Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 September 24

= September 24 =

Translating Kinyarwanda (Rwandan) sources
Hi! I’m working on an article and have found what looks to be a treasure of Rwandan sources but I don’t seem to be able to translate them as they’re in Kinyarwanda, the national language. Umuhanzi Albert NABONIBO I Gicumbi baramwiteguye banamusaba ikintu gikomeye, for example.

Wikipedia’s page on Google Translate says a December 2019 stage is to involve the language. I’m not sure what that entails.

I’m hoping for ideas on how to get translations of multiple online sources. Any help appreciated even if I just have to wait for google. Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:39, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * @: When I googled "Kinyarwanda translator" some translation apps/software came up on the first page. I'm not linking them because I don't have the knowledge to evaluate if they are safe to install on your system but perhaps the computing desk can help with that if you want to try that route. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:29, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I’ll look into it! Gleeanon409 (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

What is this tense?
In Australian sporting articles in Wikipedia I reasonably often come across a form of language that doesn't seem to me to appear in many other places. The example I've just seen and that triggered this post was about an Australia footballer in the news right now - "Fyfe would miss the majority of the season...." (following an injury.) Don't know if it happens in other countries. We're clearly talking about the past here, and it's not a conditional thing. It happened. The sentence could be equally written "Fyfe missed the majority of the season...." What am I seeing there? What's this tense called? Does it happen elsewhere? HiLo48 (talk) 23:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Executive summary: it is called future in the past (a time in the future relative to a past time). --Theurgist (talk) 23:35, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * That's as good a description as any. It's pretty common in English. A random example could be, "The 1923 Yankees would win the pennant for the third straight year, and would go on to win their first World Series." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:57, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * But why not simply write "The 1923 Yankees won the pennant for the third straight year, and went on to win their first World Series."? HiLo48 (talk) 01:15, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You probably would, if you were talking strictly about the past from the point of view of the present. But that's not always how narratives are constructed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:30, 25 September 2019 (UTC)


 * There's no particular reason to use future-in-the-past when you're only talking about two events, but consider a more complicated example. "When the Waterloo & City Railway opened in 1898, the company decided to save money by not installing elevators either at the City station (where a moving ramp would not be installed until 1960) or at Waterloo (where escalators would be provided in 1919). Their original trains were powered by two motor cars, but since multiple-unit control had not yet been invented, they required power wiring over the roof from front to back."  This sentence talks about events of 1898, 1960, 1898, 1919, and 1898 in that order.  You might choose to rearrange it, but if you don't, then it needs future-in-the-past. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 06:24, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Good example. As you've shown, it depends on the construction of the narrative. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:28, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, I can see a possible validity there, but the examples I mentioned above don't seem to have that need to maintain a chronology that might otherwise get mixed up. I suspect it's just some editors following the slightly pretentious style of some sports journalists. HiLo48 (talk) 10:27, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call it pretentious, I would say it makes the writing more dramatic (like the historic present). Compare "he broke his leg, and missed the rest of the season" with "he broke his leg, and would miss the rest of the season". The second sounds more dramatic and, yes, journalistic. --Viennese Waltz 11:00, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * However, it seems to work better when used in conjunction with perfect tenses: "He had broken his leg and would miss the rest of the season". Since the perfect tense puts our perspective in the past looking forward, the conditional future-in-the-past tense makes sense there.  If we used the simple past in the first clause, it probably makes more sense to use it in the second clause, since the perspective is from the present looking back.  Thus, "he broke his leg and missed the rest of the season" works there.  -- Jayron 32 13:33, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * This is not a conditional tense. It just looks that way. Jmar67 (talk) 21:38, 25 September 2019 (UTC)


 * HiLo48, as I'm sure you're just as aware as I am, Australian sports-speak is a gallimaufry of ghastly cliches, teeth-jarringly meaningless utterances, absurd neologisms, tortured grammatical constructions, and shameless barbarisms and malapropisms. One of my innumerable pet peeves is game callers describing a result as "a famous victory" even before the damn game's finished. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * It's certainly not just Australia. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a better-than-average baseball play described as "Unbelievable!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:35, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, well aware that sports journalism is a unique field, using a special form of English. My concern was really whether we should accept its writing style in Wikipedia articles. HiLo48 (talk) 02:59, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * And I've just seen it again, in 2019 AFL Grand Final, with the match underway at this very moment. We have "The Tigers would suffer misfortune during the first half of the season, with several of their star players sidelined due to injury." This follows a sentence about the very first match of the season, and precedes a sentence about a time during the second half of the season. I don't see the point of future in the past tense there. It should just say "The Tigers suffered misfortune..." HiLo48 (talk) 04:57, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I believe the point is to make the listener feel as if they were there at the time. SinisterLefty (talk) 05:13, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes. As an American, I find nothing wrong with the expression of the future based on a time in the past, using "would". Even if sports journalists (and especially broadcasters) are acknowledged to use less-than-optimal language on many occasions, that doesn't mean that everything they say is questionable grammatically. In the AFL case, the listener is guided between two points in time. The simple past could also do that with the word "later", for example. But it is not necessarily better. Jmar67 (talk) 06:05, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I've removed "would" from a dozen or more Wikipedia articles (I don't seek it out; I do a lot of editing), precisely because it confuses the reader. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an outlet for journalistic language. Rather than "so and so would do such as such at X time", it's clearer to simply say "at X time, so and so did such and such".

(English isn't the primary language of all readers of the English Wikipedia.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 05:22, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * It's vital to keep the prose as boring as possible. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)