Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary

Prior discussion regarding page move

See: Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary/Archive 1

Requested move

Polish Biographical Dictionary → Polski Słownik Biograficzny – Rationale: 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' was the original title of the article. This work has never been translated into English and it's current name is unofficial, original research. It is also confusing as there is, in fact, a different English publication with almost the same title (The Polish Biographical Dictionary). Note also that almost all references to this publication on Wikipedia use the Polish title, thus in effect over 90% of the links to the article in the current version go through redirects. Please share your opinion at Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 03:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose, per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations - also I get the creepy feeling this is a test case for the Polish Cabal how far they can go in bending wikipedia their way. Note that Piotrus' argument regarding the dictionary resumes to: look how successful we've been thus far in replacing Polish Biographical Dictionary by Polski Słownik Biograficzny on many wikipedia articles (which is an unacceptable self-reference argument). It has been amply demonstrated by me that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary, and not to the other one (see talk in archive). --Francis Schonken 08:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. This attempt at renaming is yet another effort by Polish nationals on Wikipedia to change as many article names as they can to Polish spelling. The name "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is the most commonly-used English name for this work. To change the article to a Polish spelling would make the article less understandable, would make it more difficult to link to (because of the use of Polish diacritics and difficult Polish spelling), and would make it harder to find in Wikipedia category indexes, since to most English-speakers, the term "Polski Slownik Biograficzny" is not intuitively clear as to what it means. --Elonka 15:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support as nominator.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I'm English and can't grok Polish (though I'd like to learn the pronounciation some day...). Personally, I don't see a Polish conspiracy in this, and probably the most important thing here is that we don't fall out about it: redirects make this at most a fairly minor issue. Having said that, for me, regardless of the language, I prefer to see the original language as the title, or a transcription of it, for proper names, rather than a translation, unless there is a well-established English name for the same. Moreover, I'm not convinced that "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is an actual English name for this topic, as opposed to a translation. To address, in particular, a couple of Elonka's points: linking and searching is no more difficult as redirects solve that problem, and the translation would appear on the first line, so the article would be no less understandable. I agree, though, that category entries would be less understandable. — Matt Crypto 17:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per Francis Schonken. --mav 20:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per WP naming conventions, why not re-title the articles Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polish) and The Polish Biographical Dictionary (English) or something like? This would make the difference clear in the title of the article and links to it, which I believe is the issue here. Also, this is the English Wikipedia, after all, and I wouldn't know what Polski Slownik Biograficzny was if I ran across it in a list or category. Her Pegship 19:00, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support - Cannot find evidence that PBD is a term commonly used in English for this compendium (most links point towards the Sokol book). ~ trialsanderrors 19:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. As I have noted before, this Polish reference work simply does not have an "English name". The title pages have the Polish title, and that's it. In the catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress (and any other electronic catalogue I have checked), it can only be found under the Polish title, nothing else. It is not up to Wikipedia to invent English titles for publications which have never been published under one. Tupsharru 20:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support per Tupsharru. Kusma (討論) 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support Per Piotrus--Molobo 20:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Errr... Oh my God, now I'm really puzzled. The secret masters of our Polish World-Wide Wiki Conspiracy™ have obliged me to vote per the Secret Polish Cabal, but my heart says otherwise... what shall I do oh what shall I do..? Weak oppose, English titles are fine for films, why not for books? Even if the Polish title is in use by the LoC, it is not because the book is called by its Polish title in English, but rather because libraries list books by the titles printed on the cover. At the same time we're not preparing a library register here, we write encyclopaedia. We're not here to make the life easier to those who would like to find the book on a bookshelf, but to those who would like to know what is the Polish biographical dictionary. Redirects do all the rest. //Halibutt 21:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose: use English, please. That's policy. Jonathunder 02:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support, per every right-thinking editor above, most especially the ever-gracious Tupsharru. KonradWallenrod 03:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

I find it amusing that one of the main arguments against the move is that it is some sinister plan by a Polish cabal. But unfortunately I find there are also some disturbing arguments, ones that certainly merit further discussion. I'd ask Francis to provide proof for the following statements:

that I or other members of the Polish cabal (who are we, by the way) have been going over articles and replacing Polish Biographical Dictionary with Polski Słownik Biograficzny on many wikipedia articles. Such a statement, putting in doubt others integrity of editors, and between the lines accusing them of preparing evidence to create a false argument to influence the vote, is a serious accusation and should be referenced, or apologized for if it is found untrue.

that "It has been amply demonstrated by [Francis] that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary". Francis directs us here to the archieve. I have looked through it again and I can find only two posts by him, none of which presents any claims other then this sentence: "Note that I found external references referring to this multi-volume dictionary by the English name according to the present page name. 'The "English name"". If this is what Francis means by It has been amply demonstrated..." then I wonder if this is supposed to be some kind of a joke?

As for Elonka, I'd like to as her too to back her statement that " The name "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is the most commonly-used English name for this work", keeping in mind that we should weed out search results for The Polish Biographical Dictionary, and as I demonstrated in the begining of the discussion in the archive, PSB has 170 hits on english pages, PSD (including both publications) has just 30 more. In the middle of the 'RfC: Request for Comment' section in archive I have also demonstrated that the Polish term PSB is more popular in books (Google Print) then the English PSD.

If not for the existence of The Polish Biographical Dictionary, I might have agreed with your second argument. However, as the existance of this book means that under current title the books are likely to be confused, a move to the Polish name would lessen the confusion, not increase it.

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

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• On WP:ASR -- Note that self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages. ~ trialsanderrors 20:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Examples of places where the English name is used

For reference, these are a few notable ones that I have found. I would particularly point out that at the English-language webpage of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the organizations which publishes the work), they too offer the English version of their title, "Polish Biographical Dictionary".[1] --Elonka 04:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Vladek Sheybal's biography: [2]
• Biography of Janusz Kurtyka, chairman of one of the branches of the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences [3]
• English-language newsletter by the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History (PDF)
• English-language page of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Krakow. [4]
• English-language brochure by the National Bank of Poland. (PDF)
• English-language biography of Father Stanislaus (17th century) Papczynski (2 MB PDF)
• In the Shadows of Poland and Russia (7MB PDF)

In the link to the academy which publishes it[5], the use of "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is clearly used as a translation: it's in brackets after the Polish name. — Matt Crypto 05:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Search hits in Google Books and JSTOR

• Google Books gives 203 hits for "polski slownik biograficzny". In contrast it has only 24 hits for "Polish biographical dictionary" (when a hit to Sokol's one-volume English-language work is discounted). Looking closer at these 24, all except one book also give the Polish title, with the English used only has a translation or clarification of what type of publication is referred to. No less than nine of the English-language hits actually come from a single book, Nation And History (ed. Peter Brock, John Stanley, Piotr J Wrobel, University of Toronto Press, 2006). But I also think it is significant to note that those texts using the English-language translation of the title tend mostly to use it in a looser way, when speaking of the undertaking of producing a Polish biographical dictionary, rather than in specific bibliographic references.
• In JSTOR, "Polski slownik biograficzny". gives 23 hits, and "Polish biographical dictionary" 5 hits. Of the five search hits for "Polish biographical dictionary", one is a translaton immediately after the Polish title. For the rest, the same observation made above is valid: they tend to use it in a looser sense, never in a direct reference to an article in the dictionary and mostly in reference to the biographical dictionary as a project. A typical example:

Independent Poland created new conditions for the development of historical scholarship: five universities, new research institutes, initiation of the basic Polish biographical dictionary, publication of sources, and participation in international conferences. (Piotr S. Wandycz, "Historiography of the countries of Eastern Europe: Poland", The American Historical Review, 1992, p. 1017)

Tupsharru 07:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for this great analysis. I think that we can safely conclude now that 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' is the most common English name for the book.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)