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I don't really have an opinion on this as far as scope goes, but this seems like a type of question that can be answered far more quickly with a dictionary. Hence, people might be tempted to vote ...
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#2: Post edited
by
Canina
·
2021-08-09T13:18:23Z (over 3 years ago)
I don't really have an opinion on this as far as *scope* goes, but **this seems like a type of questions that can be answered far more quickly with a dictionary.**- Hence, people might be tempted to vote such questions down because of a lack of effort on the part of the person asking the question. At a minimum, you'd need to pre-empt that by showing that answering the question *isn't* as simple as reaching for the nearest dictionary either online or in print, or at most doing a reverse image web search to identify similar items and derive the term for the item from there.
- Taking your real-life example from your question, I plugged "kondensator" into the Swedish Wikipedia, and sure enough [there it is](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondensator). Next, I looked in the left-hand side bar where there's a long list of links to the same article in other languages, and again, sure enough, the "English" link takes me to the English article named [capacitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor). (That article also, as it happens, mentions right near the top that "[t]he capacitor was originally known as a condenser or condensator".)
- No, Wikipedia isn't perfect, and you might want to cross-check with a more dedicated dictionary and/or thesaurus before relying on such a translation for anything important, but it seems unlikely to use a completely wrong term as the article title, and it's probably safer than just making a literal translation of the word itself without regards for the context in which it appears.
- I don't really have an opinion on this as far as *scope* goes, but **this seems like a type of question that can be answered far more quickly with a dictionary.**
- Hence, people might be tempted to vote such questions down because of a lack of effort on the part of the person asking the question. At a minimum, you'd need to pre-empt that by showing that answering the question *isn't* as simple as reaching for the nearest dictionary either online or in print, or at most doing a reverse image web search to identify similar items and derive the term for the item from there.
- Taking your real-life example from your question, I plugged "kondensator" into the Swedish Wikipedia, and sure enough [there it is](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondensator). Next, I looked in the left-hand side bar where there's a long list of links to the same article in other languages, and again, sure enough, the "English" link takes me to the English article named [capacitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor). (That article also, as it happens, mentions right near the top that "[t]he capacitor was originally known as a condenser or condensator".)
- No, Wikipedia isn't perfect, and you might want to cross-check with a more dedicated dictionary and/or thesaurus before relying on such a translation for anything important, but it seems unlikely to use a completely wrong term as the article title, and it's probably safer than just making a literal translation of the word itself without regards for the context in which it appears.
#1: Initial revision
by
Canina
·
2021-08-09T13:15:35Z (over 3 years ago)
I don't really have an opinion on this as far as *scope* goes, but **this seems like a type of questions that can be answered far more quickly with a dictionary.** Hence, people might be tempted to vote such questions down because of a lack of effort on the part of the person asking the question. At a minimum, you'd need to pre-empt that by showing that answering the question *isn't* as simple as reaching for the nearest dictionary either online or in print, or at most doing a reverse image web search to identify similar items and derive the term for the item from there. Taking your real-life example from your question, I plugged "kondensator" into the Swedish Wikipedia, and sure enough [there it is](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondensator). Next, I looked in the left-hand side bar where there's a long list of links to the same article in other languages, and again, sure enough, the "English" link takes me to the English article named [capacitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor). (That article also, as it happens, mentions right near the top that "[t]he capacitor was originally known as a condenser or condensator".) No, Wikipedia isn't perfect, and you might want to cross-check with a more dedicated dictionary and/or thesaurus before relying on such a translation for anything important, but it seems unlikely to use a completely wrong term as the article title, and it's probably safer than just making a literal translation of the word itself without regards for the context in which it appears.