Draft talk:Spa Conference (2-3 July 1918)

revision

@Mathglot I have reviewed this one. Could you take a look and see if it's ready to be moved to mainspace? Thanks Sintropepe (talk) 18:59, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Sintropepe. Are you an ESL speaker, native in Portuguese? Some of the translation seems off, and some grammar and syntax issues as well. There are some verbs in the past that use the present perfect ('They have VERBed') when they should use the simple past ('They VERBed').

The translation is uneven, with some of it easy to understand, and other parts requiring a lot of effort. This sentence is both too long, and unparseable for me:

To impose peace conditions consistent with the war goals of the Reich, Erich Ludendorff, the main spokesperson for the German hardliners, supporters of the realization of the program of war goals,[10] wished to lead the great battle of annihilation which have been dreaming of German strategists since the outbreak of the conflict in the West, the break having to be obtained by shock troops and their unlimited tactical and strategic exploitation once the Allied front is broken.

For example, who was "dreaming of German strategists"? My guess is nobody, and maybe the subject and object have been reversed, so that that German strategists were dreaming of the great battle of annihilation; but that's not what it says.

A simple question to ask about a sentence, is: what is the subject, and what is the verb? In that sentence, the subject is relatively easy to find, and it is "Erich Ludendorff"; but what is the verb? What is Ludendorff doing? "Wishing"? If so, that verb is separated from the subject by a clause whose function I don't understand. And then there's the final clause, starting with "the break...", and I don't know what that's doing there. This sounds like it might work better as three or four sentences, maybe.

But this is just one sentence, and I think the whole article needs to be copyedited for proper English syntax and grammar and for encyclopedic tone. I haven't really used automated grammar checkers, but you could try putting the article through one of them, and see what suggestions it offers. I didn't really read the whole thing, and if you fix those issues, I can look again. Adding 7804j. Mathglot (talk) 01:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey! I will review it again and check the original with more attention. I suspected that I would leave some mistakes uncorrected. Thanks for your revision. Sintropepe (talk) 13:23, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I confess that the first revision was rough and there were lots of senseless and disorganized information. Now I think most thinks make sense. Could you take a look now @Mathglot? Thanks again for your eye. Sintropepe (talk) 14:07, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot Thanks for flagging these! For the context, the person who originally published this is no longer with OKA due to repeated quality issues, hence why Sintropepe was taking on the revisions 7804j (talk) 17:24, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@7804j:, thanks for that explanation. Sintropepe, thanks for taking this on. For the time being, I have removed the Draft submitted header and replaced it with unsubmitted draft for now. Mathglot (talk) 11:08, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@Sintropepe and 7804j:, I think this is a worthy draft on a notable topic that would pass AFC with a bit of cleanup (and might even pass without it, although that's not certain). A fairly low amount of effort would ready this for publication; anyone feel like taking this on? It doesn't even need a translator at this point, just a copy editor, so anyone could do it. Then the draft should be submitted. Mathglot (talk) 16:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@Sintropepe Can you finalize the cleanup? 7804j (talk) 17:07, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot I see we both made some contributions at the beginning of the month regarding the issues you mentioned. What else can be done, in you opinion? I'm available to do it Sintropepe (talk) 18:07, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot in case you missed this message Sintropepe (talk) 20:25, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Sintropepe, thanks for the reminder. In general, there are some translation issues, but mostly remaining issues are with other things involving a properly written draft that merits inclusion as an article. This is a bigger issue for OKA translators than just this one Draft, as the job is more than just translation, but that is out of scope for this discussion. Some specific thoughts on this Draft:

1. S[entence] 1: Why are we using the piped term Imperial Reich in the lead, instead of German Empire? The fact that it is not a redirect or article and had to be piped should've been a clue that something was wrong there.
2. S 1: what two major German offensives? Link to one article or article section if there is one that covers just those two, or else replace with between the <bla-bla offensive> and the <yadda-yadda battle>
3. S 2: Nothing really wrong with Gathered in Spa, but because the town hasn't been described yet and English (or ESL) speakers may be familiar with spa but not Spa, I would either change that to Gathered in the town of Spa or to Gathered in Spa, Belgium. I'd prefer the latter, because it imparts more information, and nothing has been said about Belgium yet.
4. Last S of lead: prefer English. Where you have Friedensturm mentioned in German in the lead, along with an explanatory note mentioning the English name (unlinked), this should be switched around: English in the lead, German (if needed, but I don't see why) mentioned in the explanatory note. Either way, the English name must be linked; it took me some time to discover that this is, in fact, the Fourth Battle of Champagne (don't take my word for it—investigate!), which is part of the Second Battle of the Marne. Fourth Battle of Champagne is a redirect, so you can use that as the linked expression in the lead; furthermore, the redirect is now linked to Bataille de Champagne which is how French Wikipedia calls it, although they also have Quatrième bataille de Champagne as a redirect to it.
5. Last S of lead: victory of the Reich: same as point 1; in English, this would be victory of the Empire.

That is as far as I got, but I think it shows some themes in the lead, that if similar to how the body was translated, require attention throughout the draft; namely:

• Use English. If necessary, foreign terms in French or German can be given in parentheses, or in an explanatory note, or not at all. If there is an article (or article section) which covers the topic in English, then just link it; no foreign expression is needed at all. (If the foreign expression is also common in English, for example: Panzer, Blitzkrieg and so on, then include it, either with or without an explanation depending on context; but in these cases, the foreign terms often exist in en-wiki, such as Panzer and Blitzkrieg, so again, just link them; no explanation needed.)
• Watch out for literal translation of proper names, or any other topic that might be rendered differently in English, and track down the English name, and link it if there is an article for it. Examples: not Imperial Reich but German Empire. Not Friedensturm, and not the literal translation "Battle of Champagne (1918)" for the French Bataille de Champagne (1918) because we don't call it that; instead, use "Fourth Battle of Champagne".
• If fr-wiki or de-wiki has an article for something in the article and en-wiki does not, then you can either add an appropriate redirect yourself to English Wikipedia if we can point to a section of some article, or else use an {{interlanguage link}} template to link it to the French or German (or other language) article.

If you go through the whole article fixing up items like these, that will improve the draft to a point where it is probably ready for submission. Mathglot (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)