Talk:Weidner Communications

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Fenevad in topic Asian language claims

[Untitled] edit

Thank you Aecis for your help in editing this article.

My interest and intension for my submission of this article is to establish a formerly reported on subject by professionals in Machine Translation, but has since been buried in history.

I met the basis (Bruce Wydner) of this subject in 2005, and I became very interested in it. It is not my intension to promote Bruce Wydner, his works or his company, I am doing this article for the sake of preserving the knowledge of the subject.

I have original copies of all my references and sources, and I would like to collaborate with other interested parties in getting this article as wikified as possible.

I must admit that other than having these source materials, I am not in any way up to the writing or research level of your typical wikipedian. Much help is needed and requested. But please, before you wikipedians just chop-up or delete the article or its content, take some interest in the subject, its source materials and reporting of the subject. Keep in mind that when I made my list of sources I listed the sources in order of importance, so acquire the research materials in that order. Unfortunately most of the better articles are in print format only, and are not readily available on the internet, I had to hunt long and hard, but I have scans of them if you would like to see my copies.

My last attempt to get this article on wikipedia resulted in the article being completely deleted, COI and other such tags, I had to wear. I would prefer this not to happen again, I took a break from this article and had hoped someone else would take a try at it. My waiting was in vain, I even asked other professionals in the Machine Translation industry to get involved. Apparently nobody was interested in getting involved. I would hate to have this important history just fade away, as it apparently has. But if that is the work of an encyclopedia of the internet maintained by those who only publish what is salient and/or popular, then we will get what we get.

Sure we can strip this article down to a fragment of its original size, but because there was a number of expert reporting about this subject in the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s I feel it would be a shame to not represent these perspectives and their observations/conclusions of how the Weidner Multi-lingual Word Processor made - and continues to make - it's mark on history.

Asian language claims edit

I don't know Weidner's technology well enough – although I do know a number of people who were involved in the company – to know if the claims about Asian languages accurate reflect what he claimed. They may well do, but they were presented as statements of fact about some hidden genius of Asian writing that I don't think any serious linguists would accept. I don't object to them being put back in if there is appropriate citation and explanation that they are claims made by Weidner or someone else, not just matters of fact.

As a second note, European Commission translation experts do not count as the world's leading experts in translation or translation technology. Over the years the Commission has hired good people, but their endorsement does not mean that the best experts in the world were convinced that Weidner had made a major breakthrough.

As a general note, I think the content is good here, but some of the hyperbolic claims need to be moderated or contextualized.

Fenevad (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply