Wikipedia talk:Common sense is not common

Untitled

Em, yeah. This is sort of tautological, and besides, people do often agree on what the common sense action to take in a situation is!--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 16:12, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Is the quotation correctly translated?

According to Yahoo answers, the quote is not "Common sense is not common." Their contributor Ray G suggests the quote was originally "Le sens commun est fort rare." They offer the translation "Common sense is quite rare." (It's not like French has no words to say precisely "not common" if that was what had been intended.) It seems as if some artistic license is creeping in here, and I wonder if that's appropriate. In this situation, it may be benign, but in other situations I don't now that it will be. Does Wikipedia really not have a policy about foreign language quotations that requires citation to show the original statement, so that those who worry the translation is wrong can tell the difference between information or nuance introduced by the translator and that intended by the original speaker? --Netsettler (talk) 21:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)