Simple English Wikiquote, Translate a quote...? Options

[American Eagle]

As poorly as many editors think of it, Simple English Wikiquote (yes, the wiki that "translates" quotes) has never been this active! With the additions of four administrators in the last three days, things are moving along quite nicely. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

Yay for Simple English Wikiquote!

[American Eagle]

"Jesus was a real person, that is not debated." O rly?

Heh. This was agreed upon (not that it isn't disputed, but that most historical works agree) by the community of Simple English Wikipedia. Read "The Case for Christ" or "The Case for Easter".

My edit summary wasn't fully explained. Yes, it is debated, but not by the mainstream world. Some people still believe the earth is flat.

Mate, it's disputed by between 75% to 90% of the world, depending on how you measure.

I don't mean Jesus dying on the cross and saving the world from sin (the Christian belief). I only mean him being a real person. But whatever.

Yes, it is debated, but not by the mainstream world. Some people still believe the earth is flat.

It can be scientifically proven that the Earth isn't flat, though.

Yes, I know. That's called faith, which I don't expect you to understand. You win that.

This discussion has become pointless. You all can hate Simple English Wikiquote, and me. I'm not really worried about that

[dogbiscuit]

This discussion has become pointless. You all can hate Simple English Wikiquote, and me. I'm not really worried about that

If you dredged back through previous discussions you'd find that in discussions about Simple English Wikipedia, the complaint has been that it was a good idea, destroyed by the complete lack of understanding of what a Simple English Wikipedia should be, together with it being damaged by ignorant Wikipedians dumping their problem children upon it (along the lines of "Stop playing with our real encyclopedia, go and play with that toy simple one over there and come back when you've grown up").

So, Simple English Wikipedia had the potential to be the really useful product for the Dusty Child in Africa™ but the players at WMF have not grasped that.

However, Simple English Wikiquote simply misses the point of quotations. Quotations are verbatim reporting of interesting sayings that depend on their specific use of words. Explain the quotes in Simple English, don't reword them.

Take today's quote of the day:

"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen." – Stephen Hawking

Simple: Humans lived like animals for millions of years. Then something happened which gave us the power of imagination. We learned to talk and to listen.

The last sentence did not need to be reworded, and arguably makes it a slightly harder level of comprehension as you need to understand that the "to listen" also goes with "we learned".

The first sentence change acquires a subtle change in that Hawking used a turn of phrase that didn't have the derogatory flavour - that "just" has a subtle effect to me.

Worst, there is the creationist subtlety of changing "unleashed" to "gave us". That is a big change, from saying it was something that we had, but couldn't leverage until we learned to communicate to saying that some outside agency messed with mankind - and gives the final sentence an ambiguity that was not there in the first case: is the final sentence a result of the giving, a subsequent event, or is it the "something"? (To be fair, the original quotation would have been better with a colon after imagination, but it is clear that it was communication that was the "something").

So, in trying to make something simpler, the lack of English comprehension has actually made something more opaque. It should not reword, it should explain and should not pass itself off as a quote.

How would I do it:

"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen." – Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is saying that humans were ordinary until we learnt to talk to each other, then we were able to use our imagination to do special things.

So, the principle of being a resource that turns educated words into a resource for the less able (whether that is language or intellect) is laudable. The problem is that you need to be very clever to pull it off - you need to understand the subtleties of why these quotations are notable in the first place. For what it is worth, WikiQuote often gives such a commentary:

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible

Though I'd take issue with the impossible, note WikiQuote does not paraphrase, it attempts to explain. (It also hints that this is not a great quotation for all mankind, but it was an advertising slogan for BT - the British equivalent of AT&T).

So without a clear understanding of the goal of Simple WikiQuote, and a clear set of guidelines to achieve this, it is just a waste of time, and for that reason the project should be disbanded.