On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:56 PM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> Not just bootstrapping the content. By having the primary content be saved > in a language independent form, and always translating it on the fly, it > would not merely bootstrap content in different languages, but it would > mean that editors from different languages would be working on the same > content. The texts in the different language is not a translation of each > other, but they are all created from the same source. There would be no > primacy of, say, English. > This is a thought but I've never heard of a Language independent form. I also question its importance to your core idea vs. say, a primary language of choice. An argument can be made that language independent on a computer medium can't exist, down to a programming language, the instructions and even binary bits, there is a language running on top of higher inputs (even transitioning between computer languages isn't at an absolute level)- to that extent, I wonder if data can truly be language independent. As far as Linguistic typology goes, it's far too unique and too varied to have a language independent form develop as easily. Perhaps it also depends on the perspective. For example, the majority of people commenting here (Americans, Europeans) might have exposure to a limited set of a linguistic branch. Machine-translations as someone pointed out, are still not preferred in some languages, even with years of research and potentially unlimited resources at Google's disposal, they still come out sounding clunky in some ways. And perhaps they will never get to the level of absolute, where they are truly language independent. If you read some of the discussions in linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), there is research to suggest that a language a person is born with dictates their thought processes and their view of the world - there might not be absolutes when it comes to linguistic cognition. There is something inherently unique in the cognitive patterns of different languages. Which brings me to the point, why not English? Your idea seems plausible enough even if your remove the abstract idea of complete language universality, without venturing into the science-fiction labyrinth of man-machine collaboration. Regards Theo _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l