week11-Wikipedia Editing and Translating Book Titles-xiongchaoli웅초려

 This week I continued editing Wikipedia pages related to Russian feminist activists. While editing references, I encountered an issue related to translated book titles in citation templates.

At first, I thought it was enough to translate the English titles into Chinese so readers could understand them more easily. However, when I used “trans-title” without keeping the original “title,” the template produced an error message. During class, I realized that Wikipedia citation templates usually require both the original title and the translated title. The original language is important because readers may want to search for the original source later, while the translated title helps local readers understand the topic more quickly.

I found this interesting because translation on Wikipedia is not simply about changing language. There is also a balance between accessibility and accuracy. If we only translate everything, some academic sources may become difficult to verify. But if we keep only the original language, some readers may not understand the content at all.

One thing I still wonder about is how much translation should be added in Wikipedia references. For example, should every foreign-language source include translated titles, or only important ones? I think different editors may have different opinions about this.

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