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Foreign-language article titles[edit]

archived to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting/Archive_7#Foreign-language_article_titles

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign-language article titles

31 August 2021 (UTC)

Inline translations[edit]

Is there a mechanism for including English language translations of foreign terms?

Currently I'm using efn for this:

the ((lang|fr|Nid de la Poule))((efn|Hen's Nest)) crater
...
((notelist))

Which produces this (normally the note is displayed in a tooltip):

the Nid de la Poule[a] crater

  1. ^ Hen's Nest

Something like this would be cleaner though:

the ((lang|fr|Nid de la Poule|translation=Hen's Nest)) crater

See, e.g., Puy_de_Dôme#Tourism

Alex Hajnal (talk) 22:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not in ((lang)) but you might rewrite that sentence somehow and use:
The summit can be reached by two [[Trail|pedestrian paths]]: a southern one (((lang-fr|Le sentier des muletiers|translation=The Mule Trail)), formerly a [[Roman road]]) and a northern one (((lang-fr|Le sentier des chèvres|translation=The Goat Trail|label=none))) which runs past the ((lang-fr|Nid de la Poule|translation=Hen's Nest|label=none)) crater.
The summit can be reached by two pedestrian paths: a southern one (French: Le sentier des muletiers, lit. 'The Mule Trail', formerly a Roman road) and a northern one (Le sentier des chèvres, 'The Goat Trail') which runs past the Nid de la Poule, 'Hen's Nest' crater.
or just include the translations parenthetically in the sentence:
...the ((lang|fr|Nid de la Poule)) ('Hen's Nest') crater → ...the Nid de la Poule ('Hen's Nest') crater
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think there's anything inherently wrong with using efn for this? Edit: I presume using lang-fr would be highly enouraged.Alex Hajnal (talk) 23:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can pretty-much do what you want. From a reader's point of view, using ((efn)) for such short translations seems to require more work than perhaps it's worth because the reader has to, at minimum, float their mouse-pointer over the ((efn)) superscript in order to see what is hidden there. I neither encourage nor discourage the use of ((lang-fr)); I merely offer it as an option that you can consider.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely the most common way to do this is with ((lang)) and plain-English after it:
...the ((lang|fr|Nid de la Poule|italic=unset)) ('Hen's Nest') crater → ...the Nid de la Poule ('Hen's Nest') crater
or
...the ((lang|fr|Nid de la Poule|italic=unset)) crater (the name of which means 'Hen's Nest') → ...the Nid de la Poule crater (the name of which means 'Hen's Nest')
(with |italic=unset in this specific kind of case because we don't italicize proper names in most cases). It requires no footnote futzing-around for the reader, and is more flexible and less template-geeky for the editor, compared to something like:
...the ((lang-fr|Nid de la Poule|translation=Hen's Nest|label=none|italic=unset)), crater → ...the Nid de la Poule, 'Hen's Nest', crater
Japanese is kinda-conventionally a special case, often done with a complex template called ((Nihongo)), which participants at WP:JAPAN are big fans of, but some of us are not, at least not for cases of this sort (versus, perhaps, the opening line of an article on Japanese subject).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks for the feedback.
My rationale was to not break up the flow of the sentences too much with a lot of clauses and parentheticals. Of course, requiring/encouraging the mousing-over of the superscript breaks the flow as well. Bit of a double-edged sword.
Browsing though the docs it looks like Template:tooltip is also an option:

((lang|fr|((tooltip|Nid de la Poule|Hen's Nest))))

Giving:

Nid de la Poule

Thanks again.

Alex Hajnal (talk) 18:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Needs Proto-Germanic[edit]

If it's already there, then it just needs to be set to understand Wiktionary's gem-pro code as referring to Proto-Germanic and to add the necessary italics and HTML tags. — LlywelynII 00:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

((lang|fn=name_from_tag|gem-x-proto)) → Proto-Germanic – listed at Template:Lang § Private-use language tags.
gem-pro is not a valid IETF language tag. To be valid, the extlang subtag must be defined in the IANA language-subtag-registry file. That file does not list pro as an extlang. Because all currently defined extlangs refer to languages that have primary language tags, Module:Lang does not support extlangs.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can't this be done (using some code or other) with the private-use codes described in #New codes, above? I wouldn't mind having one for Proto-Celtic using cel- as the base.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:51, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For Proto-Germanic we have the private-use tag: gem-x-proto. Similarly, for Proto-Celtic, we have: cel-x-proto:
((lang|fn=name_from_tag|cel-x-proto)) → Proto-Celtic
Both are listed at Template:Lang § Private-use language tags.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah so!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Common Brittonic

Given the above, I can definitely see a use at various articles (like Yan tan tethera) for cel-x-brittonic for Common Brittonic AKA Common Brythonic, Old British, Proto-Brythonic, etc. There's no ISO base name for this (or the Insular Celtic sub-family it usually gets classified into, and for which I can't think of a private-use-code need), but the root language family is Celtic languages with a code of cel, which we're also already using in cel-x-proto for Proto-Celtic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:39, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The subtag following the x singleton must be 1–8 characters; brittonic is 9 characters. See IETF language tag § Syntax of language tags.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Derp. In that case, we could keep it quite short with cel-x-brit. I don't think that would be ambiguous with anything. cel-x-combrit or cel-x-britton could also work if we wanted to be longer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I chose cel-x-combrit because we have a Brittonic languages article which would use cel-x-brit if it ever becomes necessary.
((lang|fn=name_from_tag|link=yes|cel-x-combrit)) → Common Brittonic
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:46, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good call, and thanks for adding it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

`yue-jyutping`, but not `yue-Latn-jyutping`[edit]

Forgive me if I missed this somewhere, but is it canonical that the code for Jyutping romanization of Cantonese should be yue-jyutping, but not yue-Latn-jyutping?
I'm comparing with Hanyu Pinyin for Standard Chinese, which is often tagged either with zh-Latn or zh-Latn-pinyin. Remsense留 00:29, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tested, and |yue-Latn-jyutping throws "Error: ((Lang)): unrecognized variant: jyutping for code-script pair: yue-latn (help)". That's not very intuitive, since -Latn seems to apply to anything that has been transliterated from another character set into Latin-based chars.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the |j= parameter of ((zh)) emits a yue-Latn-jyutping tag, so it seems likely that one of the two templates is misbehaving. Remsense留 00:54, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
((zh)) is not rendered by Module:Lang. We have no control over that template.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Who knows? By definition, Jyutping is a romanization system so it would seem that Latn is superfluous. The standard is the standard. Complaints about the standard should be directed to the custodians of the standard.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if my question was unclear—I was just asking if it might be an error here or at IANA. Thank you for the reply, and thanks for all the work you do in this area of the site. :) Remsense留 01:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to the IANA language-subtag-registry file: 
%%
Type: variant
Subtag: jyutping
Description: Jyutping Cantonese Romanization
Added: 2010-10-23
Prefix: yue
Comments: Jyutping romanization of Cantonese
%%
so Module:Lang is correct when it emits an error message complaining about yue-Latn-jyutping:
((lang|yue-Latn-jyutping|yue-Latn-jyutping)) → [yue-Latn-jyutping] Error: ((Lang)): unrecognized variant: jyutping for code-script pair: yue-latn (help)
I cannot explain why zh-Latn-pinyin is preferred over zh-pinyin. If you think that IANA are wrong, you must take it up with them.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

De-italicization glitch[edit]

Shelta uses English orthography, sometimes with some Irish diacritics, and sometimes the additional character χ. The presence of that character in any ((lang|sth|...)) string causes the entire string to be de-italicized automagically, and this is undesirable. See, e.g., Shelta#Grammar, and note how the first and last items in the table have been forced into roman mode.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It does that because χ is U+03C7 Greek small letter chi. Any non-Latn character in the text causes Module:Lang to render the text in upright font. Is χ really the proper character or did someone simply search the characters in the char-insert tables and use whatever they found that looked more-or-less correct?
You can override the upright font:
((lang|sth|gloχi|italic=yes)) → gloχi
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is ꭕ (U+AB55 Latin small letter chi with low left serif) in Latin Extended-E:
((lang|sth|gloꭕi)) → gloꭕi
—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Given that all of this is based on printed books, it is likely that someone editing here just used χ as the first visual match they found for what they saw in the book, which could equally well be rendered with ꭕ, so might as well switch to that, since it's within the extended Latin character set and is not jumping ship to Greek.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:38, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I think it happened because the IPA symbol for the sound is actually the Greek glyph χ; trying to replace that in the IPA chart with ꭕ broke the IPA template. The article has to use both in differen places, the IPA symbol for the sound in the IPA chart, and the extended Latin variant in running text for the word spellings.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:44, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Samaritan[edit]

See also: Module talk:Language § Samaritan

((lang|smp|example)) (the code for Samaritan Hebrew language) adds a page to Category:Articles containing Samaritan-language text but Samaritan language redirects to Samaritan Aramaic language sam. Error (talk) 01:22, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Fixed. The redirect was pointing to the wrong page (per https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/smp at least). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now Category:Articles containing Samaritan-language text points to a disambiguation page. It shouldn't. --Error (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted a good-faith change to that redirect. "xxx language" redirects, where "xxx" matches the ISO name, always point to the article for that language. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:47, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In Module:Language/data/iana languages, searching for "Samaritan", I find: ["sam"] = {"Samaritan Aramaic"}, ["smp"] = {"Samaritan"} – This module contains data taken directly from a local copy of an IANA language-subtag-registry file, and is supposed to be kept in sync with that external site.
That external site apparently makes Samaritan Hebrew the primary topic for "Samaritan", by simply calling it that, rather than "Samaritan Hebrew".
I see, Category:Articles containing Samaritan Aramaic-language text. Category:Articles containing Samaritan Hebrew-language text. Hmm.
Samaritan Aramaic language was the primary topic for Samaritan language for 17 1⁄2 years, until Jonesey95 changed that.
Just two articles currently link to "Samaritan language", though – Salbit and ‎George Nicholl.
Not sure I'm comfortable with letting a third-party website decide whether the term "Samaritan language" has a primary topic or is ambiguous, though. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why a category red link was pasted above; the relevant category is Category:Articles containing Samaritan-language text. In my experience, articles about languages are all either called "XXX language", or a redirect exists at "XXX language" pointing to the article name that the English Wikipedia has decided upon. This lang template/module set uses the ISO and IANA files to map language codes to language names; those language names are used for the relevant categories. In the case that the OP posted about, the redirect was pointing to the wrong place, so I fixed it. Since, as you say, there are minimal links to both pages, it should be fine to have ((for)) links at the top of each of the language pages; I have added those. [Edited to add: Since we call it "Samaritan Hebrew" here, as does Ethnologue, a reputable language source, maybe the lang templates should override the default "Samaritan" with "Samaritan Hebrew", which would free up "Samaritan language" to be a disambuiguation page. I don't know how to do that override.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Easily enough done if and when the editors here can figure out, and clearly state, what it is that they want. Thus far, that has not happened. This discussion was originally at Module talk:Language § Samaritan. I'm not inclined to change anything until there is at least a minimal consensus, clearly stated, to override ISO 639-3/IANA or repoint the redirect.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so ["smp"] = "Samaritan Hebrew", -- to match en.wiki article title: Samaritan Hebrew.
Now, Category:Articles containing Samaritan-language text says: Error: Samaritan is not a valid ISO 639 or IETF language name. Please see Template talk:Lang for assistance.
Go figure. Have you figured out what we want yet? wbm1058 (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That follows logically from the diff. I guess that's what we want then. The next step was to create Category:Articles containing Samaritan Hebrew-language text. I have restored and spruced up the disambiguation page at Samaritan language and marked the old category for deletion. I think this may be resolved. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very good, thanks. You figured it out for me. Category:Articles containing Samaritan-language text history-merged to Category:Articles containing Samaritan Hebrew-language text and deleted. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lang-ktz[edit]

returns the wrong spelling, even though the name is spelled correctly [Juǀʼhoan] at Module:Language/data/ISO 639-3. Where do I go to fix? — kwami (talk) 00:34, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where are you seeing a misspelling? If I write:
<code>[((lang|fn=name_from_tag|ktz))]</code> → [Juǀʼhoan]
and without the <code>...</code> tags:
[((lang|fn=name_from_tag|ktz))] → [Juǀʼhoan]
Where are you seeing a different spelling?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:50, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In both. (A quick test on my system is to double click on the result. Only part of the name highlights.) — kwami (talk) 00:54, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know that that is much of a test. If I double click your example and both of my examples, all eight characters are highlighted in each case.
If I examine all three examples at https://r12a.github.io/uniview/, the only difference between your example and the output from Module:Lang is the apostrophe. You use U+02BC: MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE and Module:Lang uses U+0027: APOSTROPHE which is in keeping with en.wiki's preference (MOS:CURLY). Is that where the highlighting stops?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:15, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I double-click on the word "Don't" in Trappist's response above, only "Don" or "t" is highlighted. That does not indicate an error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:34, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You know? I was just going to ask about that ...
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Might be OS or some other thing dependent, but if I double click "don't" or "[Juǀ'hoan]", the whole text is highlighted for me. Gonnym (talk) 16:35, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's OS or something dependent. For me, it's a convenient test to check if a word contains punctuation substitutes for letters. E.g. Juǀʼhoan with a click letter highlights as a word, but Ju|ʼhoan with a punctuation mark substituted does not. — kwami (talk) 19:10, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, what? Earlier, you wrote: Only part of the name highlights. Now you write: Juǀʼhoan with a click letter highlights as a word. Is this not contradictory? None of the example language names, except the latter one in your most recent post, use a pipe character (U+007C: Vertical line). What am I missing? Is there still a wrong spelling issue here?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Only part of the name highlighted because there was a punctuation substitution for proper orthography. That happens with either the click letter or the modifier apostrophe. For the whole name to highlight, all of the characters need to be letters. — kwami (talk) 19:35, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So what you are saying is that your OS objects to U+0027: APOSTROPHE (a punctuation character)? And you didn't answer my other question: Is there still a 'wrong spelling' issue here?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't object to it, it just recognizes that it's a punctuation mark rather than a letter. Quite convenient to test whether someone used a curly quotation mark instead of IPA for ejective consonants, for example.
Yes, the spelling issue is that we use a punctuation mark for a letter. If there's consensus that we should do that, then fine; I thought it was an error. — kwami (talk) 19:54, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thanks. Nothing to do here.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:05, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Kwami, if that character should be used, you should bring it up at Wikipedia:Manual of Style. MOS:APOSTROPHE allows the following: Letters resembling apostrophes, such as the ʻokina ( ʻ – markup: ʻ), saltillo ( ꞌ – markup: ꞌ), Hebrew ayin ( ʽ – markup: ʽ) and Arabic hamza ( ʼ – markup:ʼ), should be represented by those templates or by their Unicode values. Gonnym (talk) 20:53, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly the issue.
Why would I bring it up at the MOS? That section is pretty clear already: letters should be encoded as letters. They even provide for the {hamza} template to be used for ejective consonants, which is essentially what this is. — kwami (talk) 20:55, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the character you want to add (to me it looks like a curly apostrophes so I don't know which one it is) an ʻokina, saltillo, ayin or hamza? If it isn't one of those, it isn't essentially what this is, which is why I said that you should bring it up at the MoS page. Gonnym (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's the hamza. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, they say "such as". They're not going to list every single character. The point is that the MOS stuff about apostrophes (no curly apostrophes etc.) applies to punctuation. It doesn't require us to distort a language's orthography.
(When I said "pretty much", I meant it's arguable whether it's really an ejective in this case -- a few KS languages make a distinction between glottalized and ejective clicks -- but it's written as if it were an ejective, just as glottalized letters are in many alphabets.) — kwami (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So we're not done? Do we undo the override or keep it as it is? As far as I can tell, the override (imported from the now deleted Module:Language/data/wp_languages) has been in place for nearly a decade (since 15 April 2014). The associated article, Juǀʼhoan language, uses the curly apostrophe.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what the consensus is here. If it's to follow the MOS, then yes, we should change it to the modifier apostrophe (the letter, not the quotation mark). If it's to use ASCII substitutions, then it's fine as is.
Personally, I think that if we use the proper Unicode characters for languages with some political clout in the US, like Hawaiian where people insist on a proper okina letter, then we should do the same for languages that don't have such clout. — kwami (talk) 23:31, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a problem with that. Given my druthers, en.wiki would follow ISO 639 naming conventions so that overrides are unnecessary. I'm not going to hold my breath for that. So, I will undo the override so that ktz uses the name as given in the IANA language-subtag-registry file: Juǀʼhoan which uses U+02BC: MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:47, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And done:
<code>((lang|fn=name_from_tag|ktz))</code> → Juǀʼhoan
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:50, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks!
BTW, a couple years ago ISO was going through all their language names to treat such ASCII/Unicode issues consistently after making a few sporadic fixes. (That is, fixes for languages that had someone to speak up and make a formal request.) I don't know if it ever got anywhere. — kwami (talk) 23:51, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Forced prefixing of *[edit]

I've just noticed that use of codes for protolanguages, as in ((lang|cel-x-proto|...)), forces a prepended * (indicating a construction unattested in surviving materials). This is undesirable, since in the vast majority of cases what we're going to be doing is replacing existing in-article strings with bare italics and no lang markup, like *''kal-'', with templated replacements, e.g. *((lang|cel-x-proto|kal-)), but this produces a double ** which has to be manually fixed. And there are apt to be tabular-data cases (interlinear glosses, etc.) in which an entire row of cells is prefixed with * and specific words or morphemes in particular cells follow this and should not each individually have * but should still have language markup. At bare minimum we need a way to suppress this "auto-*" behavior, but ideally it would be off by default and turned on only by a parameter switch, since it is unexpected, inconsistent, completely undocumented, and almost always editorially unhelpful. PS: If this does get changed, please ping me, since I will need to go fix Caledonians#Etymology and some other things to have non-templated * again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two thoughts: there is some value to the asterisk symbol as unattested (especially if we tooltip the first occurrence à la ((c.))), so could we use ((asterisk)), or perhaps (new) ((unattested)) and have that resolve to ((asterisk))? Alternatively, what about just using one of the many star-shaped thingies that look like asterisk, but aren't, e.g.,
❋ (U+274B HEAVY EIGHT TEARDROP-SPOKED PROPELLER ASTERISK) (my favorite, but several more hidden in the wikicode).
Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:17, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Already exists but, alas, not documented:
((lang|cel-x-proto|kal-)) → *kal-
((lang|cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no)) → kal-
((lang-cel-x-proto|kal-)) → Proto-Celtic: *kal-
((lang-cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no)) → Proto-Celtic: kal-
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Testing bullet-asterisk interaction with proto asterisk:

Looks good. We should document Module code starting at line 791 of the Module in a new, level-4 subsection 'Proto' at Template:Lang, probably to live under section § Formatting. Mathglot (talk) 20:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But wait—you said in sentence 2, but this produces a double ** which has to be manually fixed, so what was your example that produced a double asterisk? It seems to be the identical code that works just above. Can you reproduce your error case below? Mathglot (talk) 20:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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