Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portuguese-related articles

Untitled

Please contribute your suggestions below. Galf 14:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I came across "Anti-Dantas Manifest" which is at least butchering the title of the work. I here by propose that NO translation will be done into english of Names, Titles, Places, Offices where no historical translation exists. Names should be presented as: "Portuguese Name (meaningful translation of Portuguese name - ultra short explanation of name)" example: lapis azul (blue pencil - a symbol of censorship).

Same applies for text quoted in line. Important expressions should be preserved as well, such as "a bem da nação(for the good of the nation)". Also, I believe that "proper" native speakers of English, especially if their have NO knowledge of Portuguese subjects should be invited as proofreaders as they can more easily spot Grammar issues but also concepts that are missing or unclear.

Another thing I came across "Parish" means "Paróquia", "freguesia" should be translated as "Civil Parish" as it is a civil, not a religious entity. As I explained above, over-translation leads to confusion, someone who sees a country divided in "parishes" would infer that clerics have civil power, which we know isn't the case. For instance, in Poland they use Voivodship instead of "Distrito" and we know that District is actually closer to the concept of "Civil Parish" than that of Voivodship don't we? See Central_business_district for an example

Galf 15:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I had noticed the "parish" before as sounding blatantly inadequate. I suggest changing all mentions to "parish" to simply "freguesia", and changing the translation as "parish" in the latter to "civil parish" or some other form that would not sound like it's a religious division.--Húsönd 15:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

For all it's worth, I agree with this suggestion.--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 15:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut

After creating the initial version of the manual, please use WP:MOS-PT as the official shortcut. Thanks.--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 15:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Translations

Don't "preemptive translate" if something has a proper portuguese name, but no common use english name then don't create one an explanation and a simple direct translation should be added to the article and a redirect may be added as well, but only after there is a translation agreed upon.

Translations should be faithful to meaning more than to wording. specially when translating quotes, the meaning should be preserved over the exact wording. References should be provided with the original text and the translation should be consensual.

A short list of commonly made mistakes should be compiled for reference (eg. freguesia = civil parish ; paróquia = parish) Galf 15:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Mountain Names

I propose that Mountains are named preserving the original Portuguese name: "Serra da Estrela Mountain", "Serra d'Aires Mountain" and thus avoiding things like "Mountain Range of the Star" or "Mountain Range of the Great Goblet" (Serra do Caldeirão). I think this translates better than "da Estrela Mountain" or "Mount Estrela". Even the Everest has the native name on it's article. Comments? Galf 22:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

You hit the nail. I completely agree with your argument.--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 14:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that names such as "Serra da Estrela Mountain" or "Serra d'Aires Mountain" sound like an odd combination of Portuguese and English. Besides, those are not mountains, but rather ridges. I think that having "Serra da Estrela" as the name of the article is perfectly acceptable, there's no need to add "mountain" or any other unnecessary description that's better suited for the content of the article itself.--Húsönd 15:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I might not have quite said what I meant.... in the article it would appear like this:" Serra da Estrela is the highest Mountain of Portugal, often known simply as "Estrela". It is part of the Montejunto-Estrela mountain range." I just want to avoid wierd translations...I've seen "mountain range of Rates" used in the Peter of Rates article and it is neither informative nor accurate Galf 15:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Chouriço

I'm sure all Portuguese will say that it is better than the Spanish Chourizo and that in fact it's not even the same thing and we have the alheira and the farinheira...but the fact is that they are all the same basic thing, a cured sausage. My point is: if something has already been named in english using a term from another language then that is the article that should be expanded, national differences apart. And even if everyone knows that the farinheira and the alheira originated from the new Christians this still needs proper sourcing.

Also, on sourcing, I'm sure everyone in Portugal saw at least once the footage of Ramalho Eanes on the chaimite asking if anyone dare shoot him (you guessed, no one did) but say, in the UK, they might not even know that we had the PREC(again, not a surprise, since the article isn't done yet). The point? SOURCE! cleanly and reputably and in English if possible. Galf 22:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The letter "ç"

Do mention that "ç" reads as "ss" and not as "c", and that no Portuguese-related article should replace a "ç" with a "c" on any circunstance. Some important names already have a replacement for "ç" as "z", e.g. Azores, Braganza. This was defined long, long ago as part of the English language, and it's not related in anyway with Wp. However, anything less known that may use a "ç", like my name Gonçalves, Non-Portuguese people tend to replace the "ç" with a normal "c", and thus why I believe it should be explained here why this is wrong to avoid problems.--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 13:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point there, I will include that with the translation guidelines. IPA should be used to represent the proper sounds, I don't know how to use it though.Galf 15:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Battle Names, Royal Names

I came across another interesting issue with the translations...the "Guerra das Laranjas" article was created as "War of the Oranges" and makes no reference to the original Portuguese or Spanish name for it. This would make any follow-up in either language difficult because it makes the reader "untranslate" the name. also, it makes an uneeded connection to the orange issues to which it has no connection whatsoever. I propose that Old Names be preserved, along with archaic terms, such as "Lente de Direito" (Law Professor) to alow readers with an understanding of portuguese to follow on their research unimpeded.

Also, in Royal names, a lot of them were created with "Infanta" which is an honorific AFAIK, but I could be wrong. My issue here is with the King's names, should we stick to the english names only in the article's body, or use the more common formulations eg. "Dom Pedro" or King Pedro? it becomes a bit weird when "Dona Maria" becomes just "Mary" would "Queen Mary" do? thoughts? Galf 08:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Porto/Oporto

The English variant for the second largest Portuguese city "Oporto" is falling into disuse and the most common name nowadays is "Porto", even among English speakers. Wikipedia should use the most common name, reference to the variant "Oporto" should only be mentioned in the article Porto.--Húsönd 15:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I could subscribe that, even though I feel some activism there....the "O" in Oporto was an inehited mistake, but I think no great harm comes from correcting it. Galf 15:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I have always felt that Oporto was wrong in all senses, but I saw it in so many places in Wikipedia that I began to believe it's how outsiders render the city's name. If we can use "Porto", then by all means, let's fix this! I really hate Oporto; it's way more retarded than "Lisbon".--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 17:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Film titles

In film titles, the foreign version often becomes the title of the article, so we are having a discussion in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Capitalization in titles, trying to establish what is correct for each language/country. We would appreciate if you could drop us a line about it. Hoverfish Talk 21:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Brazil

This applies only to Portugal? Can't we get some mention on the article? Macgreco 22:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Although linguistic matters do appear here, I believe that this page turned out to be more Portugal-related rather than Portuguese (language) related. Perhaps it should be moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Portugal-related articles), and a new manual of style concerning the Portuguese language created.--Húsönd 23:20, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there any objection to adding the "Wikipedia style guideline" category to the page?

The infobox says this is a style guideline, and it has the style bar on the right side, but it's not in any category. Should I add the category? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure.--Ivo ^{talk / contribs} (join Project Portugal) 01:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Geography - Municipalities

Hi everybody!

I am working on big project to help with the geography related articles on Portugal.

1. I have seen a lot of inconsistency and false links
2. I have seen that Portuguese WP has more content
3. I have seen that sometimes even German and Dutch WP have more content

I found esp. the latter very astonishing. Why is this so? What can we do?

I found it hard to help in disambiguation, since the Portugal geography articles were not named consistently. Sometimes the "," sometimes the "()" were used, sometimes (municipality) was appended. Sometimes city/town and municipality were in one article even if they were clearly different things. The population and area data sometimes did not clearly state whether it referred to the municipality or the city/town. Often it was good, but sometimes not. Also see Alentejo - a long established region: what is shown on the map - the EU NUTS 3 region, that is not the same as the historical Alentejo. A definition several 100 years old is replaced with one that is maybe not even 10 years old.

Then there are articles that are split in city/town in other language WPs but in English WP they are in one article. Splitting is lot of work!

I suggest a consistent naming scheme on all articles about municipalities of Portugal. So if you link to a municipality you know by heart how to link there and have not guess whether the municipality article is at "Braga", "Braga municipality", "Brage (municipality)", "Braga Municipality", "Braga (Portugal)" or "Braga, Portugal". Some stuff is also generated from outside databases I guess, and for this semi-machine generated content consistency is needed too. There will still remain some disambiguation issues, but I think if municipality articles get some kind of marker then a lot is done already. Out of the 308 possible municipality articles I currently found in Category:Municipalities of Portugal the following 11 where municipalities of that name exist in other countries, so they needed a country specifier. I choose "," but it should be no problem to move them to "()":

• Amarante Municipality, Portugal
• Anadia Municipality, Portugal
• Barcelos Municipality, Portugal
• Batalha Municipality, Portugal
• Chaves Municipality, Portugal
• Fundão Municipality, Portugal
• Guarda Municipality, Portugal
• Mira Municipality, Portugal
• Mora Municipality, Portugal
• Oeiras Municipality, Portugal
• Oleiros Municipality, Portugal

On my talk page I was approached by one admin to revert all the "page moves and content removal". The thing is, I did not remove any content, but partially I added _new_ content from other language Wikipedias. I now did some research in Category:Municipalities by country, below are the sets that use a type specifier consistently within the set, nine use uppercase:

• Category:Municipalities of Bolivia - Somename Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of Bulgaria - Somename Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of Denmark - Somename Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of Estonia - Somename Parish
• Category:Municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia - Somename Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of the Marshall Islands - Somename Atoll
• Category:Municipalities of South Africa - Somename District/Local Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of Sweden - Somename Municipality
• Category:Municipalities of Venezuela - Somename Municipality

two don't use uppercase

• Category:Municipalities of Mexico - Somename (municipality)
• Category:Municipalities of Latvia - Somename municipality

So "Somename Municipality" for Portugal seems to be ok for me.

Also Wikipedia:MOS#Geographical items says "Places should generally be referred to consistently using the same name as in the title of their article" - which is easier achieved with "Somename Municipality" than with "Somename (municipality)".

The MoS further says at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Administrative subdivisions "if one district in a country is moved from X to X District, it is worth discussing whether all districts should be moved" i.e. it specifically says that X District is ok. So this would probably also be ok for X Municipality.

I think, the other countries that in future may need to disambiguate between municipality and city/town will have a hard time. As pointed out, splitting is a hard job. You may even find that when you split Somename, that Somename Municipality is occupied by an article from a different country. That it turn means, that maybe some false links exists, e.g. someone linked to the article having the Portuguese municipality in mind, but it fact the article is about the one in Sweden. In that case also the Swedish municipality article better gives place and moves to a safer article name.

From all the above, the issues noted in the beginning, esp. the lagging behind non-English WPs, the analysis what is done on other municipalities in English WP, I suggest for the municipalities of Portugal:

1. Decide on a naming scheme for the current and future municipality articles. This can serve as the foundation of actually improving the content and the linking.
2. Start implementing this scheme soon. This will avoid creation of new bad links and instead trigger creation of new ones. Everybody working on geography and other topics related to Portugal, will be able to easily remember how to link. If someone does an error, at least correctors can easily fix it.

Also have a look at List of municipalities of Portugal - and all the links that are/were going wrong.

I would like to make that list a featured list! Anybody helping?

TrueColour (talk) 20:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

You have quite an exhaustive research here. I am not against dabbing the articles, but I just don't see the need for it at this moment. Especially because an article about a Portuguese municipality would be far broader and more complete than the one about its seat town. This means that a user searching for e.g. Oeiras would first find an article about the small city, and would have to go further to check the article about the rest of the municipality, which has far more material. Another con would be municipalities such as Porto and Lisboa, which comprise the entire municipality and dabbing wouldn't thus make much sense. A third point would be the fact that when you dab a municipality and its seat town, it will be a matter of time until a user search "Oeiras", and goes straight to a dab page saying "were you looking for Oeiras (city) or Oeiras (municipality)?". Because it would be very hard to decide whether the seat town or the municipality would be the primary subject. Thus the main title would become a dab itself. Totally unnecessary. The material we currently have allows both subjects to be together in the same article. We already have articles on the civil parishes freguesias - since all seat towns are civil parishes themselves, we could have secondary articles such as "Oeiras (civil parish)", and use it to expand material just on the city of Oeiras. But still keeping "Oeiras" as a main overall article about the whole municipality. Húsönd 21:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

As for the List of Municipalities, we're missing Almeirim's coat of arms. I looked all over for it last year and couldn't find a suitable replacement. That would stain a great featured list candidate. Húsönd 21:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree for Porto and Lisboa. These special cases can go with a redirect alone. Very often it is the case that the municipality is much larger. Also legally it is a different object and we should be careful to separate the municipality from the cidade/vila. DAB sometimes is used anyway, since the names have lot of overlap with entities in Brazil or sometimes somewhere else. Still I think often the town/city can be at the top location, without "(city)" appended to the title. Exactly the decision between what is primary or not I would like to avoid. By having the municipality always at Somename Municipality a lot of the discussion goes away. From your example, if someone looks for Oeiras he can directly see from the article title that Oeiras Municipality is about the municipality. And if he goes to Oeiras he will see whether that is a big large city or just a little town. There should also be infoboxes for the towns/cities, they are currently missing. Since the infobox currently is mostly the municipality we miss the infoboxes on the cities. This is not good. I did split Sintra Municipality from Sintra. This also makes the WHS more prominent, you see the box without scrolling. Still, I didn't find exactly what the freguesias are. There was only the list for the municipio. You say all the seat towns are freguesias - sometimes they are several freguesias, so this wouldn't be the best solution. See Queluz (Sintra) - this has a parish box at the side but actually contains three parishes. TrueColour (talk) 23:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

District names

For the districts: "distrito" is part of the Portuguese name. This translates to "district" in English. The pages itself say in the infobox "District of X". The variable is called official name. While I think this is not the official name, I think this looks like a good translation. The other way to translate the name would be "X District".

Now one user comes around and moves the "X District" to "X (district)". Why? TrueColour (talk) 19:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Districts of Portugal for a deeper analysis. TrueColour (talk) 22:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

To comply with a request made by User:Muchness, I started: Talk:Districts of Portugal#RfC. TrueColour (talk) 19:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)