User:Shenme/thinking

On the encouragement of Continental Drift

Proposed: A work that is primarily aimed at, or primarily useful to, readers of English should be included at English Wikisource.

I recently came across a situation that I hope is exceptional, but that I also hope can serve as a good test case, leading to a definite rule regarding how to handle works that contain multiple languages. I know that problems regarding this area keep coming up, but the situation I will point out below represents ambiguous uncertainties carried to ridiculous ends.

Some examples where there is no confusion might help narrow the discussion.

"Thurneysen Handbuch des Altirischen 1 Grammatik" is a work in German teaching about Old Irish. There is no English. It is aimed at a German-reading audience. Having established that en.wikisource is not a catch-all destination, the sponsor correctly located it at multi-language Wikisource.

"Dictionary of the Swatow dialect" is a dictionary for the English-reading audience teaching the dialect of a particular place and time. While the individual entries may look frightening one must admit they are aimed at the audience of English speakers interested in this dialect. It should be noted, however, that the proportion of non-English to English approaches 1:1 - normal for many dictionaries.

"Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period", published by the US Library of Congress (!), is largely English with an admixture of traditional Chinese characters and (horrid) Wade-Giles phoneticizations. The reference to Chinese is necessary for certain identification of the subjects of these biographies. The work would be incomplete without the Chinese.

The work "The Ichneutae of Sophocles" is an explication and commentary on a Greek play by Sophocles. Very much in English it nevertheless has Greek - and ancient Greek at that - in great quantities throughout the text. A page from the preface illustrates this. One section of the work contains the text of the poem with original ancient Greek (and Latin notes) with the English translation, interleaved page by page.

Now it would seem farcical to insist that a scholarly work about an ancient Greek poem . . . remove the Greek as extraneous or unimportant, right? Yet in the next work that is what has happened.

"A History and Defence of Magna Charta" is an English work by Samuel Johnson. Both explanation and history of the Magna Carta, it is most definitely aimed at the English and English speakers. The largest proportion of the work is in English. But it was thought proper to include in the work the original "Articles" of the Magna Carta. These were in Latin, and so they and an English translation were included: "A History and Defence of Magna Charta/Great Charter (Latin)". Copies were made in French of the same texts, and so the work also includes a French copy and English translation: "A History and Defence of Magna Charta/Great Charter (French)".

How strange then to not see any Latin in this work. Nor French. Those (even-numbered) pages have been dropped, removed from here. Because... those pages aren't in English ?

A peek at the French page 202 finds a note "text comes from fr.wikisource.org". Looking for a Latin page 158 sees a similar "text comes from la.wikisource.org". Pages of this work have been segregated among three different Wikisources purely out of defensiveness, lest non-English text reside at en.wikisource. Mon Dieu non!

Please note my use of the word 'work' in my proposal. Not page, not section, but emphasizing the entire work.