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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Secretary General of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo → General Secretary of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo – When this article was first translated by Czar (talk·contribs) back in 2021, I initially didn't question the chosen title. In Spanish, the terms "secretary general" and "general secretary" are one and the same: "secretario general". I've also seen the term "secretary general" used in sources, so it wasn't much of an issue for me. But the longer time goes on, I'm starting to question whether "secretary general" is the common name over "general secretary".
For one, our article on Secretary (title) lists the term "general secretary" as a position of authority in various organisations, including trade unions (which the CNT is); while "secretary-general" appears to be more widely used for official positions in intergovernmental organisations like the UN and ASEAN. In Google Scholar results: "general secretary of the CNT" receives 27 hits;[1] "secretary general of the CNT" receives 18 hits;[2] "CNT general secretary" receives 7 hits;[3] and "CNT secretary general" receives 7 hits;[4] "general secretary of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo" receives 1 hit;[5] "secretary general of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo" receives 0 hits.[6]
As both are used in sources, I wanted to open a discussion about moving this. Per consistency, I'm inclined towards "general secretary", but I could really go either way. In any case, I think both need to be mentioned in the lead of the article, at least in an explanatory footnote, as they are clearly both used in sources. Grnrchst (talk) 15:35, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall my rationale from 2021 but I'm sure I considered both and either found it was 50-50 in sources (perhaps English-language newspapers?) or that matching the Spanish construction had some marginal benefit. If there isn't a strong preference in reliable, secondary sources, I'd just retain it as it is. As you linked in Secretary (title), both "General Secretary" and "Secretary General" are commonly used, even if Google Translation opts for one over the other, but I think what sources use for this particular case is the most important determination. czar12:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking into more data to see if there's a clear tendency towards one our the other. Google Search gives 4,410 results for "general secretary"[7] and 3,760 for "secretary general";[8] Google Books results seem to show a slight preference towards "general secretary", with 998 results in English language books,[9] compared with 854 results for "secretary general";[10] Ngrams also doesn't have data on "secretary general", where it does on "general secretary".[11] Official translations of CNT communiques seem to almost exclusively use "general secretary";[12][13][14][15] although there is one ICL-CIT translation that uses "secretary general".[16]
As there seems to be a slight lean in search results towards "general secretary", as "general secretary" seems to already be Wikipedia's preferred case for trade unions, and as the CNT seems to prefer "general secretary" in its own English communiques, I think I'm coming down more firmly in favour of moving to "general secretary". --Grnrchst (talk) 10:53, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Google hits and even ngrams are a rough/imprecise measure at scale (including advertising/spam/etc.), so I wouldn't read into them unless they're different by an order of magnitude. But I can support switching to "General Secretary" on the strength that those three officially translated CNT communiques use that instead of "Secretary General". It's not very strong—being only two times and perhaps even as likely due to machine translation than to stylistic preference—but that's two more than the other. Side note: I also looked at two Spanish Civil War history sources (Preston and Peirats) and both appeared to use the terms interchangeably. czar14:06, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My understanding's always been "general secretaries for trade unions and political parties / secretaries general for those Int.Orgs that choose that terminology" (per our article). If you go into the ILO's terminology database ILOTerm (click the "public access" button) and run a search for "secretario general" on the Spanish>English bitexts, the results for "Secretary[-]General" (predominantly, if not exclusively) refer to the UNSG while those for "General Secretary" cover a multitude of trade unions and labour confederations. Moscow Mule (talk) 15:29, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
