Forums:English vs. Tolkien language entries

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Tolkien Gateway > Council > English vs. Tolkien language entries


Many objects in Tolkien's legendarium have only two names, one in English and another in one of Tolkien's languages, e.g. Misty Mountains in English and Hithaeglir in Sindarin. Some of these are obvious choices for redirects. My question is, should we redirect to the English page or the Sindarin/Adûnaic/etc. page? In other words, should the title of the article be "Misty Mountains" or "Hithaeglir"? --Ebakunin 23:08, 13 May 2006 (EDT)

This seems to be the popular topic (as it is one of the most important). Personally, I think choosing the term which is used the most in Tolkien's legendarium is the most effective approach. Unfortunately this would mean Aragorn II would be changed to simply Aragorn, and Boromir son of Denethor II to Boromir, etc. So maybe we need another rule which states birth names override most used, or something similar. In the case of Misty Mountains and Hithaeglir I would say the main article should be placed into Misty Mountains since it is the most common term, while Hithaeglir contains a link to Misty Mountains as well as a history of how the word is derived, what it means, etc. But that's just me.
As before, I plead for as little redirecting as possible. In my mind, "Hithaeglir" and "Misty Mountains" are separate things and therefore deserve separate articles. I think we should only use redirects in cases of singular vs. plural entries (Orc vs. Orcs), unaccented vs. accented entries (Numenor vs. Númenor), and the like. --Earendilyon 07:32, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
The problem of multiple character names seems to have been solved with the disambiguation tags. If you go to Aragorn you will see all the relevant entries, with the link to Aragorn II in bold since he is a major character. I'm referring mostly to places and objects, which is why I mentioned the Misty Mountains. My take is that redirects should be used whenever two entries would have the same information. Since Hithaeglir is "Misty Mountains" in Sindarin, and there is no other difference between the two, why not redirect? This way editors only have to worry about updating a single entry, as opposed to every duplicate entry. To keep the site manageable, we need to keep it simple.
I also agree that we should redirect to the English entries. Once again, it makes searching easier for the casual reader as opposed to the Tolkien expert. --Ebakunin 12:42, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
But shouln't an Encyclopedia by extensive and exhaustive? I mean, the Gateway is not only for the casual reader, but also for the expert. Besides, an 'casual reader' would probably not even search for "Hithaeglir" anyway, but only for the "Misty Mountains". An 'expert' would be, IMHO, disappointed when (s)he was redirected to an article (s)he wasn't initially looking for. --Earendilyon 15:05, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
Well, disambig works great for multiple characters with the same name, but doesn't help when a character has multiple names, such as Strider or Elessar. I 100% agree that editors shouldn't have to update more than one article on the same subject. Anything relative to Misty Mountains should be present in that one single article. However I think as Earendilyon mentioned, to satisfy the experts it would make sense to delve deeper into the actual names such as Hithaeglir regarding the history of the name and other facts around the word, not the actual mountains. This way no duplicate content is present. This also would work well with the fact that we plan to add articles for every Quenya, Sindarin, Dwarvish, Orkish, etc. word. But I definitely agree with you that we have quite a few articles now which have similar content on two different names of a term, this should be changed, the content moved to a single location, and the other used simply to describe the name, what it was derived from, where Tolkien might have coined it from, etc. --Hyarion 16:26, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
I think that we should use redirects frequently, but at the top or the bottom of the article directed to there should be an extensive study of the other names. It would cut down on some problems. Many if not most people who look up a name want the object itself rather than the definition of the name. This would enable us to have one large article rather than several small ones or one large one and many other small ones. This would also solve the problem about the different names. --Narfil Palùrfalas 16:58, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
That is one solution that I have been pondering. The only thing which holds be back from that is I would like to have an article for "mellon" or for "Aiya" or for "Namarie" etc. These would have no articles to redirect to and would simply discuss when the term was used, sources, what it was derived from, etc. If we are doing it for these words why not something like "Elessar." --Hyarion 17:56, 14 May 2006 (EDT)
Redirection for me is certainly the way to go. If you're looking in an encyclopedia, online or otherwise, you are looking for information that you havnt already memorised (or you may be looking to refresh your memory). Therefore i suggest making things 'as simple as possible but no simpler'. For me that means redirecting all terminology which refers to any *single* subject (as i have expressed elsewhere, words directly applicable to multiple subjects do require separate pages: Lalaith, daughter of Hurin and Lalaith the Sindarin word for laughter require different pages) to the subject in hand. Multiple pages for every individual title given to something is just confusing and can infer that they are different things. Dr Death 13:49 30 May 2007