[Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing

Mon Nov 25 07:05:50 UTC 2002

I'm tired of this debate.  No, what someone calls a place is not what is "theirs".  Every language has certain place names in other countries that are not the same as the way the natives of that place call it.  And again, we run into the situation of whether we call such places as Liege as, well, Liege, or Leuk, or whatever.  The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large.  The people who speak English say Munich, not Muenchen.
Zoe
 Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:I must protest!

I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop
person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to
let that attack go undefended...

> Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community
> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
> Helga ever was of flouting them.

Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to
be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we
are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather
than just ranting?

> Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in
> furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
> POV.

This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:
that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to
give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest
that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert
a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective
such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're
only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of
people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect
on the point of view whatsoever.

> As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
> pure and simple.

Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I
personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my
name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to
call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying
to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate
locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the
principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other
people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the
places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and
even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on
their behalf, even if they're not. :)

But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not
about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia.
We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of
names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
sorts of approximations!

> While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual,
> that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names,
> etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that
> means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there
> was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis? 
> London, or Londinium?

I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you
are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,
I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who
live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are
several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use
the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most
familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when
we get there. ;)

> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
> morons"?

I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)

> We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common
> English-language version of a name (different forms of English
> notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very
> important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers
> had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in
> the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the
> largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to
> them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of
> other languages searching in those languages.

Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the
removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the
argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names
would still be there, but just in different places.

> I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change
> this policy.

It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add
that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using
anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add
that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing
list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...

Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed
now... :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk |
+-------------------------------------------+

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