Talk:Abram Kofman

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet talk 02:46, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

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• ... that for his planned anthology Voĉoj de Popoloj, Esperanto poet Abram Kofman tried to get Japanese translations from a scholar who couldn't speak the language? Source:
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Hamish Campbell

Created by Frzzl (talk). Self-nominated at 11:48, 3 November 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Abram Kofman; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• The article appears to meet DYK guidelines for newness and length and a QPQ has been provided. The hook is cited inline; it's in Esperanto but a Google Translate translation seems to confirm the information. However, the hook as currently written is ambiguous: the intended meaning is that Ramstedt did not understand Japanese, but the current wording is ambiguous as to if "couldn't speak the language" refers to Japanese or Esperanto. In addition, I wonder if an alternative hook about him translating the Iliad to Esperanto could work as an alternate hook. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:10, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the comments! Alts:
  • alt0a: "... that for his planned anthology Voĉoj de Popoloj, Esperanto poet Abram Kofman asked Finnish scholar Gustaf John Ramstedt to translate into Japanese, a language Ramstedt couldn't speak?" with source as above.
  • alt1: "... that Abram Kofman was the first Ancient Greek-Esperanto translator, publishing translated parts of Iliad in 1895?" Source:

• I can't quite rephrase alt0 to be unambiguous without it getting really clunky, so I think your idea for an Iliad hook is best.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  23:49, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • oh, didn't ping you @Narutolovehinata5:, sorry -  Frzzl  talk; contribs  11:09, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, I think we can go with ALT1; AGF on the source. Normally I'd be wary of "first" hooks, but given the timeframe and how niche Esperanto was even back then, I'd assume good faith that the claim is accurate. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 11:25, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

References

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Abram Kofman/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Frzzl (talk · contribs)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 17:37, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Reserving. Will try to review over the weekend. —Kusma (talk) 17:37, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for waiting so long! I'm getting started on addressing your points now.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  19:43, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Good changes overall, and good answers (I really should shut up about languages like Occidental that I know nothing about). I think we have reached GA quality. Good luck with those additional sources! —Kusma (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

• Is it Kofman or Koffman (as Baghy says)?
  • Considering Baghy refers to a "Kofman" earlier in the book, I'm tempted to see that as a misspelling. Even so, it's a viable transliteration, but I'm using "Kofman" for consistency, since that's all I've seen everywhere else. - F
• Auld has "Abraham Kofman" born in 1864
  • ie-wiki gives a delightfully unsourced 30 November, but I've not found anything to back it up. I'll adjust it to include this range. - F
• "Kofman was born in Odesa, Russian Empire, in 1865,[1] working professionally as a bookkeeper.[2]" citations seem mixed up: 1865 is in Sutton, "Odessa" in Baghy (although "librotenisto en Odessa" doesn't seem to say he was born there?
  • Well spotted on the born part - I have citations to say he was from ("el") Odessa, does that suffice?
• learned [..] Esperanto in 1889. Would be really good to give context (Zamenhof created Esperanto in 1887). Where is the "1889" from? Source just says "pioniro de Esperanto"
• "51 Jewish Esperantists in Odesa by 1902" source says there were three Jews among the 51 Esperantists in Odessa
  • Fixed x2. - F
• "First Period of Esperanto literature ... was the first main school of Esperanto literature and existed from 1916 to 1920" really? what is "la unua periodo (1892-1906)" referred to by Baghy? Later we have them working on "Zamenhof's 1903 anthology". Something isn't quite right here.
  • Messed around with this section to add more context and make it clearer.
• I am pretty sure Nikolaos Trunte and Nicolina Trunte are the same person [1]. You could compromise on "N. Trunte".
  • Compromised. - F
• "Fundamenta Krestomatio" translate title? chrestomathy is a fairly uncommon word.
  • Translated.
• I like the word "esprimkapableco" :) I don't really understand Esperanto though.
• "He additionally collaborated with Bohema Esperantisto" who is Bohema Esperantisto?
  • Described. - F
• I don't think the long list of languages for Voĉoj de Popoloj is particularly helpful.
  • Dust-bitten. - F
• "Kofman also translated the Old Testament into Ido" was this before 1902 as the structure of the article makes it look?
  • Added a "later" from the source - F
• Do not link to Zamenhof's letter inline, this is better in a footnote.
• "circulate[19] – he received" just start a new sentence instead of connecting with a dash.
  • Done x2.
• Post-Esperanto: "Although in 1894, Kofman was one of 157 Esperantists who voted against a reform of Esperanto,[21] in 1907, he changed languages from Esperanto to the Ido; this had been introduced by a proposition from the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language, and around a tenth of Esperantists would switch alongside him." ok, I don't get this. why "although"? what reform? what does changing from Esperanto to "the Ido" have to do with reforming Esperanto?
• "He would later change to Edgar de Wahl's Occidental" just to clarify, what does "change" mean here? I am sure he still was fluent in Esperanto, just Occidental (please mention that this is nowadays called Interlingue) became his conlang of choice? (Most people I know who speak Esperanto also speak at least a handful of other languages...)
  • OK, I'll stick in a sentence to explain the Schism. Done the rest. - F
• "Author of a later-destroyed manuscript of a Russian-Occidental dictionary,[4] he also translated poetry into Occidental – a translation of a poem by Ivan Krylov by Kofman appeared in an edition of the magazine International magazine of stenography (Occidental: Revúe internationale de sténographie)." split into several sentences. He wrote a Russian-Occidental dictionary whose manuscript was later destryoed. He translated poetry into Occidental. His translation of a Russian poem by Ivan Krylov appeared in the Revúe internationale de sténographie (is that really in Occidental? it looks French to me).
  • Split. Yup, Occidental, French doesn't natively have ú. - F
• István Szerdahelyi [eo] called Kofman "apparently the only one to have written poetry in three constructed languages." seems Mr Szerdahelyi was unaware of Tolkien.
  • That may be my translation at fault - terminology for "constructed language" is wavy and doesn't line up one-to-one between languages - German and Esperanto group languages meant to be spoken differently to artistic ones, so if Szerdahelyi was referring to "constructed language" in the English sense, he would have use "konstruita lingvo" instead. Since we don't have a word for "planlingvo" in English, I'll approximate it with a [spoken]. - F
• "Kofman was reported to have died during aerial bombing in 1940;[2] a message in the Occidental-language magazine Cosmoglotta records him as having died "just before the war".[4]" it would be helpful to put this into context: Operation Barbarossa started in June 1941, and bombing of Odesa started in July 1941. I don't know of any fighting in Odesa in the context of the 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
  • Added such a note. - F

Will look at lead section soon. —Kusma (talk) 11:01, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Abraham S. Kofman: If you don't mind a little original research: from the 1897 census (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XN6-4R33 ; you may need to create a free account) it seems to me that he is "Абрам Шлемович Кофман" / Abram Shlemovich Kofman, 33 years old, married to 30 year old Irana (?) Nachyovna, one son Beniamin Abramovich. But are we sure that Abram S. and Abram Antoni are the same?

  Update: I am not convinced this Abram Shlyomovich is our Kofman. According to the census form, he seems to be a teacher (учитель). Other parts are fine (language = Russian, "iud" might indicate religion, and the form says he could read) but I can't decipher everything (pre-reform Cyrillic handwriting). Not sure what this tells us, as I haven't found Abram Antoni in official documents yet.

  - I've looked everywhere I would normally look for Jewish ancestry, deaths records, the works, and didn't get much further that that record, and was able to make about the same handwriting as you. I wouldn't at all be surprised if he taught alongside his accountancy, but I doubt we'll know for a while. - F

  - Update: Actually, while rewriting today, I came across some uncitable things that could support this: if RX can get me some stuff, I might be able to clear this up after this review's conclusion. - F

• First sentence: he is not just a "Esperanto–language poet" but he is a poet and translator into several conlangs.
  • Fixed - F
• Is he "Russian" although born in Odesa?
  • Esperantist, Russian, Soviet, Jewish, Ukrainian - many ways he could be described, but from what I can tell, the those born in the Russian Empire get "Russian" if we don't know much more about their ancestry. I could go with Russian-Jewish?
• "Born in Odesa, Kofman was an early supporter of Esperanto, and one of the first Russian Jews to be so, learning the language in 1889." disentangle, just write several simple sentences instead.
  • Seems to have been fixed by another editor - F
• "He was responsible for translations" (this is also an issue in the body): to whom was he "responsible"?
  • Changed - F
• "influenced the development of the international religion Hillelism" this isn't how I would describe being critical of it and rejecting it outright as mentioned in the body.
  • Changed to make that clear, is "involved" OK? - F
• Is it worth mentioning more of his contributions to non-Esperanto conlangs?
  • The "Works" and "Translations" are to my knowledge fairly complete, and since they're fairly short, I don't really see a problem with having a full bibliography. The poems have his two most famous works, and I added the Occidental one just to give an example of original poetry in other languages, since it's not really covered in the article. - F
• Works: "Yĉebnik meždunarodnago jazyka Ido", "Slovar' meždunarodnogo jazyka Ido" I would give the original Cyrillic names as well, not just whatever transliteration this is. The "ĉ" looks out of place here. Do you know the publisher of the books?
  • Unfortunately not. Added the original Cyrillic. - F
• Poems: these are lacking bibliographical data. Is literaturo.org looks a reputable website?
  • I've formatted them similarly to the others - I can't find when they were written, only that they appeared in the Krestomatio. - F
• Translations: what is the date of the Faust translation? Same for Lenin.
• Use {{ill}} to link to Vladimir Gernet, do not use interwikilinks inline except in bibliographical templates
  • Is {{cite book}} not a bibliographical template, or am I missing a link? - F
• References section: the archives for Google Books links are generally useless
  • Blame the bot. Removed - F
• Do not link to Google Docs for Auld; this looks like linking to a copyright violation. Not sure about Baghy for the same reason.
  • Removed x2.
• Why is Delcourt in Further Reading? Looks like it could be a useful source.
  • Because I cannot find anything about it, anywhere, except for a few references; I'm fairly sure both Delcourt and Amouroux are dead, so I'm going to have a difficult time finding it. So, I settled on leaving the citation there, in case a copy does turn up somewhere. - F

Done with this part for now. —Kusma (talk) 13:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose: A few issues (sentences that need separating, mostly).
• MoS: Lead is a bit short.
  • now longer. - F
• Ref layout is acceptable. More DOIs or other identifiers instead of Google Books would be better.
  • Added more identifiers. - F
• instead of (unknown), could use NN or "Anon" if it is anonymous.
• Sources look reliable, but are a bit heavy on use of tertiary sources (encyclopedias) for basic facts, which isn't great.
• Broadness: seems reasonable compared to encyclopedia articles
• Focus: my only complaint is the language list for the planned poem
  • Removed - F
• Images: File:Брошура Заменгофа 1901 року.png needs a US tag
  • Added. - F

Further spotchecks to follow. —Kusma (talk) 13:52, 24 March 2024 (UTC) Considering Special:Permanentlink/1215330443.

• 10: hmm... "Characteristic of this group was a desire for stylistic freedom" source says "The Slavs showed a particular interest in stylistic freedom". The previous page states that the Fundamenta krestomatia had a "normative" goal of defining Esperanto style. I'm not sure this is represented fully accurately.
  • Probably my mistake in putting the two close to each other - the Slavic school was about a decade after the Krestomatia. I'll change the structure to reflect this. - F
• 12b: ok, but the source makes it clear that Kofman believed Ramstedt to know Japanese.
  • Clarified - F
• 15: looks ok (don't read Polish, but can point Google Lens at it)
• 17: ok
• 22: ok, but would be nice to find the original journal
• 24: they say "Učebnik" not "Yĉebnik".
  • Fixed - F

No copyvio or original research, but there seem to be slight inaccuracies (see also in prose review above). Done reviewing, putting on hold. —Kusma (talk) 14:52, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Status query

Kusma, Frzzl, where does this review stand? The review was completed before the end of March (I don't count the tiny edits from early April), and there's been no response here or edits to the article since then (indeed, Frzzl has made only four Wikipedia edits since the review was posted). With no action on the review for nearly six weeks, perhaps the review should be closed. Thank you. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:58, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset, when I started the review I had not noticed that User:Frzzl contains a {{Exams|27 June}} notice [2]. While technically the review could be closed as failed because of a lack of response to the (nontrivial) issues I have raised, this seems pointless bureaucracy to me; I would rather wait until Frzzl has stated that he wants to deal with the review. —Kusma (talk) 16:07, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

That's fine, Kusma. Thanks for the response. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:27, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the message - Kusma, I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to get to this review yet. This is a very indepth and helpful review, and I'd hate for someone else to have to do another review after I address the points if the article failed. As my userpage says, I'm currently right in the middle of exam season, and I don't feel comfortable making promises to devote time before I'm out of the woods; I haven't looked at the literature for a bit, so this review will take me a couple of days to get through when I can do it. I feel terrible to ask after I've already kept you waiting so long, but are we fine to continue with this once my wikibreak's over?  Frzzl  talk; contribs  16:18, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

I fully expect to be here when you return, and will be able to deal with it then. So don't fail your exams over this. Next time when you go on wikibreak, consider using something like |note=I will respond to your review after 27 June in the GA nom template to manage expectations. —Kusma (talk) 20:08, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Malpli kaj Multpli

Veselin Damjanov put Kofman's poem to music - it's available on YouTube for those interested.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  20:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)