Wikisource talk:WikiProject Translation

Discuss WikiProject Translation here:

We need a "central" place, and a target.
I'm very pleased to see that translation are felt as an important topic.

On it.wikisource I started a whole pWikiproject: it:Progetto:Traduzioni. It's been years since I thought to asdvertise the whole community: I have some ideas but I need to understand what consensus can be gained about them.

Let's put it straight:
 * One thing is "Free printed translations uploaded from scans/paper/websites to Wikisource", another thing is "Colaborative translation written by users". I will focus in the first ones because I never really believed in the second ones.
 * My main purpose is the following: help translation and original texts to be synchronized
 * I put up a page with a list of pages and categories
 * About Italian authors and works in many wikisources, in order to check them on a regular basis
 * A list of Translation from the Italian language missing their original text.
 * I couldn't follow this by myself, and it would'nt have been the right move: this had to be a collaborative effort.
 * Recently I had some feedback on ru.wikisource.

The following issues stopped me: On the other hand on meta the word "translation" raises a different approach (the one I excluded in the first place) and a wikisource-specific page could be misplaced there.
 * Where should we put a centralized place where every wikisource could announce recently published translations without their original? Oldwikisource could be the obvious candidate, but strangely it's not as populated as meta.
 * I thought about a well designed advertisement to spread through every scriptorium, but I'm no graphic wizard, and I'd like this important topic to be noticed and discussed.

So here's my progress about this topic. What do you think about it? -  &epsilon; &Delta; &omega;  10:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * First of all, the topic of Wikisource-generated translations came up at our Scriptorium a little while ago. There was some minor opposition, but the support was emphatic and led to some new ideas, including the translation template for marking the progress of a translation, and guaranteeing that at least two sets of eyes have reviewed it, similar to with the ProofreadPage extension. (In fact, it has already been suggested that we modify that extension to support the idea of proofreading translations.) At any rate, user-generated translations have always been a part of Wikisource since its creation, and are still a useful tool for getting untranslated source texts (or ones with censored or archaic translations) to be accessible to people in different languages who didn't have those resources before. However, each language Wikisource will certainly have a discussion about whether it is willing to host new translations, and some may decide to prohibit them.


 * In terms of location, I thought about having another Wiki (such as Old Wikisource) be the main location, but I decided against it because it would take almost *everyone* out of their area of activity, and this would detract from its visibility. I think the best approach is to have the main activity be at WikiProject pages for each Wikisource that is interested in this idea, which will each deal with translations to or from that language. The main discussion for any given translation would be at the wiki of the target language. This page at the English Wikisource is just a temporary point to collect our thoughts and collaborate on the initiation of the project.


 * I think that this project should deal with both original and previously published translations. I think newly added translations should be publicized at the original-language and target-language Wikisources, although a meta or Old Wikisource page may be a good idea as well. Another idea is to have an IRC channel (or use the existing one). --Eliyak T · C 14:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a wikisource "user page" should be established to be used exclusively as communication center from translation projects. Good thing about this is that it can easily involve everybody and act as agent on its own. Perhaps with "branches" for highly active languages. O.J.S. (talk) 21:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

copyright problems
How would we deal with copyright problems? I usually have to deal with problematic translations in persian wikisource.--Pedram.salehpoor (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The original language work needs to be in the public domain. For work in the translation it would need be contributed as a public domain contribution, usually with GFDL or Creative Commons share licencing. Personally for a multi-person contribution translation, it will presumably a decision per work which is the most applicable, unless this discussion indicates a preferred tag to be applied. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If these problems are solved, this will be a great effort.--Pedram.salehpoor (talk) 17:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Cudos on the project
Hi, congratulations on the project, it's a very positive idea. And thanks for leaving the note at Hebrew Wikisource, which I just summarized in translation.

I'm not entirely clear on the direction as a project per se. If it is about parallel "Wikisource" pages at the different language wikis, where each one describes guidelines and translation projects for that language wiki, that makes lots of sense. If it is about inter-language links between texts in various languages that is important, but I'm not sure a project is needed.

If it is about actual collaboration on translating texts, then that probably happens on the "micro" level (with people who are actually working on those specific texts in more than one language). But even if that is the case, a Project Page like this would be a great showcase for successful examples of such collaboration.

I also think this page is a great place to showplace and explain translation templates, as it seems has already been done. Dovi (talk) 14:03, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Modified Proofreading
I'm not sure if you will need to do anything to the proofreading extension to adapt it to translations. For example, if the scanned work is in German and the text entered in the Page: namespace is in English, then that should cover everything you need. A template should probably be added to the Index page to show that it is intended to be a translation, just in case any other user comes across it and gets confused. It can also establish what each state (proofread, valiated etc) means in the context of a translation (ie. checked by someone fluent in the source language or the destination language). Otherwise, it should work already. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * One more possibility would be: You have the proofread extension. Instead the scan you have the text in the other language. Now you are able to control the translation easily. --Alkab (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC) (de.ws)

Wikiversity
Have you considered working with Wikiversity on translations? In theory, a Wikisource translation should work well as part of a languages course, with both projects getting something out of it. It would probably require finding and listing some potential translations, with some indication of expected difficulty (beginner, intermediate & advanced). It might also help to have a standardised translation process but that's not essential. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 18:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Translation of Le Petit Prince by Saint-Exupéry
In many countries the Little Prince fell into public domain last year. Since it's such a famous and wonderful work, wouldn't it be nice with an English translation under creative commons? Also, an English translation could be a basis for other open translations. There is not much text, but unfortunately I don't know any French (nor am I fluent in English), but will happily assist in the ways I can. What do you think of such an idea? Is this the right place to suggest it?

--Anjar (talk) 19:17, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The original text is still under copyright in the United States. Wikisource is unfortunately based there and has to follow its copyright law. Prosody (talk) 22:44, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, I see, so then a translation should

be made directly at eg the Norwegian Wikisource? --Anjar (talk) 10:19, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I think that the entire Wiki projects are based in the US. Erick Soares3 (talk) 00:11, 14 September 2021 (UTC)