Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of English translations of the Divine Comedy/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by PresN via FACBot (talk) 12:25, 1 March 2023 (UTC).

List of English translations of the Divine Comedy

 * Nominator(s): The Midnite Wolf (talk) 22:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because I believe it has become one of the best translation-related lists on Wikipedia. It is as comprehensive as it can reasonably be, having been sourced from multiple high-quality bibliographies, and has a compelling lead section describing the history of the subject. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 22:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Accessibility review (MOS:DTAB)

 * Tables need captions, which allow screen reader software to jump straight to named tables without having to read out all of the text before it each time. Visual captions can be added by putting + caption_text as the first line of the table code; if that caption would duplicate a nearby section header, you can make it screen-reader-only by putting + instead.
 * Tables need column scopes for all column header cells, which in combination with row scopes lets screen reader software accurately determine and read out the headers for each cell of a data table. Column scopes can be added by adding !scope=col to each header cell, e.g.  becomes , with each header cell on its own wikitext line. If the cell spans multiple columns with a colspan, then use !scope=colgroup instead.
 * Tables need row scopes on the "primary" column for each row, which in combination with column scopes lets screen reader software accurately determine and read out the headers for each cell of a data table. Row scopes can be added by adding !scope=row to each primary cell, e.g.  becomes , again with the header cells on their own line. If the cell spans multiple rows with a rowspan, then use !scope=rowgroup instead.
 * Please see MOS:DTAB for example table code if this isn't clear. I don't return to these reviews until the nomination is ready to close, so ping me if you have any questions. -- Pres N  16:52, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @PresN Done! Feel free to review the source to make sure everything was done correctly The Midnite Wolf (talk) 23:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Umimmak
This is my first set of comments on an FLC; I don't really have any experience with FLCs but I have some thoughts which might be useful.
 * What are your inclusion criteria? I see you include self-published and unpublished translations such as Urquhart (1895) -- are there other unpublished translations you've come across but decided not to include for a particular reason or is this truly meant to be exhaustive? Or is something included only if it was mentioned by Cunningham or one of the yearly bibliographies by the Dante Society of America's bibliography or the Società Dantesca Italiana.
 * I don't think I need to be told how to access the SDI's English page; to me it's more important that I can replicate your search to verify results. Presumably you just went to and, and what, just selected every book? I'm seeing this database also brings up a lot of scholarly articles  particular translations -- some more of these might be useful for annotations.
 * I think in general I'd like better in-line sourcing for each entry (not just individual annotations). If a reader goes to any line, I think, ideally, they would be able to tell what page of Cunningham you got it from, or which year's bibliography for the DSA, or if you used the SDI's database, or some other source.
 * Also regarding in-line citations, you have a few footnotes to entire books to support single statements; presumably a specific page is providing you that information, not the entire book.
 * This is about translations, I suppose, not individual volumes. But as a reader, I'd like to see more about the individual books. What's the ISBN for modern translations? Is it a bilingual edition (I know FSG's edition of Pinsky's translation is)? Is it a critical edition? Is there commentary? A bibliography? You sometimes mention reprints and republications, but not always. You mention the introduction in the reprint to Anderson translation -- why are no other introductions mentioned? So is your article about translations, or editions and publications of these translations, if that distinction makes sense.
 * In general what does a range of years mean for the published column mean? You're presumably just providing information about the first edition, no? (And since the column is "Published", you really should clarify in the cell for Urquhart.)
 * No titles for the translations? I realize there will be a lot of similar ones and it might duplicate "Parts translated" but it might be worth having the actual title (e.g., FSG's edition of Pinsky is The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation)
 * In general take a second look at reference formatting:
 * You're inconsistent with how you deal with dates, both in formatting and level of specificity (e.g., Holekamp's dissertation is May 1985 but Zanobini's is 2016-10-26.)
 * There are some inaccuracies; Dante did not edit Barbarese's 2009 article for The Sewanee Review.
 * url in a citation template implies free access (without subscription); and it's redundant with jstor or {{para|doi} or hdl
 * It seems you've automatically let the citation manager do it for you; sometimes the automatically generated title includes information better put in website, department or date.
 * ISBNs aren't consistently hyphenated.
 * What's your rationale for when you include ISSN and OCLC or not?
 * Use an en dash, not a hyphen for page ranges (and year ranges too for that matter.) (MOS:RANGE)
 * Why do you sometimes cite Cunningham's manuscript? Is this an ease-of-access thing or is there some information that did not make it to the final printed version? I sort of feel you shouldn't be citing a draft version unless there's very good reason for it...
 * See MOS:FLAGCRUFT, these translators are not representing their countries.

This isn't a source review and these aren't the most specific comments or thorough review I realize, and again I don't know anything about FLCs, but these were just some initial thoughts I had as to how to make this a quality list. Umimmak (talk) 22:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


 * @Umimmak I didn't make the list, but the inclusion criteria seems to follow Cunningham's. The criteria isn't that it was widely published but that it hasn't been lost. There's at least one available version of Urquhart. Looking back now, the citation in Cunningham's bibliography has "Privately printed" in place of a publisher, so the publisher column here should say that instead.
 * Close., as it's quicker to see whether or not a work is in English from the citation than whether or not it's complete (and the pdf it produces is 5 pages shorter). That said, I'll go through some of the scholarly articles from . I can also add the shortcut to the citation.
 * Adding references for the entries taken from Cunningham is probably a good idea. It would take a bit of time but I'll get around to it soon. Which year's bibliography for entries from the DSA should be self evident from the year published, and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good way to cite SDI's list.
 * I assume most of these are for Cunningham 1964. The lack of specific page numbers is because I'm relying on my university library's copy, so some of it was added from memory when I didn't have access. I'll check it out again and add page numbers when I have time (hopefully this week).
 * Agreed. I'll go through later (tomorrow ?) and add a ref. column with this information.
 * It's for writers who translated the Comedy in full but did the cantiche in separate years. For example, Ciardi's Inferno was published in 1954, but his Paradiso wasn't published until 1970. Wrt to Urquhart, "privately printed" fixes this.
 * I was experimenting last night with a potential fix for this and the above issue. It removes "nationality" to save space, but it adds location to the publisher column, which is arguably more informative anyway. Feedback welcome.
 * The rational for including ISSN's is whether or not the source seems to have one. To be completely honest I don't fully understand what they are, so feel free to add any that I may have missed. Other than that, all of these issues have now been fixed (I think)
 * Ease of access. My university library only has the second volume and I couldn't find first at my local bookstore. I also made a lot of edits over the summer when I didn't have access to either volume. From what I read, the final edition and the manuscript aren't too different, with the only exception being that the final edition has information from 1954–1966 and an a proper afterword
 * Done
 * Thanks so much for the thorough review!! Don't worry too much about not knowing the specific FLC criteria, most of it is common sense and seems intentionally somewhat vague. I saw that you posted an article in FLC as well, I'll try and review that sometime this week. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 07:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley

 * "Many more translations of individual lines or cantos[ii] exist,[15] but these are too numerous for the scope of this list." You do include translations of parts of sections, so your criteria for inclusion in the list are unclear. They should be clearly spelled out.
 * I think it would be better to show full translations as "Full" rather than Comedy, which appears to put full and partial translations on the same level.
 * Sorting by nationality etc does not work.
 * In a sortable list, links should be repeated, not only the first use.
 * You should not have flags for just a few nationalities. I think flags are not needed, but if you have some you should have all.
 * You are inconsistent whether page numbers are shown in the refs. All should have page numbers if they are paginated works.
 * There is an error message on ref 23. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:57, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The above comments have gone unaddressed for over a month; are you still pursuing this nomination? -- Pres N  15:48, 27 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @PresN Not at the moment. I meant to reply to the above comments earlier but it slipped my mind (sincere apologies to Dudley). Regardless, I think the list needs more work than I can give it right now. Feel free to withdraw it from consideration if that's possible. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 18:47, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Withdrawn. -- Pres N  01:27, 1 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.