Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Translations mediation

message: This Request for Mediation has been closed.
This case was closed 08:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

message: ; Where is the issue taking place?
: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Translations
; Who's involved?
: Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr), Evrik and Jergen
:: Chris asked to be transcluded and thus was approved.
; What's going on?
: The issue is about whether the names of Scout organizations in non-english speaking countries should be translated into English and, if so, how to determine what translation to use. This of course relates to the naming of the article on the organization.
: Relevent is Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/RulesStandards#Article names which is the decision of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting to date, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), the WP guideline.
:Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) and several archives show others have had a problem.
:Various sources for translations have been proposed:-
:*WOSM www.scout.org for Scout Associations
:*WAGGGS site, but it is not clear where names are translated.
; Short responses from the editors involved on what the issue is and what the solution should be.
* Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr)
Although I do understand the wish to use as many English on this site as possible, I do not favor the translation of names of organizations, except when they have a self-declared (or at least self-used) English name. The relevant Wikipedia guideline is WP:UE, but this only speaks about cases where a well-known, commonly used, English name is available (and thus preferred). In WP:UE, there are three comments that might apply:
# The first is ...only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form, which appears to suggest that in cases where there is no commonly used English spelling, it is perfectly allright to use the native spelling.
# The second one is ...Latin-alphabet languages, like Spanish or French, should need no transliteration..., although we are not speaking about transliterations, it appears to suggest that we should not force an English variant if the current one is in (readable) Latin-alphabet characters.
# Finally, the document says ...use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article... This makes it easy to find,..', but creating English redirects (in several variants), rather than renaming the article, makes it similary (or even more) easy to find the article.
A lot of national scout organizations do not have an official English name and in many cases multiple translations are possible. By choosing one, we are performing original research by giving an organization a new name (I consider a name to be untranslatable, in contrast to a description of an organization, which can usually be translated; such a view has also been put forward by other users in related discussions, see for example:).
With regard to claiming WOSM as reliable enough to use as a single source for these translations, I want to emphasize that WOSM is not the deciding body on the names of the national organizations. For example WAGGGS (an organization with just as much authority in Scouting), does not translate these names .
As explained above, I have no objections to creating all the redirects possible, but feel that we should respect the organizations' original names as the official names of the articles. 
Finally, during this dispute, I also presented an alternative proposal to circumvent the difficulty in translating the names of organizations: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Translations#Alternative proposal, which at least was noted by Evrik (he moved it ), but was further ignored by most parties.
* Jergen
:: We should also remember the Wikipedia policy concerning organizational names at Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Organizations (such as political parties). According to it non-English article titles are welcomed in some cases. WP:UE is only an explanation of Wikipedia's name convention.
:: Main questions:
::# In my eyes the first main problem is the definition of "common use" and how the usage can be checked. 
::# A second major problem is the reliability of sources (non-literal and incoherent translations, different translations used by the same source, translations difering by far from the translation used by the respective organization itself etc.). This was discussed mainly concerning the reliabilty of the WOSM translations but could also cover other sources.
::# My third concern is the correct procedure when moving pages. In the past both User:Evrik and User:English Subtitle moved pages without changing the lead of the article, fixing the categories, etc.
::# The naming should - at least - be coherent within the ScoutingWikiProject; IMO the result of this mediation must also apply to articles in :Category:WAGGGS member organizations as well es to other articles on organizations (including international organizations).
:: My main aim is to avoid ambiguities when naming an article. IMO in most cases this is better reached by not translating organizations' names (most countries have multiple Scouting/Guiding organizations, translations differ between sources etc.).
:: This seems also to be kind of a cultural problem: As you can read at Talk:Médecins Sans Frontières (North) American English seems to use far more translations than other variants of English. We can't (and shouldn't) decide which variant to prefer but we should bear in mind that some of the possible translanstion can be really surprising for some users. --jergen 18:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would make the same basic points as Jergen. I have multiple copies of the standard for world Scouting information-from 1957, 1975, 1979 and 1990. In each of these official publications from WOSM, the native name is most often used, and when it is not, the translation is into either English (as the East Asian organizations) or into French (as many Arab organizations). Further it is the same standard when used by Eurofax and at World Conference documents. WOSM uses the names the organizations themselves use. The website that has been cited is an English language website, so it is going to use English equivalents, but those are not the names recognized by WOSM. My preference is that we create redirect pages at possible English keyword sets-like "Scouts of X", "Scout Association of X", "Scouting in X", "X Scouting". Or they could look them up on the WOSM membership chart as everyone does now. Chris 07:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully support the suggestion by Chris to create redirects like that, as I proposed the same in original discussion (see also my statement above). --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 11:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request Information

message: So the points (now just three) are:
#For naming articles on Scout organisations/associations, we use an english name if the organisation itself verifiably uses an unique english name in its own documents, or otherwise use the official non-english name.
#We use the now completed "Scouting in XXX" proposal to give english names for readers to find articles about Scouting in all countries, whether English speaking or not, and without having to know the name of the Scout organisation in the country.
#We will be extremely liberal in the use of redirects both to the "Scouting in XXX" articles (e.g. "Scouting in USA") and to the individual articles of organisations (almost any plausible translation - redirects are cheap).
Can all three of you accept this simple guideline? If not, please be clear what you can not accept and why. Must rush. --Bduke 00:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Accept all. --jergen 11:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Agreed --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 20:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I disagree. It is usefull also for countries such as the US, UK or Australia, by giving a link into all organisations of Scouting (and Guiding) in a country. When you say "changing the names of the articles to what they should be: English", you miss the point. We all would agree with you if we have a name in English which is verified as being used by the organisation and thus meets WP guidelines. The problem is how to translate a name in a way that is acceptable to everybody. Do you have suggestions for that given it has proved impossible in the discussions going back to late last year? --Bduke 22:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion 3

message: I never thought that this would be so complicated an issue (I don't think I even appreciated that the discussion was taking place)... I can understand both sides of the argument here, but i do think that there is a way forward - although there may be a small number who disagree (or a large number).
*Scouting by Country
This is certainly a step forward - as Evrik points out, even countries like the UK need this because there is The Scout Association and Girlguiding UK, the WOSM and WAGGGS organisations, and also other Scouting organisations like the Baden-Powell Scouts... I have a couple of comments about this:
:This should be extended to Guiding by Country, with redirects to the related Scouting article...
:Some countries have complex political divisions - I am pleased to see Taiwan is included (although it is also called the Republic of China, which isn't), especially given the People's Republic of China claim to the island. My point is that the people looking for Scouting in the UK could also look for Scouting in England, Scouting in Wales, Scouting in Scotland and Scouting in Northern Ireland.
Using redirects from Scouting by Country should be avoided - the majority of countries have both a WOSM and WAGGGS organisation, and many also have non-WOSM and non-WAGGGS organisations.
*English name if the organisation uses itself verifiably and uniquely
*Otherwise use the official non-english name
This will be very difficult to achieve - as has been shown with some organisations already in this discussion, even the NSO may not use a unique translation of their own name... In general, I have found English speakers to simply talk about the Scout Association of XXX, or the XXXish Scout Association - which also does away with the nuance of the fact that many NSOs recognised by WOSM and WAGGGS are actually federations of Scout associations and movements.
Publications at The Scout Association do offer an English translation when disussing non-English speaking NSOs, but the continue to refer to them using the official non-English name or abbreviation. This would indicate that the translation is in no way an official one, and is simply there to provide help to English speaking people reading the article.
Further to this - an English speaker may actually have heard of an NSO from a native speaker of that NSO, and will want to search for that name itself.
Conclusion
I think we should implement the following:
*Use Scouting by Country and extend it to Guiding by Country, and include all Scouting and Guiding organisations in the list. I have created a couple of examples:
:*User:Horus Kol/Scouting in the United Kingdom
:*User:Horus Kol/Scouting in Sweden - I realise that this is a much shorter article, but I feel that all the other information would be better in the Svenska Scoutrådet federation article.
*NSO articles should be named using the official non-English - where translations can be found in publications from WOSM, the NSO in question, and possibly other NSOs, we should create an article with that translation and redirect to the NSO article.
That's my tuppeny-worth, anyway -- Horus Kol Talk 12:42, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point and largely agree, with one exception. If there really is only 1 national scouting organization, we should redirect Scouting in XXX to that particular article. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said, I think we'd be hard pressed to find a nation with only one organisation, but I agree that in this rather rare case, we should redirect... Horus Kol Talk 16:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It is point 5 in "Discussion 2" above. The 5 points are listed several times. The main point of this is to have English redirects to articles with non-English names and I think that should be left until the names are settled. Redirects to "Scouting in XXX", such as Scouting in the US to Scouting in the United States are fine. In fact that ones needs other redirects such as "Scouting in the United States of America", "Scouting in USA", "Scouting in the USA", "Scouting in US", and maybe others. Does that give you the idea? --Bduke 00:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - I did read through the whole of the discussion, but somehow didn't pick up on that... Horus Kol Talk 11:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It looks like we all agree, but we haven't heard from Evrik here a lot, while he was the one who had the most objections. Can you maybe contact him? --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broader Scouting community views 

message: At present we are at this position. I proposed, as a summary:
#For naming articles on Scout organisations/associations, we use an English name if the organisation itself verifiably uses an unique English name in its own documents, or otherwise use the official non-English name.
#We use the now completed "Scouting in XXX" proposal to give English names for readers to find articles about Scouting in all countries, whether English speaking or not, and without having to know the name of the Scout organisation in the country.
#We will be extremely liberal in the use of redirects both to the "Scouting in XXX" articles (e.g. "Scouting in USA") and to the individual articles of organisations (almost any plausible translation - redirects are cheap).
jergen and Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) agreed with these on 23 February 2007. English Subtitle and evrik disagreed. Evrik suggested that we approach the organisations about whether they use an English name. I agree with that, so let us rewrite point 1 to give (subject to possible rewording of the addition):
#For naming articles on Scout organisations/associations, we use an English name if the organisation itself verifiably uses an unique English name in its own documents (if we can not find such a name, we ask the organisation for a name and a source for its use), or otherwise use the official non-English name.
I am unconvinced by the arguments put forward by English Subtitle and evrik. They fail to address the real difficulties of obtaining an English name if the organisation itself does not use one. Also, Evrik's comments, after such enthusiastic arguments last year for English names, seems to not have his heart in it.
I am therefore strongly tempted to just put forward the three points and let the Project Coordinator decide whether to accept them. However, I am going to resist that temptation. The difficulty is that we have to convince the wider Wikipedian community, not just the Scouting project participants. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) does suggest that an English name should be used, but it does not address the difficulties we have encountered. That project does not seem to be active. I raised our issues at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#Naming of organisations but there has been no response. However, the wider community is still involved.
A case in point is noted below under "News" where the Honduras article has been renamed to Association of Scouts in Honduras by an editor who appears to be not involved in Scouting and not concerned about the general issue or renaming other articles. He is an English expatriate interested in Honduras, who appears to live there or at least in Central America. Such changes will continue. We have to convince the wider community if we want to get such changes reverted. The bottom line is that we should be having many fewer articles with non-English titles, to convince people
I am therefore asking you all to seriously consider adding two points to the three above:
#In difficult cases we consider using the Scouting in XXX article to include everything about Scouting in that country, with no sub-articles, as I suggested previously. Jergen raised two objections if I understand him correctly. First, that we are talking about an article on the WOSM organisation, and second that as the article grows we are only putting off the problem. On the first, I repeat what I said earlier that the reader is not interested in a specific organisation, but wants to know about Scouting in country XXX. I am suggested that the article on an organisation is rewritten to cover everything we know about Scouting in XXX. On the second, I would say as I did earlier that putting off the decision allows us to move forward. Also, given the spread of English as a the main second language around the world, it is more than likely that when it does arise in the future, the organisation will have an official translation of its name if it does not have one now. An example is Scouting in Algeria which currently redirects to Algerian Muslim Scouts which was called Scouts Musulmans Algériens. It would need only minor changes in wording to making it read sensibly, leaving open the possibility of adding something about Guides/Girl Scouts or non-WOSM/WAGGGS organisation.
#We consider whether in cases where there clear consensus for a translated name, we use that. OK, this is pragmatic, but surely not every non-English name can be translated in many different ways. Even if one can, does it really matter. For example, the Honduras article could be translated, I think, as "Association of Scouts in Honduras", "Association of Scouts of Honduras", "Scout Association of Honduras", "Scout Association in Honduras" or "Honduras Scout Association". Does it really matter if we can agree on one of them? Is there a real principle involved here? Is it showing disrespect to our Scouting brothers and sisters in Honduras? Can we really convince the wider WP community to go back to the Spanish title, from the current translation or any of these? Let me however be clear that I do think there are more complicated translations where this approach should not be followed.
Obviously these paragraphs are not drafts of what should finally be stated. They are explanations and arguments for two alternative approaches. If you support either of these additions, please try to draft the proposal in a more official way. 
Please let me have your views below. This of course is open to all to express their views, but I particularly want to know the views of the three original participants. --Bduke 00:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As your 3 points above are in contradiction with the second point below, I honestly have no idea what exactly you are suggesting we do from here. To be honest, I would like to see you come up with just one proposal for how we continue. I appreciate the effort, but presenting several different proposals like this is quite confusion to me, let alone to outsiders who you want to comment here. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 00:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Dear Bduke, thanks for combining them all together. When I first read your previous explanation, I was not sure whether the additional points were meant to replace others, or be used in addition to them. The only part I personally not agree with is seeking consensus when multiple translations are possible. We should keep in mind that these are names of organizations. Your name is "Brian Salter Duke". Do you consider for example ""Brian Duke Salter" or "Duke Salter Brian" trivial variations on your name? Probably not. But, for the sake of compromise, I will accept also that part of your proposal as we have to find a way to deal with these names in a fashion that everybody agree with. In addition, the Scouting in XXX should probably be extended to Guiding in XXX or even Scouting and Guiding in XXX were applicable. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 08:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you misunderstand me. Your example is changing a name. We are talking about translation. However, I need advice from someone who is a much better linguist than I am. My understanding is, to continue with the Honduras example above, that "Asociación de Scouts de Honduras" could equally well be translated as "Association of Scouts in Honduras", "Association of Scouts of Honduras", "Scout Association of Honduras", "Scout Association in Honduras" or "Honduras Scout Association". All five English names when translated back into Spanish would give "Asociación de Scouts de Honduras". Am I correct on this? If I am, this is an example of a translation that is trivial. Using any one of the five is not going to offend our brother and sister Scouts in Honduras, as the name we have selected translates back to their name uniquely. A non-trivial example would be something like this. "Scouts de France" can be translated to "Scouts of France" or "French Scouts". "Eclaireurs de France" can be translated to "Scouts of France" or "French Scouts". Therefore it is obvious that the two English names can not be translated back into the names of the French Associations (former Associations actually, but it simplifies the point). In the French case I would argue strongly for the French names to be used. Translation there is not trivial. --Bduke 21:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

text: On the "Guiding in XXX" or "Scouting and Guiding in XXX" links, I agree. I thought that was agreed after Horus raised it above. I have added an addition to the proposal above. We should not let this distract us from the main problem. --Bduke 21:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed a large reply here, because it slightly missed the point. Again, I agree to your proposal, now lets see what the others have to say. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. I have been through the history of your edits and I think I understand your thought process. I was probably less than clear. The problem with the French example is that "Scouts" and "Eclaireurs" both translate to "Scout". We have nothing in English which reflects the big diiference of understanding in French between these two terms. I have understood this since meeting Scouts from these organisations in the 1950s and 1960s. A back translation is not possible. You are quite right to point out that the Spanish Honduras title can be translated into even more English terms, but I think they all translate back to the same Spanish name. My concept of trivial and non-trivial needs more work, but I think there is a real distinction here somewhere that we can use. Let us see what Jergen and Evrik think about this. --Bduke 11:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

text: --evrik (talk) 13:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: --evrik (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion 4 - an attempt to bring it all together

message: #For naming articles on Scout organisations/associations, we use an English name if the organisation itself verifiably uses an unique English name in its own documents (if we can not find such a name, we ask the organisation for a name and a source for its use).
#If no official English name becomes available, we seek consensus on whether there is one clear translation to English of the organisation's name and use that. If there are several translations that differ only trivially, we seek consensus on whether one of them can be used. By trivial, we mean different prepositions (e.g. "in" or "of") or word order ("Scout Association" or "Association of Scouts")
#If no consensus is reached on point (2), we seek consensus whether the "Scouting in XXX" proposal (see below) can be used to write a complete article on all aspects of Scouting in a particular country to replace the article with a contentious title.
#Failing resolution of an Egglish name from points (1) - (3), we use the official non-English name.
Separate from these key proposals we note:
#We use the now completed "Scouting in XXX" proposal to give English names for readers to find articles about Scouting in all countries, whether English speaking or not, and without having to know the name of the Scout organisation in the country. These can be redirects, disambiguation pages or articles. In some cases we should also create "Guiding in XXX" or "Scouting and Guiding in XXX" links in the same way as above. (Addition added:- 21:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed policy

message: I have added the two sub-headings to make it clear where the proposal starts and ends. Please comment either in particular or in general, below. Please read my proposal in the light of the longer discussion with examples that I gave further up. --Bduke 01:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear Bduke, thanks for combining them all together. When I first read your previous explanation, I was not sure whether the additional points were meant to replace others, or be used in addition to them. The only part I personally not agree with is seeking consensus when multiple translations are possible. We should keep in mind that these are names of organizations. Your name is "Brian Salter Duke". Do you consider for example ""Brian Duke Salter" or "Duke Salter Brian" trivial variations on your name? Probably not. But, for the sake of compromise, I will accept also that part of your proposal as we have to find a way to deal with these names in a fashion that everybody agree with. In addition, the Scouting in XXX should probably be extended to Guiding in XXX or even Scouting and Guiding in XXX were applicable. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 08:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you misunderstand me. Your example is changing a name. We are talking about translation. However, I need advice from someone who is a much better linguist than I am. My understanding is, to continue with the Honduras example above, that "Asociación de Scouts de Honduras" could equally well be translated as "Association of Scouts in Honduras", "Association of Scouts of Honduras", "Scout Association of Honduras", "Scout Association in Honduras" or "Honduras Scout Association". All five English names when translated back into Spanish would give "Asociación de Scouts de Honduras". Am I correct on this? If I am, this is an example of a translation that is trivial. Using any one of the five is not going to offend our brother and sister Scouts in Honduras, as the name we have selected translates back to their name uniquely. A non-trivial example would be something like this. "Scouts de France" can be translated to "Scouts of France" or "French Scouts". "Eclaireurs de France" can be translated to "Scouts of France" or "French Scouts". Therefore it is obvious that the two English names can not be translated back into the names of the French Associations (former Associations actually, but it simplifies the point). In the French case I would argue strongly for the French names to be used. Translation there is not trivial. --Bduke 21:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

text: On the "Guiding in XXX" or "Scouting and Guiding in XXX" links, I agree. I thought that was agreed after Horus raised it above. I have added an addition to the proposal above. We should not let this distract us from the main problem. --Bduke 21:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed a large reply here, because it slightly missed the point. Again, I agree to your proposal, now lets see what the others have to say. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. I have been through the history of your edits and I think I understand your thought process. I was probably less than clear. The problem with the French example is that "Scouts" and "Eclaireurs" both translate to "Scout". We have nothing in English which reflects the big diiference of understanding in French between these two terms. I have understood this since meeting Scouts from these organisations in the 1950s and 1960s. A back translation is not possible. You are quite right to point out that the Spanish Honduras title can be translated into even more English terms, but I think they all translate back to the same Spanish name. My concept of trivial and non-trivial needs more work, but I think there is a real distinction here somewhere that we can use. Let us see what Jergen and Evrik think about this. --Bduke 11:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on above draft or general comments about material in this section "Discussion 4".

message: It is 10 days or so since Evrik commented and we still await a response from Jergen. I note that he has been fairly inactive on the English Wipipedia recently. We still need and would welcome your comments, Jergen. 
To progress, I think it might be helpful if we look at a number of cases that have been discussed before and see whether the proposal above would lead to a resolution. In each case, I will use the current name of the article, even though in some cases these were changed ignoring this mediation and have been left pending the mediation conclusion. OK.
=====Association of Scouts in Honduras=====
The official Spanish name is Asociación de Scouts de Honduras. On point 1, we have no record of an official English translation of the name by the Association itself. I asked an English expatriate living there but he has not replied. We should ask the Association officially. Can anyone who knows Spanish do that? If that fails, point 2, would suggest to me that we leave the current title in place. There are other possibilities, but an English speaking resident in Honduras selected this name and it seems that all suggested translations are trivial in that they all translate back to the same Spanish name. We have Scouting in Honduras in place. That disambiguation page also leads to Asociación Nacional de Muchachas Guías de Honduras and we need to resolve that title. Asociación de Scouts de Honduras redirects to Association of Scouts in Honduras, but other possible translations should be added as redirects.
*Agreed, --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: --evrik (talk) 13:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: --evrik (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Moving forward

message: The official Spanish name is Asociación de Scouts de Honduras. On point 1, we have no record of an official English translation of the name by the Association itself. I asked an English expatriate living there but he has not replied. We should ask the Association officially. Can anyone who knows Spanish do that? If that fails, point 2, would suggest to me that we leave the current title in place. There are other possibilities, but an English speaking resident in Honduras selected this name and it seems that all suggested translations are trivial in that they all translate back to the same Spanish name. We have Scouting in Honduras in place. That disambiguation page also leads to Asociación Nacional de Muchachas Guías de Honduras and we need to resolve that title. Asociación de Scouts de Honduras redirects to Association of Scouts in Honduras, but other possible translations should be added as redirects.
*Agreed, --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Association of Scouts in Honduras]]

message: On point 1, we have no record of an official English translation of the name by the Association itself. Asking the organisation itself was considered earlier on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting/Translations. Did that get anywhere? On point 2, I do not see a solution. The translation seems difficult and the alternatives are not trivial. On point 3, using Scouting in Albania, would lead to the article covering both organisations mentioned in the current disambiguation page.
Scouting in Albania  also links to Shoqata e Guidave dhe Scoutëve në Shqipëri which needs to be considered. Covering both would solve the problem of that name also, but it would probably be an unwieldy and large article. I think in this case, we have to use the Albanian name. Besa Skaut Albania and Besa Scouts Albania redirect. We would need some English translations to redirect.
*I have not been able to get any response from them. Does someone in Europe want to try? --evrik (talk) 17:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Beslidhja Skaut Albania]]

message: The correct name of this Scout Association is in Arabic, which we have to translate. The French name Scouts Musulmans Algériens appears to be official. There is no record of an official English name. We should ask the Association officially. Can anyone who knows French do that? If that fails, point 2, would suggest to me that we leave the current title in place. Again, I can only see trivial other translations. We have Scouting in Algeria in place as a redirect. The French name is also a redirect. We need other translations as redirects.
*Agreed, --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: --evrik (talk) 13:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Algerian Muslim Scouts]]

message: The official name is Associação de Escuteiros de Angola, which redirects, as does Associação de Escuteros de Angola. On point 1, we have no record of an official English translation of the name by the Association itself. We should ask the Association officially. Can anyone who knows Portuguese do that? If that fails, point 2, would suggest to me that we leave the current title in place, or perhaps Association of Scouts of Angola is a more literal translation. It looks to me as if the various possibilities are trivial. We have Scouting in Angola as a redirect. Other possible translations should be added as redirects.
*Scout Association of Angola 
* The Scout Association of Angola 
* Angola Scout Association 
:--evrik (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Scout Association of Angola]]

message: The Guides and Scouts of Finland appears to be an official English name as indicated here. Thus this article should be renamed to the official English name. Finlands Scouter redirects to Suomen Partiolaiset and should be changed. Scouting in Finland does not exist and should be created as a redirect. Maybe other redirects are needed. --Bduke 05:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Suomen Partiolaiset]]

message: That is five examples and they cover a pretty broad range of the various possibilities in the proposal above. Please comment under the headings below. Also please feel free to add a similar analysis to the other above for any other Association that has a non-English title. --Bduke 05:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: It seems time to put the proposal to the Project. I have done so at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting#Proposed policy on naming of Scouting organisations in non-English speaking countries. Please add your views there and do not add anything more to this discussion here, unless there is clear consensus to move the mediation back here. --Bduke 23:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Seeking Project input

message: The article on the Association of Scouts in Honduras has been moved from a Spanish title to an English title. The author seems to live in Honduras or at least close to it and is interested in it. I have had a discussion with him and hope he can let us know whether the Association uses an official English name. Please leave it alone until the mediation is over, as I suggested earlier for other articles. --Bduke 06:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: News