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It's not feasible to create a multi-language Wikipedia without introducing a lot of inaccuracies and/or significant complication, because different languages do
by yongjik 5y ago
It's not feasible to create a multi-language Wikipedia without introducing a lot of inaccuracies and/or significant complication, because different languages don't necessarily divide words in the same way.
A famous example is the word "blue" - the corresponding word can also include the green color in East Asian languages, while in Russian there are two different words for "light blue" and "dark blue" (or so I've heard). What would a single entry for "blue" look like?
As another example, the English page for "goose" obviously explains both domestic and wild geese, because they're the same animal... in English. In Korean, domestic (geowi) and wild (gireogi) geese are different animals, and I don't think people even know they're related. (When I learned that they were the same in English, I was like "Huh, why do English speakers have one word for these different birds... oh wait.")
Even in physics: Korean has words jajeon(자전)/gongjeon(공전) which mean "a stellar body's rotation about itself" and "a stellar body orbiting around another stellar body" - these are elementary-school-level terms. There are no corresponding entries in the English Wikipedia, because they're simply called "rotation" (or maybe "orbit" which is related but not exactly the same meaning).
As for exposition, the English page for "poetry" is a tome with examples from Ancient Greece, China, and Shakespeare, but only a single passing mention of any Korean - and none from Sweden. You could meticulously translate the whole article into Korean or Swedish, and its readers will still find it wanting.
And this is before we consider all the edit wars, POVs, and politics ...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 5y ago> It's not feasible to create a multi-language Wikipedia without introducing a lot of inaccuracies and/or significant complication, because different languages don't necessarily divide words in the same way. This is obviously a concern, but there are ways to address it as described in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia . Of course disambiguating all of these things would involve a non-trivial amount of work, but the expectation is that the result would at least be accurate and maintainable.
- jhanschoo 5y ago> There are no corresponding entries in the English Wikipedia, because they're simply called "rotation" Til rotation is commonly used to refer to both. My formal education referred to orbits as revolutions, distinguished from rotations.
- Twixes 5y agoI believe you're correct and "rotation" is just said colloquially