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Translation versus paraphrase

Posted: 30 Jan 2017 16:26
by BarryJ
I wrote a free paraphrase of http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Wie_ ... orgenstern; I would rather call it a "paraphrase" rather than a "translation" because I took some liberties with the text to get it to fit the meter, including ignoring some German words, and inserting English words not in the German. I thought to create the Template:Paraphrase to cover this possibility, but I'm beginning to have second thoughts, especially since I now see that a lot of texts called "translations" are in fact metrical paraphrases. Also, the maze of templates and categories behind Template:Translation is a little overwhelming -- I thought (naively) that creating just one little template would do the job, but I'm not sure it deserves the full-blown treatment. And it would involve evaluating a lot of "translations" and changing them to "paraphrases", which I'm not sure would be helpful.
So, what I would like to do is delete the Template:Paraphrase (and Category:Paraphrases), then call my paraphrase a translation. I would then label it somehow as a "metrical paraphrase" or something like that. Leave the Translations system the way it is.

Re: Translation versus paraphrase

Posted: 04 Feb 2017 03:31
by carlos
Hi Barry,

Indeed, there are lots of paraphrases currently labeled as "translations" on CPDL. There are also texts with literal and less-literal translations (but not to the point of being a paraphrase, I guess). I agree with you that maybe it's not worth to indicate these nuances via different templates.

If you decide that the template and associated category should be deleted, please let us know here or by editing those pages and adding {{subst:delete}} at the top of them.

Regards,

Re: Translation versus paraphrase

Posted: 06 Feb 2017 00:07
by BarryJ
Thanks, Carlos.
I have changed Template.Paraphrase on the text page to Template.Translation, and marked the template and category for deletion, as you suggested.