Talk:Introitus et Exitus

A fact from Introitus et Exitus appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Introitus et Exitus, a financial record of the Apostolic Camera from 1279 to 1524, has been used to authenticate the provenance of artworks and study past European exchange and interest rates?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/June.

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Sorry for breaking the ref! But routine translation is not original research; if it were practically every article would be tainted by it. Doops | talk 03:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is. You think the Latin means one thing; I think it means another; then someone else comes along and he thinks a third translation would be more appropriate. I have provided a source for the translation that is currently in the article, and would ask that you provide a source for whatever translation you think is more appropriate. If it were a well-known translation (i.e. a single word for which thousands of sources coudl be provided) then it would not be necessary; however, since this is a relatively obscure topic, I think a source is in order. Savidan 03:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, seriously, think a minute. WP:OR says nothing about translation, and with good reason— the wikipedia is literally filled with useful translations, provided by editors, of foreign words and phrases. Indeed, some editors improve English-language articles by translating foreign-wikipedia articles and citing those articles as a source.

All that said, I'm not actually very happy with my first translation, since "entrance" and "exit" could be misinterpreted. A good literal translation of the phrase would be "The apostolic chamber's comings-in and goings-out". Doops | talk 04:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, amending my comment now that you've amended yours: let's look at this phrase. Your source's "translation" ignores the Apostolicae Camerae; which just patently makes it a loose rendering, not a translation. But I'm sure you wouldn't argue with me on what Apostolicae Camerae means, nor on et; so that just leaves two single words; and since they're each other's antonym, there's really just one word to translate! :) Doops | talk 04:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Obvously the source doesn't translate "Apostolic Camera" itself. If you want to add of the Apostlic Camera outside of the quotation marks, I wouldn't stop you although I think the opening sentence makes that clear enough. There's no point continuing this dicussion in the abstract. Even if we can't agree about translation when there's no source, I'm sure we can agree that when there is a source for a certain translation that it ought not be changed to another one without a source (if we had two sources with conflicting translations we could either choose between them or list both). Savidan 04:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I don't quite agree with your last point -- when a sourced "translation" is patently wrong, I don't think we should be in the business of reporting it uncritically as fact; we'd need to distance ourself a little. And even if it's not wrong, I don't think there's any hard NEED to stick with a sourced translation if we (the editors) have a preferred alternative translation which we think (for example) is clearer or more natural-sounding. The problem isn't that we have a sourced translation; the problem is that we have a sourced translation and an editor (you) who likes it and is willing to fight for it. But, OK, this particular instance isn't that bad; so I'll defer to your preference and stop being annoying. Cheers, Doops | talk 04:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not annoying at all: I think this is an important issue and don't mind discussing it. Savidan 20:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]