Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of African cities in different languages


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was delete. Keep voters have failed to assert how this is encyclopedic material, although at least one keep voter admitted that he doesn't know what encyclopedic content is. Wikipedia is not an indiscrimate collection of information, nor a translation service, nor a study aid. Mackensen (talk) 21:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Names of African cities in different languages
There is no particular reason why an incomplete list of cities in Africa in different languages is in any way relevant or notable to an English-language encyclopaedia, particularly as it violates Wikipedia is not a dictionary. While some articles include the name of a place in different languages that may be relevant to the place in question, there is no reasonable reason why a Wikipedia user needs to know what Cape Town is called in Hindi. If anything; this should be either deleted as irrelevant or moved to WikiDictionary or WikiSource.  Páll  (Die pienk olifant) 05:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep useful and interesting list. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Hmmm. As a student of Hindi, and a person who tries to be reasonable, I can easily think of many contexts in which someone would want to know what Cape Town is called in Hindi. As a teacher of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) at the university level, such a list would have come in handy occasionally for me and very often for my students, who are forever struggling over problems of translating geographic proper nouns. Inter lingua  talk
 * Delete. Interesting, yes, but not an appropriate Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminant collection of information. Hundreds of cities, hundreds of languages. This is what the interwiki links to articles in other languages are for. Zaian 09:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Not to discount the other arguments for deletion but the "inter-lingua link redundancy" argument is specious. First, not all of the foreign language variants have Interwiki pages.  Second, foreign language using non-Latin alphabets do not usually contain transliteration or pronunciation information. E.g., Capetown has no Hindi article and the Chinese article does not tell how to render 開普敦 into something readable to a non-Chinese.
 * In general, Interwikis are very Eurocentric whereas lists such as these have the potential to include important non-European forms. AjaxSmack 17:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair comment, but I don't think Wikipedia is or should be a translation service, other than in the limited sense of providing interwiki links. With pages like this, perhaps it could attempt to become one, but it would be a very ad-hoc attempt. Would "Food names in different languages" be an appropriate article?  I think not, although some might find it useful, but Wikipedia is not only about being useful. It's about being an encyclopedia, which means selecting carefully what to include. Zaian 18:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete, per nom and Zaian. These cross-language articles cause huge problems for verifiability (OR), and Wikipedia isn't a translation service. If you want to know what Cape Town is called in, say Portugese, then follow the inter-wiki links to the relevant language Cape Town article -- which has a much better chance of being verified and correct. - Motor (talk) 10:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, Zaian, and Motor. A list of this sort could go on and on---as Zaian says, "hundreds of cities, hundreds of languages". ---Charles 16:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per Zaian and others. Although this is arguably useful, it's redundant with interwiki links, and we don't include all useful information on WP. Mango juice talk 17:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Ok, it's incomplete and not so nice to see. But if updated it could turn to be useful.--Attilios 17:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per Zaian. -Dawson 17:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per Motor & Zaian.--Isotope23 18:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep (like here) because this information was deleted from several articles about cities, based on the fact that they are available in this list anyway. If we delete this list, the information should be moved piecemeal into the individual articles for fairness but I hardly think it's worth the effort; we'd rather keep this list. Also, names of cities say a lot about the history of the counties that speak those languages (eg Hungarian names often reflect German influence, due to historical reasons), they are not just a random collection of data. Moreover, most names are, in fact, verifiable from the interwiki links of the specific cities. Adam78 19:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - This information is much more likely to be useful divided up into the respective articles. I don't think we need articles of List of stuff in different languages.  Wickethewok 19:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep per the European page discussion. In addition (from that discussion) I add my comment -- and yes, I know Berlin is in Europe not Africa, just subsitute Benghazi and German if you feel the need -- The mere fact that some editors cannot verify some of the contents of some pages (because of their OWN SHORTCOMINGS) is no reason to delete a page. Perhaps, some users would not be in the best position to police that particular part of WP -- I don't verify whether the descriptions of various drugs have the reputed effects on their WP page; I'm just not qualified. Most of us are similarly not qualified, so should they be deleted? All of them? WP is not the lowest common denominator.  For quick verification of nearly the entire page, we can always look to the interwiki links to many of the articles on the cities listed; I will assume that the editors of the Japanese wiki know what Berlin is called in Japanese better than I and if WP:ja has Berlin as ベルリン that's verification enough. For the rest, if one is doubtful, you can discuss the matter on the discussion page.  But note: just because a source is not in English doesn't make it useless especially when it is the name by which one place is known in another language not some kernel of truth waiting for someone to translate it.  The outright arrogance demonstrated by the ENGLISH only crowd never ceases to amaze and disappoint me. Carlossuarez46 21:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * AGF please. A vote you don't agree with isn't necessarily arrogant (and isn't necessarily from an English speaker either). Zaian 21:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep per Adam and Carlos. &mdash; Khoikhoi  21:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Wikipedia is not a translating dictionary or an orthographic listing. —Centrx→talk 21:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. Let me explain. Suppose you wanted to know the etymology of the English word algebra. What would you do? You would of course look it up in an etymological dictionary. That is precisely what an etymological dictionary is for: to answer that kind of question. You would find that it is a word of Arabic origin. However, suppose your question was not "What is the etymology of algebra?", but rather "What words are there in English that have an Arabic origin?", a very different question. At this point, an etymological dictionary would be of little use. What you need is a list. Sure enough, the Wikipedia does have precisely such a list: the List of English words of Arabic origin. (There are also a List of English words of Sanskrit origin, a List of English words of Portuguese origin, and possibly others.) Why is it useful to have such lists as Names of European cities in different languages, List of European rivers with alternative names, List of European regions with alternative names, and others? Precisely because it is extremely unusual, in the universe of all city names, river names, region names, etc., in the entire world, for these to have such multiple names (exactly in the same way as it is unusual for English words to be of Arabic origin). Consider the map of any country, Britain, for example. While London has a variety of names in foreign languages, there are thousands of place names such as Acton, Brixton, Croydon, Kilburn, Luton, Paddington, Tottenham, and so on, that don't. While Cornwall has a variety of interesting names in foreign languages, most English counties don't, e.g. Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and so on. Ditto for river names. And it would be exactly the same if you considered the map of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, etc. In order to use a dictionary (such as the Wiktionary) to find the foreign-language forms, you would have to know a priori which forms to look for, i.e., you would have to know already which place names have foreign-language forms. But how can you know that in advance? In other words, the purpose of these lists is to answer questions such as: "What European cities have alternate forms in foreign languages?", "What European rivers have alternate forms in foreign languages?", "What European regions have alternate forms in foreign languages?", etc. These are all very different questions than "What names does Paddington have in foreign languages, if any?" (which you can look up in the Wiktionary), but those are precisely the questions that linguists, historians, toponymists ask. Why? Because the fact that a city has a multiplicity of foreign-language forms has great historical and linguistic implications, and it is the responsibility of the linguist, the historian, and the toponymist to study the reasons why that happened. To repeat, these lists answer a completely different type of questions than the ones that are answered by dictionaries, such as the Wiktionary.  Pasquale 21:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That argument is based upon an exceedingly limited if not downright false conception of an etymological dictionary. An etymological dictionary such as Wiktionary has categories, and indeed has categories that duplicate, and in the main far exceed, the articles that you list.  (Wiktionary has an auto-categorization system that categorizes words by etymology using templates.)  Indeed, we had a discussion about those very articles a year or so back.  See Articles for deletion/List of English words of Latin origin, Articles for deletion/List of English words of Greek origin, Articles for deletion/List of English words of Romanian origin, and Talk:Lists of English words of international origin. Uncle G 18:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * First of all, this is pertaining to Africa, and second of all, nearly every place in the world has a translation of its name into another language. that seems to be bogus reasoning, as one can assume that one place can be called something else in another language.  Páll  (Die pienk olifant) 08:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * My impression is that my two respondents above have completely failed to grasp what I was saying, but I'll let any third party be the judge of that. I can only suggest that these two respondents re-read my remarks a little more carefully.  Pasquale 19:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep if this is unencyclopedic, I don't know what an encyclopedia is. -- E ivindt@c 21:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep per Pasquale. Aguerriero  ( talk ) 21:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Useful and not hurtful. --Lambiam Talk 22:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:NOT a translating dictionary (or gazetteer). If you want to know the foreign name for something, or the etymology as above, an encyclopedia is not the place to look. What could be less encyclopedic than something that you wouldn't look in an encyclopedia for ? Angus McLellan (Talk) 08:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Tychocat 07:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 13:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.