User talk:Szfski

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

Announcement of my existence.

Hello. I'm watching. (Add one Knowledge point.) --Gimme danger (talk) 02:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But you didn't see the backflip I just did? How can you say you're watching? Szfski (talk) 05:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I left a note for you on my talk page. --Gimme danger (talk) 21:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic phonology

I noticed your change. Does the cited source support your new edit? Cbdorsett (talk) 04:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does. If you like I can send you a PDF of the article if you cannot access JSTOR.Szfski (talk) 04:33, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A request for your mad translation skills

Hello there. I got your name from Category:Translators ar-en. I'm currently working on the article for Honoré de Balzac's novel La Peau de Chagrin. In it, he includes this writing, another image of which can be found here. The writing is (from what I can tell) Arabic, and the translation from the book is here. I wonder if you can tell me how accurate it is. Thanks in advance for your assistance. – Scartol • Tok 13:55, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Turn and Burn

I reverted your edits because you didn't follow WP:NOR which states: "all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source." I don't doubt that what you put on the page is 100% correct, but you need to review Wikipedia rules: "[Y]ou must cite reliable sources that provide information directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented." Find a cite that deals with your particular edit, but until then, original research doesn't really belong. Sorry. If you have any other questions, please let me know. GoCuse44 (talk) 00:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

translation of "Nasín cand' as prantas nasen"

Thanks for the answer. I don't think we're supposed to sign our work here, so I removed your name from the article. I also made a few punctuation changes.

Why "grin" rather than "smile"? Why not repeat the part about complaining as the original does? Maybe something like "Why then this complaint? It's true—"

I'm sorry if I'm annoying you, but if so, I hope you'll retaliate by fixing my translation of Lermontov's "Dream", which I made with a dictionary and Nabokov's translation (to replace the latter, a copyvio). —JerryFriedman (Talk) 19:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure Szfski (talk) 05:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Very impressive, and thanks for letting me know. I made a couple punctuation changes (again) and changed "immersed" to "submerged" for an additional difference from Nabokov's translation. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Latin Spelling &c.

Judging from your edits, you are doing them basing on your own research. IIRC, this is forbidden by Wikipedia policies, so this alone could be a valid reason to revert you change.

But I personally agree with you, that primary sources (aka "own research" in this case) are more important than secondary sources, as the primary sources supply facts, and secoundary sources supply interpretation of the facts. The facts never change, but the interpretation may.

However, it would be advisable to put the controversial bit into question first (on the article talk page), wait a little bit (a week or a month), and edit if there is no reaction or discussion. I am personally rather fed up with persons, who are constantly reverting the classical pronuntiation section on the grounds that they heard how their priest pronounced this or that on their mass, or what their Latin teacher said 30 years ago, or that there is such tradition there in their country. Mamurra (talk) 19:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My initial revert was based on bad secondary sources. My subsequent change of the diphthong value was based on primary ones, as noted. I don't see how consulting ancient grammarians counts as Original Research, whereas consulting modern ones does not. If Varro can be cited in the article, why can't Terentius Scaurus? Szfski (talk) 05:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citing ancient grammarians is the original research, because they don't provide all the matter our knowledge is based on. Citing modern grammarians is not the original research, because their theories are (or: should be) based on a variety of sources, and are a synthesis of assertions of ancient grammarians and rhetors (like Cicero), epigraphic material (spelling errors and such), and also stuff induced from the preserved works, like poetry (how metrical licences change over centuries) etc. Of course, in the particular case of the AE diphthong this variety of sources is somehow limited, and may be misinterpreted as well (e.g. the confusion of AE and E in Cisalpine Gaul means, that these were confused in Cisalpine Gaul and this process says nothing about what pronunciation there was in Rome at the same time). The problem is that ancient grammarians rather vaguely define the sound AE, as you certainly noticed yourself, and so their statements are open to interpretation in various ways. What we know is that there were TWO sounds in this diphthong, and 1st century BCE is the time when it started to merge into E (and yet that in very ancient times there was no diphthong at all, but two syllables A-I, which can be observed in Ennius, Lucretius, Virgil, Martial and so on). But when this process has been ultimately finished, we have no slightest idea. Inscriptions can tell us, that in 3rd century AD this process was already widespread, but it is unknown, if at the same time the AE survived as diphthong in the language of educated classes (I mean, not as enforced in schools, but naturally), or was already completely dead. Mamurra (talk) 09:36, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Again, Varro's "De Lingua Latina" is used as a source in certain portions of the article (specifically the bit about Edus for Hædus.) Since it is quite common for acrolectic/educated/prestige variety of a language to retain (sometimes even artificially) more archaic features that the plebeian variety has dropped (such is the case in French, Arabic, German, Modern Hebrew and Modern Greek, for example) I could easily imagine that the upper class pronounced a diphthong well into the 2nd century CE. However the reverse can sometimes occur, with the more "lower-class" registers preserving features dropped from the more patrician variety (as is the case with Russian, Mandarin, Dutch, Italian and some varieties of Modern English.) But this is not in question. What is at issue is the fact that what the primary sources do demonstrate unequivocally is that the j value for the second element of Æ was already archaic by the latter half of the second century BCE. It is therefore unequivocally anachronistic to render Virgil's speech as containing a phoneme [aj].Szfski (talk) 22:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is however still less anachronistic than to render Virgil as this, and that was what caused my revert. Mamurra (talk) 12:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I already said that that edit was made in error. Please stop correcting me on things which I myself have acknowledged as mistaken.Szfski (talk) 03:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Then please stop keeping referring as an issue something that is not one: if you look through even the older edits of the relevant Talk page, you will see that I kinda always have considered [aj] for AE as archaizing pronunciation. It is however still more correct (for the period in question) than to render the diphthong as E. And, just to recall your own words, I could easily imagine that the older/more conservative people pronounced the diphthong as [aj] well into 1st century BCE. It will not be visible in script, because "AI" (as opposed to "AE"), when written, denotes two separate syllables. :) Mamurra (talk) 14:04, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I realize that /e/ and [aj] are both inexact/incorrect renderings of æ for the period in question. And yes, it is entirely possible that [aj] existed well into the 1st century BC. Unfortunately, even if this is true (and it quite possibly is), it is not grounds to automatically assume that this feature was synchronically active during the latter half of the 1st century BCE (during which the Aeneid was composed.) And I have, as I believe I have said, already admitted that a value of /e/ for æ is likely incorrect for anything BCE in urban speech. That does not mean it is at all a good idea to render as [aj] a diphthong which had not been pronounced that way for quite some time. It is a terrible idea to transcribe it as [aj] between phonetic brackets when we can be quite certain it was nor pronounced this way. How, exactly, is this not an issue? Moreover, the change from ai to æ does not simply denote a change in syllabification. There are plenty of instances where i is used to describe a Palatal approximant. (Cuius, iuxta etc.) Might I suggest [a͡ɪ] for the phoneme in question? Szfski (talk) 20:50, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can source this, feel free. "Cuius, iuxta": could you remind me of a place, though, where "AI" is used to denote one syllable in a Latin word?

As for the - I admit that it is marginal - question of [aj] vs [e], although it might be that both are "inexact/incorrect for the period in question", I feel however that [aj], for the period is question, is still better, because, unlike [e], it contains two sounds where there were two sounds, even if not exactly these. But this is not the issue of AE alone, as you know Quintilian, see what does he wrote about words like "heri" or "maximus": so if they used "E" in script to denote something that wasn't really "E" (and they knew themselves it wasn't), or "I" to denote something that wasn't really "I", we can really be in trouble, when it comes to strict definition, what a grammarian has in mind when he writes that something "sounds more like E". Mamurra (talk) 10:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Al Farooj Fresh

Hi Szfski,

I came to your page as you are still in the category:translators ar-en. I'm afraid I have a request for you. We are discussing Al Farooj Fresh at AfD and I think it's close to being notable with English language sources, however it's probably not quite there. I wonder if you could have a look for relevant Arabic sources and bring them to the party please?! Thanks, Bigger digger (talk) 12:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

nv-1 Dinék'ehjí

Usertemplate/Bable nv-1 (Navajo) is now in Navajo. You are one of 5 people who actually have it on their pages... and I was bored :P Ahéhee' Seb az86556 (talk) 11:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rowghan/Rōghan

Although eastern varieties of Persian are more conservative in preserving the distinction of "ō" and "ē, there are always some exceptions. I don't insist of mentioning "Rōghan" in that section (because example like "Rōshan" are more clear), however, it was pronounced with "ō" in Middle Persian and in most of colloquial western varieties of Persian, it's pronounced more like "Rughan" (the usual merge between "ō" and "ū"). Another important exception (in preserving the distinction of "ē" and "ī" in eastern varieties) is the original combination of "ēn" which is changed to "in" in the Tajik variety, almost without exception. Alefbe (talk) 18:47, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sufi Saints of South Asia

Hello Szfski. I notice that you are interested in Sufism. I have put forth a request on the Reward Board for assistance in bringing the Sufi Saints of South Asia article to at least B-class. All meaningful contributors will get barnstars. The article is in dire need of being developed. It is an important article in relation to the Islam in South Asia. Please help in developing the article. Regards--Shahab (talk) 06:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Szfski! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 2 of the articles that you created are tagged as Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring these articles up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 329 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:

Adel Karasholi - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
Jeanne-Marie Cash - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 05:27, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proofreading help?

Hey there! I saw that you're listed as a French proofreader, so I was wondering if you could help me out. I recently translated Déclic Images from French to save it from deletion, but it definitely needs proofreading. If could help out, that would be great! If you're too busy at the moment, let me know so I can ask someone else. Thanks! Maethordaer (talk) 19:09, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Liszt

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Franz Liszt, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. (Your edit.) Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

your edits on Hafez

Hi, You reverted one of my edits on Hafez: I have to say that many of those oh-so to relevant links are promotional, suspected of violating copyrights, and blogs which fails WP:El. Please check them again.Farhikht (talk) 17:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(a) The site containing readings does not violate copyright because Iran is not a signatory of the Berne convention and therefore Iranian copyright does not apply outside of Iran. (b) The links to online translations are relevant because they contain information and content that someone curious about the article's subject could reasonably be expected to want access to. Linking to blogs is not ipso facto a violation of WP:El, but simply a general guideline. Take a look at the actual content. Szfski (talk) 21:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On copyright in Iran: The country has a legal code to protect the proprietary and intellectual rights of works produced for inside Iran. See this. I think that section needs clean up.Farhikht (talk) 12:46, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it does. But does not apply in the US, which has no copyright agreements with Iran. On the former see this. Regarding WP policy, see this: While Wikipedia prefers content which is free anywhere in the world, it accepts content which is free in the United States even if it may be under copyright in some other countries. And as for the blogs and translations, it makes far more sense to me to raise the issue on the Hafez discussion page rather than simply wiping out the links that many people (including me) have gone to the trouble of collecting. Szfski (talk) 18:26, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism

Damn it! I never know how to react to that sort of thing. On on hand yes, on the other hand you're making me look much more popular than I really am. Say, would you have any interest in a quick translation from Serbo-Croatian (or whatever it is you kids are calling it these days).--Danger (talk) 00:54, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing. I always enjoy some good WikiTranslation. I'll get to it soon enough, prolly this week. Szfski (talk) 20:52, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just letting you know

I have a book of my poetry coming out in September for limited distribution. In it I have included two of my "renderings" of poems originally by Daniel Ladinsky (with acknowledgement). I have tried to salve his metaphors, which often are not bad, and improve on his slapdash writing style. If his publisher objects I shall explain that Ladinsky came to me in a dream and begged me to "take his work to a wider readership." I feel I am on strong ground here. (Are you attuned to irony?) Rumiton (talk) 12:08, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Colloquial box

I really wanted to edit that box. I have edited it in a colloquial variety, rather than MSA, if you don't mind :) --Mahmudmasri (talk) 13:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not. And I suppose it's fitting that it be in Egyptian, since Egyptian Arabic is the only variant with its own Wiki. Szfski (talk) 00:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Written Taiwanese

per your recent comment, perhaps you could start an article on Written Taiwanese? If well sourced, that would go a long way toward clearing things up. — kwami (talk) 01:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've actually wanted to create an article (though I'd call it Written Hokkien) like that for quite some time. The trouble is (1) I don't want to rely exclusively on sources written in Chinese, but I don't see how not to and (2) I want to come up with a way to do it that will not result in massive Mandarin backlash.

The two are closely linked, in my view. If I only use Chinese-language sources, then all the non-Sinophone editors will be at a disadvantage in the disputes that arise. And arise they will, since it seems that every time a new page is created to document and describe some aspect of some Chinese dialect/language that isn't Mandarin, all hell breaks loose on the talk page and everyone is treated to a bucketful of babble about how "the Han Chinese have ONE language."

Basically, I want to do it, but am reluctant to do so if I know it will cause a gigantic headache and waste a lot of people's time. --Szfski (talk) 03:17, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

help in Arab needed

Dear Szfski, when I was looking for active users fluent in Arab, I found you and was impressed with your language skills. Eigentlich könnte ich Ihnen auch auf Deutsch schreiben (meine Muttersprache), but this is the en-WP :-) On this page, the current Libyan governments lists the primary and secondary administrative subdivisions. I'm looking for a transcription of the subdivisions of Tripoli and Bengasi, and, in the case of Bengasi, matching them with the list in Bengasi#Administrative_divisions. The page of Geohive for Tripoli lists the population figures of the city wards, but only on the basis of Arab writing, that we can't use in the en-WP or de-WP. Same goes for Bengasi. Here we have the transcribed names (correct or not, I don't know), but I still must match them with the Arab list on page [1], although there at least eight of more than thirty city wards are transcribed already. Once you find time to spend on this task, your help will be greatly appreciated. Greetings,--Ratzer (talk) 13:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Research survey invitation

Greetings Szfski-

My name is Randall Livingstone, and I am a doctoral student at the University of Oregon, studying digital media and online community. I am posting to invite you to participate in my research study exploring the work of Wikipedia editors who are members of WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias. The online survey should take 20 to 25 minutes to complete and can be found here:

https://oregon.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cSHzuwaQovaZ6ss

Your responses will help online communication researchers like me to better understand the collaborations, challenges, and purposeful work of Wikipedia editors like you. In addition, at the end of the survey you will have the opportunity to express your interest in a follow-up online interview with the researcher.

This research project has been reviewed and approved by the Wikimedia Research Committee as well as the Office for Protection of Human Subjects at the University of Oregon. For a detailed description of the project, please visit its Meta page. This survey is voluntary, and your confidentiality will be protected. You will have the choice of using your Wikipedia User Name during the research or creating a unique pseudonym. You may skip any question you choose, and you may withdraw at any time. By completing the survey, you are providing consent to participate in the research.

If you have any questions about the study, please contact me via my Talk Page (UOJComm) or via email. My faculty advisor is Dr. Ryan Light. If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research participant, please contact the Office for Protection of Human Subjects at the University of Oregon.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Randall Livingstone School of Journalism & Communication University of Oregon UOJComm (talk) 18:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Daniel Ladinsky

Hi there. I see the Wiki-reputation of this subject has risen greatly today, due to some new edits by Wabashin. Rumiton (talk) 00:50, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Following on from my talk page; I don't think having previously expressed the opinion that the subject is a rebarbative nitwit should disqualify you from participation in any Conflict of Interest investigation. As I understand it, COI normally applies to people who can be shown to benefit materially from the reputation of a subject. Mostly employees, etc. There is no restriction on ordinary Catholics editing the Pope Benedict article. But probably the best thing is to watch the editing process carefully and make sure that all significant points of view are neutrally represented, bearing in mind WP:BLP. Cheers. Rumiton (talk) 11:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Romania

Hi! From your edits, it looks like you might be interested in contributing to WikiProject Romania. It is a project aimed at organizing and improving the quality and accuracy of articles related to Romania. Thanks and best regards!

--Codrin.B (talk) 06:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

John the Warrior

hello,

I see you are a translator from Russian to English. Could you help translate User:GreatOrangePumpkin/Sandbox6? The troparion and quotes from the kontaktion need to be translated. Regards.--GoP _T ^C _N 14:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done Szfski (talk) 18:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amazing! Thanks! :)--GoP _T ^C _N 18:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Innocence of Muslims film trailer

Hi, I'm writing because you are listed in Category:Translators ar-en. It was recently pointed out at Talk:Innocence of Muslims#ARABIC Wikipedia version that the English Wikipedia article on the deliberately inflammatory film trailer Innocence of Muslims contains very much more detailed information about the deliberate deceit on the part of the filmmakers to try to obscure their identity and the nature of the trailers which has not yet been added to the Arabic version at ar:براءة_المسلمين which is getting about 8,000 page views per day presently. Would you please consider adding some of the details which might help Arabic readers understand some of the missing details of the trailers? Thank you for your consideration. —Cupco 22:13, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP Poetry and The Canterbury Tales task force

As someone who is listed as a participant for WikiProject Poetry, I hope you will be interested to learn of an attempt to revive the WP and alongside this the creation of task force to improve coverage of The Canterbury Tales. We are currently looking for participants to help set up the basics. Please get involved if you can, and we can hopefully revive this important project within Wikipedia! Many thanks, MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Love history & culture? Get involved in WikiProject World Digital Library!

World Digital Library Wikipedia Partnership - We need you!

Hi Szfski! I'm the Wikipedian In Residence at the World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO. I'm recruiting Wikipedians who are passionate about history & culture to participate in improving Wikipedia using the WDL's vast free online resources. Participants can earn our awesome WDL barnstar and help to disseminate free knowledge from over 100 libraries in 7 different languages. Multilingual editors are welcome! (But being multilingual is not a requirement.) Please sign up to participate here. Thanks for editing Wikipedia and I look forward to working with you! SarahStierch (talk) 22:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Voynich Manuscript: Arabic !

Hello, I happen to have seen your wiki page here. Sorry, you're late for a decoding of VM. Nevertheless, the linguistic foundations of my solution would be interesting to you: There is a Aljamiado transliteration from Al-Andalus. For details, see: http://voynich2arabic.wordpress.com/origin-and-genesis/ Regards, Jodawiki (talk) 07:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Population update project

Hi. The 18th edition of Ethnologue just came out, and if we divide up our language articles among us, it won't take long to update them. I would appreciate it if you could help out, even if it's just a few articles (5,000 articles is a lot for just me), but I won't be insulted if you delete this request.

A largely complete list of articles to be updated is at Category:Language articles citing Ethnologue 17. The priority articles are in Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 17 speaker data. These are the 10% that have population figures at least 25 years old.

Probably 90% of the time, Ethnologue has not changed their figures between the 17th and 18th editions, so all we need to do is change "e17" to "e18" in the reference (ref) field of the language info box. That will change the citation for the artcle to the current edition. Please put the data in the proper fields, or the info box will flag it as needing editorial review. The other relevant fields are "speakers" (the number of native speakers in all countries), "date" (the date of the reference or census that Ethnologue uses, not the date of Ethnologue!), and sometimes "speakers2". Our convention has been to enter e.g. "1990 census" when a census is used, as other data can be much older than the publication date. Sometimes a citation elsewhere in the article depends on the e17 entry, in which case you will need to change "name=e17" to "name=e18" in the reference tag (assuming the 18th edition still supports the cited claim).

Remember, we want the *total* number of native speakers, which is often not the first figure given by Ethnologue. Sometimes the data is too incompatible to add together (e.g. a figure from the 1950s for one country, and a figure from 2006 for another), in which case it should be presented that way. That's one use for the "speakers2" field. If you're not sure, just ask, or skip that article.

Data should not be displayed with more than two, or at most three, significant figures. Sometimes it should be rounded off to just one significant figure, e.g. when some of the component data used by Ethnologue has been approximated with one figure (200,000, 3 million, etc.) and the other data has greater precision. For example, a figure of 200,000 for one country and 4,230 for another is really just 200,000 in total, as the 4,230 is within the margin of rounding off in the 200,000. If you want to retain the spurious precision of the number in Ethnologue, you might want to use the {{sigfig}} template. (First parameter in this template is for the data, second is for the number of figures to round it off to.)

Dates will often need to be a range of all the country data in the Ethnologue article. When entering the date range, I often ignore dates from countries that have only a few percent of the population, as often 10% or so of the population isn't even separately listed by Ethnologue and so is undated anyway.

If Ethnologue does not provide a date for the bulk of the population, just enter "no date" in the date field. But if the population figure is undated, and hasn't changed between the 17th & 18th editions of Ethnologue, please leave the ref field set to "e17", and maybe add a comment to keep it so that other editors don't change it. In cases like this, the edition of Ethnologue that the data first appeared in may be our only indication of how old it is. We still cite the 14th edition in a couple dozen articles, so our readers can see that the data is getting old.

The articles in the categories linked above are over 90% of the job. There are probably also articles that do not currently cite Ethnologue, but which we might want to update with the 18th edition. I'll need to generate another category to capture those, probably after most of the Ethnologue 17 citations are taken care of.

Jump in at the WP:LANG talk page if you have any comments or concerns. Thanks for any help you can give!

— kwami (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can you help verify translations of articles from German

Hello Szfski,

Would you be able to help evaluate the accuracy of translations of Wikipedia articles from German to English Wikipedia?

File:Language icon.svg

This would involve evaluating a translated article on the English Wikipedia by comparing it to the original German article, and marking it "Pass" or "Fail" based on whether the translation faithfully represents the original. Here's the reason for this request:

There are a number of articles on English Wikipedia that were created as machine translations from different languages including German , using the Content Translation tool, sometimes by users with no knowledge of the source language. The config problem that allowed this to happen has since been fixed, but this has left us with a backlog of articles whose accuracy of translation is suspect or unknown, including some articles translated from German. In many cases, other editors have come forward later to copyedit and fix any English grammar or style issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the translation is accurate, as factual errors from the original translation may remain. To put it another way: Good English is not the same as good translation.

If you can help out, that would be great. Here's a sample of the articles that need checking:

All you have to do, is compare the English article to the German article, and assess them "Pass" or "Fail" (the {{Pass}} and {{Fail}} templates may be useful here). (Naturally, if you feel like fixing an inaccurate translation and then assessing it, that's even better, but it isn't required.) Also please note that we are assessing accuracy not completeness, so if the English article is much shorter that is okay, as long as whatever has been translated so far is factually accurate.

If you can help, please {{ping}} me here to let me know. You can add your pass/fails above, right next to each link, or you may indicate your results below. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 07:32, 11 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Persian prosody

I see that you were planning to write an entry on Persian prosody, which has now been done. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:40, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Szfski. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

translations of Hafez

Hi AZ,

Who would you recommend as a translator of Hafez? I'm specifically looking for ghazal #42, which starts حال دل با تو گفتنم هوس است. (I have Avery on order, but don't know how he compares. Doesn't look like Bell covered this one. I found an English translation online at hafizonlove.com, but the rhymes drive me nuts.)

You can answer through my email if you like. — kwami (talk) 01:59, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Szfski. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]