation, or conversely adapt the text to modern standard, both approach valid depending on the final intent.
If I may conclude before moving on to more pragmatic topics, do not judge too harshly translators and their works. It's a hard profession, often regarded with disdain by people who hardly understand the complexity of the task, far too often not remunerated to it's true worth, and sacrificed on the altar of productivity.
Issues
The intent of this SH is to attempt to identifies the various issues that have arose in regard to how Wookieepedia handle content originating form languages other than American English, gather opinions, and proposes possibles solutions, which may or may not lead to further SHs, CTs and policy changes.
Feel free to add any topic under this by simply add a header with the title of the problem, and two sub-headers: "Problem" and "Discussion". You may also engage under "General discussion" if you have comments that don't fit in one issue or another. Also don't hesitate to provide more example of articles concerned by the discussion. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Editors translation
Problem
As a general note, I think we should be cautious of Wookieepedia editors providing their own translation. Translating is not an easy skill to master, and even if a native speaker is to provide some insight (Lelal and myself have often provided advice in matters of French to English translations), the result will always be assumptive, as it fall outside the official editorial process and with little to do in the way of making sure authorial intent is preserved. As a general rule, an encyclopedia should reject assumptions. However, there are some cases where, such as with games content where we assume 100% completion, or with SWTOR where we assume in the article body that a certain alignement is followed at all time, it would be beneficial for our readers comprehension to include translations provided by editors. So you can all stop holding your breath, I'm not advocating for the removal of editor-made translations ^^. But, it is imperative that we introduce to our policies the notion that those kind of translation are to be tagged in a way that clearly identifies them as non-official and thus subject to miss-interpretations and errors. The form this tagging shall take is yet to be determined, but suggestion are appreciated. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- Huh, I don't think I was aware of editor-provided translations being a thing - do you have any examples? (On status articles, or nah?) Imperators II(Talk) 07:13, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, wait, do you mean just translations that editors have "provided themselves" by sourcing them to dictionaries? Imperators II(Talk) 07:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yes. To be clear, I meant here to speak about any translation (from a single word to a whole paragraph) done by editors that they introduced to Wookieepedia articles. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:22, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, wait, do you mean just translations that editors have "provided themselves" by sourcing them to dictionaries? Imperators II(Talk) 07:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- OK, well if we take numnoid as an example, doesn't sourcing the translated word(s)/phrase(s) to a dictionary already indicate that it's non-official? Imperators II(Talk) 07:50, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, it's implied. But that just for one or two word. And we still want to be clear on our intention regarding the reader and inform them fully. So it might be sufficient for this case, but in the case of the publisher's summary, it's more complicated. Give the original text to three translators and you're sure to end up with three slightly different translations, so in my opinion, we should better inform users in all circumstances. I also think we can streamline the current referencing process in Numnoid to a single reference/dictionary instead of the three individuals references. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 08:18, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Absolutely. I made {{Conjecturetrans}} for articles with titles that were translated by me from The Vow of Silver Dawn (Mandarin, a language of spoken Chinese). Sometimes (especially with people's names) it also involves transliteration, which is basically spelling out sounds from Mandarin Chinese in English (e.g. Beijing, Taipei spelt in those ways is essentially what a Mandarin Chinese speaker would say, albeit in tones non-existent in English). Assuming that we're going by standardised Mandarin (I used pinyin, the most common standardisation in various countries), transliteration is usually is pretty clear affair, in that you shouldn't get competing possible transliterations, but it's a good idea to note down that it's used as well—sometimes in English you can spell someone's name as, for example, "Sun Zhongshan," while others might spell the name as "Sun Zhong-shan." Hope this makes sense! OOM 224 (he/him) 07:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- I also made this The_Vow_of_Silver_Dawn#Notes_on_translation just to note the standard method of translation for that particular web-novel. Maybe it should be noted in the Behind the scenes of relevant articles as well. OOM 224 (he/him) 08:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, I like this template. I didn't know it existed and I think that could be a good idea to implement it within the naming policy along with other suggestion in "Article titles (real-world publications)". However, that only cover the title, and we still have to come up with a more global solution. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 08:18, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Another example, Elespads and other elements from the Star Wars 1987 video game. Since it was exclusively in Japanese, the exact transliteration is conjectural. Rsand 30 (talk) 00:13, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Article titles (real-world publications)
Problem
The Naming policy is clearly lacking regarding how we should name articles of works published only in another language than American English (with the exception of how we handle titles in British English), and in practice, we can find articles either going with a translated title (Star Wars - The Official Magazine, Star Wars: The Dark Side, The Vow of Silver Dawn, Yeager's Secret), or articles using the original title (Star Wars, Objets du mythe).
My personal opinion would be to always respect the official title, with prevalence to the English version if provided by an official source and/or the author themselves. This would mean that Star Wars - The Official Magazine should be renamed, along with each individual issues, Star Wars - Das offizielle Magazin (as supported by StarWars.com), Star Wars: The Dark Side would stay in English (title provided by the author herself, Tricia Barr), The Vow of Silver Dawn would stay in English (title provided by Matt Martin), Yeager's Secret should be renamed Le Secret de Yeager, and Star Wars, Objets du mythe should stay in French. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- Ooh, I like this for the consistency value! (Though due to my own background bias to Latin-script-using languages I dread the implications for SW works for which we only have the title in a non-Latin-script language. :P) Imperators II(Talk) 07:15, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Let's imagine that Vow of the Silver Down isn't the official translation of 白银誓约, having 白银誓约 or The Vow of Silver Dawn as the main link don't seems too problematic to me. Sure you don't know what it's about when reading the Chinese characters, but to be honest, the English title isn't too helpful either, and at any rate, someone will click on the link and find out, and both the original title and the translated title would be included either as the main article or a redirect. We might want to introduce a rule that ask that a redirect (either the original or translated title) is always to be associated with the article. Which is not currently the case with Le Secret de Yeager for example, even if it's the official original title. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:39, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Regarding the Vow example, what usually bothers me most is searchability (and type-ability) (admittedly, for Latin-script-users) but as far as redirects exists it's not really a problem of course. Regarding redirects from/to translations, that seems like a no-brainer to me. Imperators II(Talk) 07:52, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- Let's imagine that Vow of the Silver Down isn't the official translation of 白银誓约, having 白银誓约 or The Vow of Silver Dawn as the main link don't seems too problematic to me. Sure you don't know what it's about when reading the Chinese characters, but to be honest, the English title isn't too helpful either, and at any rate, someone will click on the link and find out, and both the original title and the translated title would be included either as the main article or a redirect. We might want to introduce a rule that ask that a redirect (either the original or translated title) is always to be associated with the article. Which is not currently the case with Le Secret de Yeager for example, even if it's the official original title. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:39, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- I think it makes total sense to only use titles that are officially provided instead of translating them ourselves. ThrawnChiss7
Assembly Cupola 22:10, 6 October 2023 (UTC) - Given that all non-English titles are currently in Latin scripts, I agree. As Imp said, it might become problematic if a work doesn't have an official English title and it is widely known among Anglophone people by an unofficial English title rather than its title in the original language, but the proposed arrangement should be fine for now. OOM 224 (he/him) 17:30, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Sourcing a translation
Problem
Everything added to Wookieepedia must be sourced, but how to proceed with translation provided by editors? Looking at articles like the French Star Wars Resistance chapter books The New Spy (Le Nouvel Espion), The Survivor (La Rescapée), The Triple Dark (Triples Ténèbres) and Yeager's Secret (Le Secret de Yeager), we use translation for the title, the publisher's summary and even individual translation on items like cam slider, Lucky or Numnoid in the "Behind the scenes" section of those articles. It can be quite easy when it's only a few words, like how "Numnoid" get turned into "poule mouillée" (a derogatory expression for a cowardly individual, easily referenced to a French online dictionary like Larousse) or "petite brindile" (literally: little twig, but with the denotation of: something that might break very easily under pressure) where you can reference each word to an online dictionary, even if in that last case you can't really reference the meaning behind those words. But you can't proceed with such minutia with whole paragraph like with a publisher's summary.
I feel that we might be able to kill two birds with one stone by finding a solution for tagging editors translation and sourcing those translations. In fact, why not go with a template like Template:Fact, that would do this: [Translation] and link to a sub-section within the sourcing policy defining our stance on translation and providing links to online dictionaries for each language concerned (Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and a handful of others). Or with a reference-type going like this:
<ref name="Translation">This is a unofficial translation in English of a text originally published in [language]. It is provided by Wookieepedia to ease the comprehension of its readers, as allowed per our [policy]. Please note that this translation can be subject to errors or misinterpretations.</ref>
What solution do you prefer? If you want to propose something else, please don't hesitate ;) .NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- About that list of dictionaries - did you mean something like "this is Wookieepedia's authoratitative list of dictionaries, use these" or just a "here's a few that you can use, but this is not binding"? Imperators II(Talk) 07:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- I'd lean toward the non-binding list, but still limited to reputable one (like Larousse, who is in the business of dictionaries for more than 150 years). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:25, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- I really like the Translation note idea. Clean and simple. OOM 224 (he/him) 13:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
- I think that the translation should be inside the reference; something like <ref name="example">This is a unofficial translation in English of [example work] originally published in [language]. It is provided by Wookieepedia to ease the comprehension of its readers, as allowed per our [policy]. Please note that this translation can be subject to errors or misinterpretations.</ref> ThrawnChiss7 Assembly Cupola 01:33, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Translation within a reference
Problem
While updating references on Star Wars (LINE Webtoon) (originally published in Korean, and later officially translated in English), I came to wonder how to best introduce a translation for the title of a page with {{WebCite}}, and I don't know if status reviewers already follow a guideline in this matter. Note that the template already permit to identify the language when dealing with non-English content with |language=. My solution was to just add a note with {{C}} at the end of the template, but I wonder if we should introduce a more "elegant" solution, either with another internal parameter and/or using my idea of the "translation note template" (see previous topic) linking to a future "translation policy".
The reference itself:
스타워즈 : 깨어난 포스 그 이전의 이야기 (Korean) by Hong Jac Ga on Kakao Webtoon (backup link archived on October 12, 2013) (Translation:Star Wars: Story Before The Force Awakens)
NanoLuukeCloning Facility 17:53, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- A separate pipelinking translation template sounds like a good idea. Imperators II(Talk) 08:31, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, pretty simple solution. Makes sense to me. OOM 224 (he/him) 20:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)