Talk:Origins of the French Foreign Legion

Comment re tone

Example text from the lead:

" Just like a Pretorian Guard[1] and Imperial Guard,[2] the Origins of the French Foreign Legion are unmatched. None of the French Army Corps ever aroused so much interrogation, mystique and myth such as the French Foreign Legion. Uncopiable today, the Foreign Legion was just another foreign formation among so many others that have already served France. "

This is clearly not sutable for an encloypedia, if this was a company, I would go with PROMO for that kind of writing, I don't mind most the article, but really, please, keep it neutrally worded. Dysklyver 11:27, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

earwig permalink 0% violation. Dysklyver 11:30, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Meaningless banality

• "On the other hand, Grand Armies and important battles were won or lost due to the participation of foreigners."

__as far as I can tell contains zero fact and is an editorial comment that would require a reference if it stayed Elinruby (talk) 15:42, 22 May 2018 (UTC) Elinruby (talk) 15:42, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

• "The creation of the Legion was more of a response and political will to the multiple challenges faced by the nation during that period; nevertheless, for the founder of the Legion (the King), such would be an issue of relativity." --- first sentence of the Causes of Creation section; says nothing, as far as I can tell Elinruby (talk) 01:29, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

• "he Legion, in its long history has always been a manifestation to the political arenas of foreign countries." - from Causes section; I think "to" should perhaps be "of" but this is not a usual mistranslation, so possibly "manifestation" should be "reaction", either way I believe it means to say that politics in other countries determined the makeup of the Legion, but that point is already adequately made. If that is not the intended meaning then I don't know what it is, but there still does not seem to be a fact there. Elinruby (talk) 02:56, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Rewrite from scratch

This article is a disaster, not only of mangled translation, but also of organization and chronology. The history jumps forwards and backwards, zooming forwards in time, then inserting one unconnected event from decades earlier, then jumping backward again haphazardly. The sections are not well organized. Multiple sections cover the same event, repetitively, in different ways, and out of context. The text content is hopelessly garbled machine-translated nonsense. The user who created it is indef-blocked.

In my opinion, trying to repair this, by the painstaking efforts of multiple editors to fix it sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, section by section, is not worth the effort, and would be a frustrating time-sink. I believe it would be far, far easier, and much faster to blank the article, and rewrite it from scratch.

Now, a rewrite is a major change and not to be taken lightly, and certainly would require consensus before attempting it. So, let's talk about this for a few weeks. We don't need a formal Rfc (at least not yet) because discussion comes first. I will add a concrete proposal for change that will echo some features of Rfc formality, so that at least it's as clear as possible what is being discussed, and attempt to achieve a consensus, one way or another. Underneath the proposal, I will put a "Straw poll" section (echoing votes pro-and-con) and a "Discussion" section. I'd like to see with the straw poll, if there's any agreement on this, or if we're all over the map about it. Please keep the straw poll comments brief (like an Rfc vote), and please go into detail in the Discussion section. I'd like to see some sort of consensus forming in around three weeks (June 13) if possible, but that's just my opinion and is subject to change by consensus also.

Rewrite proposal:

Should the Origins of the French Foreign Legion article be blanked and rewritten from scratch? Mathglot (talk) 01:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Straw poll: Rewrite or fix

Please add Rewrite or Fix, along with a brief comment about your reasoning. Add longer comments to discussion below.

Rewrite – as nom. Translation is a disaster; article sectioning is disorganized. Much faster and more economical, as well as more accurate to start from zero, using a mix of English and French sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion: Rewrite or fix

As someone who has worked on plenty of translated articles, in my opinion it would be much faster to dump this article and start over. The current section organization is like a strait-jacket, that would be very difficult to dislodge, and make sense out of. The translation is catastrophic, and there's no sense trying to fix it; it's machine translated gobbledygook (fixed in places by diligent editors after the fact; thank you for your efforts). Not surprisingly, almost all the current sources are in French. That's partly because of the nature of the article, but also because this was translated from a French article. In fact, there are tons of good resources in English, and I will be adding some of them below, later. If we agree on a rewrite, they can help serve as the basis for a stub article, which can then be developed. If we agree on fixing the current article, they can serve as a basis for better sourcing using English-based references. Mathglot (talk) 01:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I think rewriting would probably yield a better article. I am not committing to doing it however. I usually work by making incremental changes. But if other people rewrite and need help or have questions I will be happy to pitch in. Elinruby (talk) 19:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Did what I could. Undecided on rewrite vs fix. Usiruk86 (talk) 20:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

English sources

Here are some English sources that can be used, whether for a rewrite, or to fix it up:

• Blanchard, Jean-Vincent (4 April 2017). At the Edge of the World: The Heroic Century of the French Foreign Legion. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8027-4388-6. OCLC 968690174. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bourgeois, Emile (1919). History of Modern France in Two Volumes volume I 1815-1852. Cambridge, UK: CUP Archive. p. 178–182. GGKEY:KY6GL7E4GAD. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Boyd, Douglas (January 2010). The French Foreign Legion. Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7110-3500-3. OCLC 907190049. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kanitz, Walter (28 June 2017). The White Kepi: A Casual History of the French Foreign Legion. Arcole Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78720-576-5. OCLC 993448774. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lepage, Jean-Denis G.G. (27 November 2007). The French Foreign Legion: An Illustrated History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6253-7. OCLC 946999115. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Porch, Douglas (2010). The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force. New York: Skyhorse Pub. ISBN 978-1-61608-068-6. OCLC 911809103. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Varin, Caroline (15 September 2014). "4 The French Foreign Legion". Mercenaries, Hybrid Armies and National Security: Private Soldiers and the State in the 21st Century. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-67477-1. OCLC 908132240. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Windrow, Martin (1999). The French Foreign Legion. Men-at-Arms, 325. London: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-8553-2761-0. OCLC 464142950. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Mathglot (talk) 09:53, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

translator notes

As of today I am coming close to the end of the first part of my personal process, which I call unFrenching, ie identifying, based on experience, translation issues and unnecessary sentence complexity. It will take time and effort to fix this article. Please feel free to pitch in. A couple of points come to mind that may be useful to anyone else that wants to help this article (PLEASE DO)

• The article is unquestionably promo and I have pruned off big chunks of promo already. However, the topic is definitely important to French history and so probably worth fixing (unless someone wants to rewrite from scratch using the existing article as a series of writing prompts)
• "Accordingly" and "by this fact" (de ce fait) are essentially French-language mouth noises to connect related thoughts and can almost always be removed or replaced with a better and less pompous conjunction
• The article was written by a fan of the Foreign Legion who does not speak English very well. If something does not make sense the reason is very likely that the related but wrong translation was selected, possibly by an early version of Google Translate. For example "assembled" has specific meanings in English which all mean "put together" but more likely comes across as parts of something physical, or perhaps a large rally, than simply "grouping people together".
• The flowery language is not unusual on the French Wikipedia but is considered non-encyclopedic in the English version. We should not be afraid to remove references to France, land of liberty, for example. Another example: "national territory" = France
• The French, who share a common history education, often assume that people know who Robespierre is, or this or that general. This is not the case in English when it comes to French historical figures, and one of the things that needs to be done is to identify first references to places, events, or people and supply them with a first name if applicable, and above all a wikilink. If you do not know what something is, please feel free to google it and edit the article, or to ask questions here.
• This still needs to be checked for accuracy against French wikipedia or the sources supplied by @Mathglot. Free free if so moved. Until this is done this article should not be relied upon for important matters except as a set of research leads

My own interest in French history and French military history is limited. Not non-existent, but limited. More limited than the work that needs doing. There is a big dump of articles on w:PNT about various regiments and generals of the Foreign Legion that may help with wikilinking. Most likely the redlinks in the article are caused by small variations in spelling, appellation or hyphenation. That's all, folks, at least for now.

PS - one mistake I found (and perhaps made) was confusion between ordnance and ordinance. In this context ordnance is correct Elinruby (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2019 (UTC)