Talk:Corresponding member

Two problems

I have made two changes which @Altenmann has been reverted and that I think should be reinstated:

1. The article currently gives translations of the title in French, Russian, and German. This violates MOS:LEADLANG "If the subject of the article is closely associated with a non-English language, a single foreign language equivalent name may be included in the lead sentence, usually in parentheses." (my emphasis). But this concept isn't particularly closely associated with France, Russia, or Germany (the example that the MOS gives for a closely associated topic is a city in the country where that language is spoken); it is simply a concept that exists in those countries, in the same way that learned societies exist in those countries. There is no justification for cluttering up the lead sentence with three translations - providing translations of terms is what Wiktionary is for.
2. The article includes the sentence "For example, in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in the Academies of Science in some post-Soviet states (e.g., Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) a scientist is usually first elected to corresponding membership" (my emphasis). Since the Academy of Sciences has not existed for over thirty years, the use of the present tense is inappropriate. It's also not clear to me why the article presents this as a general phenomenon of learned societies and then restricts it to the Soviet/Post-Soviet context. Furius (talk) 18:14, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• (1) Good point, but the quoted guideline has a continuation "Consider footnoting foreign-language names". This would be an option preferred to deletion of indormation. As far as I understand, listed foreign terms are listed because the corresponding countries have the tradition of corresponding members.
• (2) I rewrote the sentence because it it a reasonable piece of knowledge that Russian and some other post-Soviet states inherited the tradition from the Soviet Union.
• (3) why the article presents this as a general phenomenon of learned societies and then restricts -- well, the article restricts nothing of the kind. Also, if you know anything to add on ther subject, you are very welcome. - Altenmann >talk 20:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  (1) But these are far from the only countries with a tradition of corresponding members. As shown by the translation side bar, they exist in Portugal, Spain, Romania, Czechia, all post-Soviet states... So, should this footnote have "corresponding member" translated into every European language and then some?

  (2) Thanks; this is much better. Furius (talk) 21:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  (1) That the WP article exists in the language does not mean that the tradition exists in the corresponding country. Exactly with this thought in mind I added the tag {{globalize}}, encourage editors to add info about countries where such tradition exists. - Altenmann >talk 21:19, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  It might not in theory, but in practice the concept is extremely widespread. This article already notes that it exists in Ukraine and Belarus. So, the footnote should include the translation for "corresponding member" into Ukrainian and Belarusian. They also exist in Romania, Greece, Serbia, Portugal, etc. All of these countries' languages should appear in the footnote too. Furius (talk) 01:24, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

  (which will rapidly become completely unwieldy... which is why such translations usually appear on wiktionary, where they have the proper templates to display translation information in a useful way) Furius (talk) 01:25, 20 August 2023 (UTC)