Talk:national average

SoP really. Equinox ◑ 16:54, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

RFD discussion: November 2016–July 2017

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national average

SoP. Also easy to find "national total", "county average", and so on. Equinox ◑ 03:41, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

• Keep as a translation target: translations that are not word-for-word ones include German Landesdurchschnitt (Google Translate gives low-frequency Nationaler Durchschnitt), and similar Danish and Norwegian terms; the most common Czech translation is celostátní průměr, although the word-for-word one národní průměr also exists. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:43, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
• Keep per DP's analysis. DonnanZ (talk) 12:00, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
• Delete. SoP. de.wikt seems to have a purely compositional treatment of the word. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

  Delete. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:06, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

  @Metaknowledge, were you closing the discussion or voting to delete? — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:21, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

  I closed this discussion last week. I did not read Metaknowledge as closing the discussion because he did not, in fact, delete the page, and because the statement appears to be prospective ("Delete") rather than retrospective ("Deleted"), and because it is indented, whereas discussion closes tend to be unindented. bd2412 T 12:50, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

  Oh, I see that you posted "no consensus to delete" at the end of the subsection below. I missed that. Maybe it would have been clearer if you had posted the message here, in the main section. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:15, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Sidebar: clarity on "translation targets"

Could we have some clarity on when terms should be retained as "translation targets"? I looked at WT:SOP, and the only relevant paragraph seems to be the following: "In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers." However, it does not appear that "translation targets" are likely to be rare. Do we need to have a discussion and vote on the issue (@Daniel Carrero)? — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:09, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

The translation target rationale is not in CFI. It is not clear that it is supported by consensus. I have seen a fair number of editors support translation target on a host of terms, but I do not know whether the supporters make up 2/3 or the like. I and bd2412 have been working on more specific criteria, the latest draft of which is at User_talk:Dan_Polansky/2015#Let's draft a vote for CFI translation criteria 2. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:25, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Great, keep us informed when it's ready for wider discussion. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

I am basically an inclusionist but I don't like the idea of "translation targets" exactly. The way I prefer to think about it is that when lots of other languages have unexpected translations for a particular concept, it's a clue that the English term, however denotionally transparent, is nevertheless idiomatic, and should be kept on those grounds. Ƿidsiþ 13:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the existence of compound translations that use unexpected component words or patterns can be (strong?) evidence supporting English idiomaticity, at least if multiple language families or independent languages are involved. The argument would also support including terms like chalk and cheese, Mutt and Jeff, etc. DCDuring TALK 17:06, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I disagree that other languages' lexica can determine the idiomaticity of an English expression. English "be silent" is utterly unidiomatically SOP regardless of the existence of schweigen, zwijgen, taire, taceō, молча́ть, callarse, calar, and the rest. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:00, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Classes of words such as the one you refer to seem to me to offer little support for idiomaticity. In the case of those translated into English as be + an adjective, I'd favor exclusion. I'm sure that are other patterns that similarly are trivially rendered into English phrases quite predictably. We already have a great deal of trivial content and hardly need more. DCDuring TALK 18:22, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

But using an adjective to convey this idea IS idiomatic; most languages use a specific verb. (I am just talking about idiomaticity in an abstract way here; I agree that "be silent" doesn't need a dictionary entry.) Ƿidsiþ 08:01, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

• Another one like this is national mourning, which is landesorg in Norwegian (and Danish). DonnanZ (talk) 13:55, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that "translation target" should be restricted to a few very common phrases that are commonly expressed as a single word in other languages, i. e. day after tomorrow/day before yesterday, last year or maternal grandmother. It shouldn't be used indiscriminately as an argument for keeping any number of SoP entries. -- Pedrianaplant (talk) 10:14, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. Also not really the place to settle the question of a translation target policy. bd2412 T 15:57, 20 June 2017 (UTC)