User talk:mxn/2004

Messages sent to Minh Nguyễn in 2004

No one’s paying attention to the discussions on this archive page anymore. Please start a new discussion at my main talk page.

Hi Mxn. Thanks for your work on Vietnamese - we need more people with knowledge of the lesser-known languages.

On the Vietnamese pages, could I ask you just to translate the words into English rather than giving definitions and lists of translations. This is the current practice in Wiktionary, which saves replication and makes the dictionary more likely to remain consistent. So, for example, the page for "Ca-na-đa" would look something like this:

==Vietnamese==
===Proper noun===
'''Ca-na-đa'''

#[[Canada]]

with nothing else on the page. The definitions and translations then all go on the English page at "Canada".

Thanks, and keep up the valuable work.

-- Paul G 10:06, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC) (Wikitionary sysop)

Translingual homophones

Hi Mxn,

I see you've been adding English homophones to some of the Vietnamese pages. I don't think this is a good idea. I think it is unlikely that, for example, the Vietnamese "sinh" is pronounced identically with the English "sing". The inclusion of the homophone also suggests that there is a Vietnamese word "sing" that is a homophone - I don't know if this is the case or not. Either way, I believe this is misleading. Could I suggest that you only include Vietnamese homophones in your Vietnamese entries? Thanks. -- Paul G 08:40, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

See User talk:Paul G.

Hi Mxn - thanks for your comment about translingual homophones. I take it from what you say that your name is pronounced "ming" :) The English word "sing" and the Vietnamese word "sinh" may be pronounced the same way, but, as Polyglot says above, pursuing translingual homophones is a minefield that we probably shouldn't go anywhere near.

Keep on adding to Witkionary - are you our only contributor of Vietnamese content? — Paul G

See User talk:Paul G.

Translingual translations

Hi Mxn, (and others)

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to add translations under non English entries. Let's suppose we try to do that for say 100 languages (supposedly there are about 5000, but let's not go there yet). This would mean that for each and every word in existence we are going to try and maintain 100 different versions of translations. Can you imagine that this becomes unmanagable fairly quickly. This is a volunteer project and even though more and more people join the effort every day, we have to try and use our resources as efficiently as possible. This means we should avoid duplication of information at all cost. As soon as the same list can be found in more than one place, it takes n times more effort to maintain it. Either this discourages people from contributing, or the changes don't occur in every list (much more likely). This will mean that somebody who looks for a translation would have to go and look under every link to see whether there aren't more translations to be found under another language's entry for this word. Of course, as with every good rule, there has to be room for an exception. This doesn't apply if there is no good translation for this word or concept in English. In that case we should try and find one other language where translations can be grouped. For names of languages and countries, for numbers, for everyday things it should generally be possible to group the translations under the English entries.

Thanks for your contributions and keep up the good work! Polyglot 08:14, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Cerveza

Are you sure "cerveza" is a good translation of soda pop? I've never heard it mean anything but "beer". "Agua fresca" seems closer in meaning. -dmh 16:59, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Whoops, sorry. I don't know how I made that mistake. Thanks for correcting me. – Minh Nguyễn 02:44, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Synonyms

To find a word in a dictionary, you rely on the spelling. When a spelling is correct, it merits a mention in a dictionary. Therefore, I think that any correct spelling can be in wiktionary. However, the preferred spelling is what should be used with the templates like {{nl}}. Thanks, GerardM 08:43, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Translation for Tiếng Việt - the templates text is the ISO 639 language

I have not replaced the translations for Vietnamese on vi: I have added loads of translations on the talk page. Please have a look and let me know.. GerardM 08:45, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Home is where the heart is :)

My Home wiktionary is nl: nl:Gebruiker:GerardM is where I can be found most days. This is where all these new stuff originates and where I do some experimenting. GerardM 09:19, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)