Wikisource:Project namespaces

Reminding to tech-admins. Please change site name "Wikisource" to (as in Wikisource:Language domain requests):

ar.wikisource: "ويكيمصدر"
~~de.wikisource: "Wikiquelle"~~ (see below --Jofi 15:02:23, 2005-09-11 (UTC))
el.wikisource: "Βικιθήκη"
es.wikisource: "Wikidocumentos"
he.wikisource: "ויקיטקסט" (see Bug 3272)
la.wikisource: "Wikifontes"
pl.wikisource: "Wikiźródła"
ru.wikisource: "Викитека"
sr.wikisource: "Викизворник"

--ajvol 17:09, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do have a problem with this. Some of the requested names are not just a translation of "wikisource". For example, the names requested for greek and spanish are more like a renaming of the project; (I do not know about the others, although the russian proposal sounds like the greek one).

I am not against renaming the project (in fact, I believe its name is really not well chosen). However, if some renaming occurs, it should happen for the whole project, not just for a few subdomains. I believe that the project's name should be the same for all languages; the differences across subdomains should only come from translation.

ThomasV 18:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In Russian it's "WikiThek" like "WikiLibrary". Name was discussed in ru.wikipedia community. --ajvol 07:57, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Thomas. It is normal procedure in all the projects with lots of languages that each language selects the word that best fits. No one word can ever work for all languages!

Sometimes the namespaces are transliterations. This works best for "Wikipedia" because "encyclopedia" is an international word in the vast majority of modern languages. Other times they are translations: The Hebrew Wiktionary, for instance, became "Vikimilon" because "milon" is the Hebrew word for dictionary ("dictionary" is not an international word). ("Viki" is because modern spoken Hebrew has no "W")

Sometimes there are problems unique to a language. For instance, I initially thought of calling the Hebrew Wikisource "Vikisors" (i.e. a direct transliteration). The problem is, as someone immediately pointed out to me, that the Hebrew letters used when doing that are most likely to be read as "sores" - with unsavory connotations: "Sores" is the Hebrew verb for "castration" (so that's no good at all... :-) Someone else, at the time, suggested calling the Hebrew version "Vikimelel", "melel" being a general term for "words."

"Vikimakor" might have been used ("makor" is a translation of "source"), but it doesn't sound the greatest in Hebrew, nor does it have the direct connotation called for here. In the end it became a "Vikitext." "Text" is an international word.

This goes to show, by the way, that had this project chosen an international word like "text" for its title rather than "source" (European), the equivalents in most or all languages would be far closer.

That point is moot now, however. We are "Wikisource" and that is not likely to change. The bottom line is, however, that for local use, the people who speak a particular language are the only ones who can choose an appropriate word for that language. If those requesting the language all agree on the sitename - and so far all of them have - there is no reason to make an issue of this.Dovi 19:06, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

all right. I never wanted to castrate this project :-). I agree that direct transliteration is not always a good idea. ThomasV 19:21, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquelle: I don't know who suggested the name Wikiquelle for de.wikisource, but I never saw a discussion about the name and I would prefer discussing it there before any changes are made. --Jofi 15:02:23, 2005-09-11 (UTC)