Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Västgötska


 * 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 was   keep.   A rbitrarily 0   ( talk ) 16:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Västgötska

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This is an unreferenced and near-nonsensical machine-translation from an unreferenced article in the Swedish Wikipedia about a Swedish dialect. It has now remained in its current state for nearly ten days. In my view this type of contribution should be discouraged, but I think we should give the original "author" (in this case the person who ran the Swedish text through Google Translate), Fågelfors-Glen a chance to re-translate and re-research the subject and move the whole page to User:Fågelfors-Glen/Västgötska. Hegvald (talk) 09:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Not all bad translations can be blamed on computers. Some can be blamed on human translators who overestimate their command of the target language. If the topic is notable (and it appears to be), this is a case for cleanup rather than deletion. – Eastmain (talk • contribs) 09:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As I pointed out at Articles for deletion/Olof Strömstierna, a Swedish-speaker will immediately recognize the articles I nominated for deletion today as a machine translations. Sometimes knowing the original language and its idioms and nuances will make a machine translation somewhat transparent, but in the case of this article parts of it are nearly completely incomprehensible without consulting the original, which defeats the purpose of translation. This article suffers from the additional problem that there is absolutely no way to know the validity of the content, as even the original from which it was translated is completely unreferenced. It could be based on dialectological scholarship (but in that case, why no references?). But it may just as likely be based on someone's private recollections of the quaint speech of the picturesque peasants in the place where he spent his childhood summers, which I believe would be problematic in view of the policy on original research. --Hegvald (talk) 10:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions.  – Eastmain (talk • contribs)  09:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I find it strange that there are no references, it is after all copied and machine translated from the Swedish wikipedia. I'm fine with having it deleted, it is totally nonsense, and it's quite hard translating a Swedish dialect into english. Fågelfors-Glen (talk) 09:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Now i've edited the page, hopes it matches Wiki-standards, Fågelfors-Glen (talk) 09:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep. I did some additional cleanup for clarity and flow; I believe all of the artifacts of translation are gone. What remains is a brief overview of the changes between this dialect and Standard Swedish. There is one ref - the same ref as in the Swedish wikipedia. I'd like more, and I'm surprised there isn't some textbook somewhere that talks about this and other Swedish dialects. But I think we have enough here to keep it. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 15:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: The text is better but I will not really stretch as far as withdrawing this nomination. In response to Ultraexactzz, there are obviously going to be publications on the topic for anyone looking for them. One possible search of LIBRIS brings up a few titles ranging from an 18th century work (originally in Latin, published in Swedish in 1993) to relatively recent ones, but this is almost certainly just scratching the surface, as many articles are not going to be included as individual titles in the catalogue, and other publications may simply evade a search with these particular keywords. To Glen: If you are interested in working on the topic, I would suggest getting yourself to the nearest university library and looking at what they have about Swedish dialects. Look at a few of the most recent works and check what they refer to as older standard works on the subject. Then use these works (both the newer and the older but not completely outdated ones) to write an article. I think you will find that this will give more satisfaction and that you will learn more from the experience than just running things through Google Translate. You should probably begin by checking the website (dialect department) of the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore and perhaps contact them for some tips. --Hegvald (talk) 18:02, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep: I've just Googled "westgothian", and this came up. Unfortunately you have to pay for it, but the Google summary has "Westgothian pedlars', and their special language was known as ... is of Westgothian origin: to speak a secret language', plus the suffix ...". Another reference to the same book, here shows 4 occurrences of the term (two are in the index). I know that's pretty weak, but it does refer to "Westgothian" in the context of language - there must be proper references out there somewhere. Westrogothia does claim that "In Västergötland the Götaland dialect of Swedish is spoken", but unfortunately that isn't referenced. Anyway, that wasn't the most productive bit of searching I've ever done, but it might give others some ideas - and I think the possibility of it being notable is too strong for a Delete right now --  Boing!   said Zebedee  11:20, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That the subject exists and that there are "proper references out there somewhere" has never been in question. Hopefully, Fågelfors-Glen will take my advice above and consult the main institution specializing in Swedish dialect studies. --Hegvald (talk) 12:18, 21 February 2010 (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.