Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2023-02/THUB amendment

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Allowing closed compounds that are word-for-word translations of the English term to qualify to support that term[edit]

Voting on: Removing the following sentence from WT:THUB: “a closed compound that is a word-for-word translation of the English term: German Autoschlüssel does not qualify to support the English "car key"; or”

Current text:

Translation hubs

A translation hub (translation target) is a common English multi-word term or collocation that is useful for hosting translations. Some attested translation hubs should be included despite being non-idiomatic and some excluded, but there is no agreement on precise, all-encompassing rules for deciding which are which. Therefore, the following criteria for inclusion of attested non-idiomatic translation hubs are tentative:

  • The attested English term has to be common; rare terms don't qualify.
  • A translation does not qualify to support the English term if it is:
    • a closed compound that is a word-for-word translation of the English term: German Autoschlüssel does not qualify to support the English "car key"; or
    • a multi-word phrase that is a word-for-word translation of the English term; or
    • a diminutive: Spanish mecedorcito does not qualify to support the English "small rocking chair"; or
    • an augmentative: Portuguese amigão does not qualify to support the English "good friend"; or
    • a comparative or a superlative; or
    • a phrase in a language that does not use spaces to separate words.
  • At the very least, two qualifying translations must support the English term. Editor judgment can require a higher number, on a case-by-case basis.
  • The existence of a rare single-word English synonym of the considered English term does not disqualify the considered English term: the existence of Anglistics, which is rare, does not disqualify English studies.

Proposed text:

Translation hubs

A translation hub (translation target) is a common English multi-word term or collocation that is useful for hosting translations. Some attested translation hubs should be included despite being non-idiomatic and some excluded, but there is no agreement on precise, all-encompassing rules for deciding which are which. Therefore, the following criteria for inclusion of attested non-idiomatic translation hubs are tentative:

  • The attested English term has to be common; rare terms don't qualify.
  • A translation does not qualify to support the English term if it is:
    • a multi-word phrase that is a word-for-word translation of the English term; or
    • a diminutive: Spanish mecedorcito does not qualify to support the English "small rocking chair"; or
    • an augmentative: Portuguese amigão does not qualify to support the English "good friend"; or
    • a comparative or a superlative; or
    • a phrase in a language that does not use spaces to separate words.
  • At the very least, two qualifying translations must support the English term. Editor judgment can require a higher number, on a case-by-case basis.
  • The existence of a rare single-word English synonym of the considered English term does not disqualify the considered English term: the existence of Anglistics, which is rare, does not disqualify English studies.

Rationale: under our current policy, an entry such as smoked salmon, while admittedly useful, cannot be kept on the basis of its translations alone. Indeed, its translations into Finnish (savulohi), German (Räucherlachs) or Norwegian (røkelaks), although they are closed compounds, cannot be used to support its existence, because said compounds are word-for-word translations of the English term. It is furthermore highly unlikely that any translation will satisfy the condition that it not be a word-for-word translation. Other examples include murder weapon, insurance agent, car key, prostate cancer, hotel room, evening class, death threat, penis enlargement, kidney failure, car accident, air resistance, war of independence, women's rights, childhood memory, heat-resistant, yesterday's, tomorrow's.

Schedule:

Discussion:

Support[edit]

  1. Support German is a good example of a language that has what we call a sum-of-parts distinction built into its grammar, and there are others. This idea could spare us a lot of pointless debate. Like other translation hubs, these phrases will need to pass two important tests: 1) that a single-word translation must exist in at least two languages; and 2) that the phrase must be in common use in English. Because of these pre-existing rules, I don't think we need to worry about being flooded with translations of nonce words from German poems and the like. —Soap— 09:35, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd like to add a bit more. Rather than end my vote with "it won't be so bad", I should highlight an important positive aspect. One benefit of including phrases like car key in our dictionary is that it will be easy for people who know one language to find the translations in other languages. After all, most languages, including English, have more than one word for car. People don't say *auto key in English, and in German, people don't say *Karreschlüssel. What might seem unnecessary or even frivolous at first glance can actually be an important help to language learners. —Soap— 09:51, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support The current policy is too strict in this regard. It's advantageous to have translations located in one spot, and commonly used phrases are useful to include. To restate my argument in the beer parlour discussion, this proposal will not support adding phrases which are superfluous in English, such as "animal garden" as a translation of Tiergarten, because the phrase in question has to actually be in common English usage to qualify. Megathonic (talk) 16:05, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Our current policy is way too strict, and this would go a long way towards fixing that. I'd also like to note that other dictionaries usually have entries for common SOP terms, such as car keys and prostate cancer, and our doing so would benefit readers in ways Soap outlined above. Binarystep (talk) 21:57, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support: This is long overdue. The scaremongers voting "Against" should relax, commonsense is still needed. There is no problem with SoP place names. DonnanZ (talk) 21:09, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Leaning towards Support: I agree with Soap that this would be helpful when the translations are not intuitive or immediately obvious to the reader. I don't think this change itself would lead to what some of the opposing people have mentioned as a large influx of English entries. The THUB policy already theoretically allows the creation of English entries that are otherwise SoP (for example I made shaved female genitalia not long ago, which I must say is not particularly useful), it's just no one has ever bothered to do so. This is evident by the fact that most entries in Category:English translation hubs are just grammar words, common words in daily usage, and stuff that English lacks the distinction (e.g. kinship terms or n days after/before today). On the otherhand I do think a slightly stricter condition should be imposed, but that should already be covered by the phrasing "Editor judgment can require a higher number, on a case-by-case basis." – Wpi31 (talk) 15:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Wpi31: As far as I know the THUB policy is specifically designed for terms that are otherwise SoP, that's not theoretical. Given the translations listed, shaved female genitalia seems far more useful than what's being discussed here, which would be terms where the only translations are terms that match the English lexeme-for-lexeme but happen to be written as a single word. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:12, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "where the only translations". I'd be glad to go a step further and strike out "a multi-word phrase that is a word-for-word translation of the English term" as well. Obviously that's not what is proposed in this vote, but it would be sounder policy. It's not the slightest bit clear whether a word in a given language is coincidentally word-for-word equivalent to the English word, and even when it is, which equivalent words would one use? English could have just as easily picked "vehicle key" or "auto key" instead of "car key". Just because the term is SOP doesn't make it unuseful; the phrasing is not inherently obvious to a language learner. Megathonic (talk) 05:21, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

  1. Oppose This would inevitably result in a flood of new English entries that only exist because some languages prefer closed compounds, which is not a good outcome. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 16:06, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose. I would certainly consider supporting if something like the ten translations condition that @PUC mentions were added, since I think the point about closed compounds not always being straightforward is fair, but just removing the criterion entirely would lead to a lot of more or less useless entries being created. The criterion about phrases being common does not solve this problem given the huge number of phrases (or even entire sentences) that are common without necessarily being idiomatic. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:41, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose per Al-Muqanna. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes 02:22, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose per Surjection. --Svartava (talk) 02:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose per above. I certainly do not want to open the door to any sufficiently attested closed compound with at least X word-for-word translations. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose Thadh (talk) 15:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose per Surjection. - -sche (discuss) 18:30, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose per Surjection. What would be more useful is translation tables for collocations; why split information over so many different pages? MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:16, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Oppose per Surjection. — Fenakhay (حيطي · مساهماتي) 02:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Oppose per Surjection, in consideration of how people will understand this amendment. I cannot exclude that car key should be included anyway for its being a technical thing, or in general all the mentioned terms should be included anyway because the translations tend to be idiomatic and not too easy to guess, however it is true that the mere existence of closed compound that represent word-for-word translations are no criterion to qualify the translation, and people should not think that it is.
    It can well be that a combination of the criteria, I cannot exclude, turn the scales to conclude that an English term should be maintained. I created lack of sleep, well received since 2021, because it is a particular condition we can all feel and contradistinguished from other entry-demanding ones AND the ledger of translations is attractive, but neither the idiomaticity of the term nor the translations alone appeared to afford a sufficient cause for the entry; a larger context did, the complexity of which the current law explicitly confesses, while enumerating some wrong causes. Fay Freak (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Oppose Learners of languages with closed compounds will know how to form them just as easily as English noun clusters. I looked at the smoked salmon example in the rationale. savulohi has savu- (“smoked”) +‎ lohi (“salmon”), Räucherlachs has räuchern (“to smoke”) +‎ Lachs (“salmon”), røkelaks has røke +‎ laks. If we extrapolate Latin into English analogically, smoked salmon would become *fumisalmon. Imagine speakers of other languages telling you that "smoked salmon" is complicated and noteworthy as a separate entry because they think "salmon that is smoked" would be a simpler construction. It's the same way with those languages with closed compounds. Those learners will find it just as easy to glue prefixes together as we find it easy to place a noun after another noun, so they will not need this amendment. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 05:17, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Translating smoked salmon literally into German would give you geräucherter Lachs, which works, but it's not the principal term. It's highly unlikely that a language learner would come up with Räucherlachs on their own. When the English entry for a compound word doesn't exist and thus no translation is given, they will turn to another dictionary or translation tool to figure it out. Megathonic (talk) 08:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    People who want to figure out how to say “smoked salmon” in German will more probably look up smoked and salmon separately. We should give the translation of “smoked salmon” on those two pages, not on a separate page. (That’s how most other dictionaries work, by the way.) MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 06:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps, but our project serves a different purpose than traditional one-to-one dictionaries. If someone wanted to look up the words for smoked salmon in more than one language using the system you're proposing, not only would they need to click through to each language individually, they would have no idea, without brute-force checking every single language, which languages we even list translations for. Centralizing the information all in one place, using a Translation Hub, is much more convenient for our readers, and I'd argue also more convenient for our editors. —Soap— 14:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Apologies, I replied in haste and probably misread. I thought you wanted the German word for smoked salmon to be listed under the German word for salmon. It see now you're saying it should be on the English page, which would mean that we could put all of the languages together and save the users a lot of work. But wouldn't that just be a Translation Hub by another name? And it would need to be there twice, once on smoked and once on salmon. I don't think this is a good idea. —Soap— 14:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This "German word for [...] under the Germain word" already exists everywhere like Lachs#Related terms. As for saving work for the other layout, you could click on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/salmon . But your point still stands as that's a lot of search results to work through and I hated using WhatLinksHere for something else in Korean. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Now I've thought of another problem being discoverability. It never occurred to me to look up multi-word terms in a dictionary, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could find phrasal verbs and idioms here on Wiktionary. I would not have thought of looking up smoked salmon even if I wanted to find something like that because it is a noun cluster. After trying that a few times, I've learned that pages for noun clusters tend to exist only if I'm lucky and usually they doesn't have a page simply because of the number of combinations. Someone trying to translate "smoked salmon" would need to first discover that they can expect to find pages titled that, and even if they become confident in doing so, they won't find the new page if they worded their search slightly differently such as if they used synonyms. If this discoverability problem exists, then this amendment would create a lot of new pages but not reach many people with those pages. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Oppose Jesielt (user talk) 19:29, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Oppose: Not a fan of the t-hub argument for inclusion anyways. I don't see why non-English words which translate into English SOP phrases deserve their own entries. – Guitarmankev1 (talk) 18:48, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain[edit]

  1. Abstain for now until I see some arguments. Some of the arguments for this brought up look like they can be solved with collocations, which we have; however on the other hand having a singular link for a definition is usually handy. Vininn126 (talk) 10:45, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Abstain I'm unsure and undecided. As Surjection, I worry this could lead to a flood of useless English entries. However, I think the added condition I envisioned (that "at least ten (this is a tentative number) entry-worthy word-for-word-compound translations, ideally from different language families, be present") could alleviate the issue. Also, the already present condition that "the attested English term has to be common; rare terms don't qualify" will continue acting as a safeguard. PUC – 16:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Btw, @Soap, I think you have misunderstood this part: the added condition I suggested would only apply to word-for-word compounds. Two non word-for-word translations would still be enough. PUC – 16:19, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Im just posting to make clear that I understood the modification as proposed ... that it would apply only to words entered under the new, amended criterion. I dont think this is a good idea, as there will be very few words meeting such a criterion, and in those few cases, it creates a lot of extra work for our editors. —Soap— 14:46, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Honestly, I'm now more confused as to why you started this vote all of a sudden with no prior substantive discussion (per the links here, please correct me if I'm wrong) if you were only going to vote abstain. Who was hard pushing for this vote? Especially considering that the example smoked salmon was nominated for RFD by you yourself, I was surprised when you proposed this change to CFI and thought that maybe your approach had changed, but after this abstain vote, it seems to me that you set this proposal up for failure, and that post its failure, there'd be a failed vote to point to in RFD discussions (which has happened in the past). AG202 (talk) 15:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn't clear either on PUC's position but there's nothing wrong with getting a vote on something you don't personally support to make clear the community position, as long as it's not purely grandstanding (which this one doesn't seem to be, there are people who support it). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not particularly eager to see smoked salmon deleted, as I think it's a rather useful entry, but votes like Donnanz's, which are absolutely not rooted in policy, irritate me. I'd prefer if we could point to something in our CFI to keep it. In this particular instance, my reasoning has been exactly the reverse of what you're suggesting.
    On the other hand, I fear this vote will indeed lead to the inclusion of some crap, so I'm not super enthusiastic either.
    So yes, I'm genuinely undecided on the issue, which has been bugging me for more than a year already. If I'd set this vote up for failure I would have voted oppose. By the way, I did not start it myself, and would not have done so with so little input from other contributors. But since someone else went ahead, let's it run its course (is this grammatical?), I guess. PUC – 18:05, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "But since someone else went ahead, let's let it run its course." Only one word was missing :) Megathonic (talk) 19:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the clarification. I do wish that the person who started the vote would've waited until there's been more discussion (as seen by the oppose votes), but here we are now. AG202 (talk) 13:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I started the vote because it was scheduled to start on that day. Are scheduled votes sometimes postponed? Even if so, I dont think waiting would have changed much, as the Beer Parlour thread that led to this vote had been inactive for five days by that time. —Soap— 16:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps you didnt mean me. I started the vote in the sense of bringing it live, but I wasnt the one who wrote it up. In either case, I dont think there would have been much more discussion in the Beer Parlour thread if we had waited longer. —Soap— 16:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Soap: Yes, scheduled votes are sometimes postponed, or even not run at all. I would have waited longer, but that's not too bad I think. If necessary, we can start a new discussion and run another vote in a few months, taking into account the objections that have been raised. PUC – 18:00, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Abstain this ought to be discussed more fully. Helrasincke (talk) 12:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Decision[edit]

Failed 5-13-3. Vininn126 (talk) 11:00, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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