A fact from Translating The Lord of the Rings appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 March 2008, and was viewed approximately 552 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that J.R.R. Tolkien was so incensed by the adaptation of proper names in the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings that he wrote a guide to advise future translators?
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Latest comment: 3 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I've removed a paragraph which claimed "Most translations ..." without any evidence. This is called WP:OR if it simply comes out of an editor's head, and WP:SYNTH if it is cited to multiple individual translations, and then SYNTHesized by the editor into an induced generalisation which the editor hopes or believes may apply across the board. This is forbidden by policy. TaivoLinguist makes the telltale edit comment "There is a difference between specific information and widely-reported general knowledge among specialists". So how do we VERIFY that the claim is "widely-reported general knowledge among specialists"? We cite a single RELIABLE SOURCE which verifiably makes that claim. Otherwise, it's OR. I do hope this is clear, as it is both mandatory and standard across the whole of Wikipedia. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:00, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
So I suppose that we need a reference to every time we write that "the Earth is round and not flat". --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
"The sky is blue" is the stock Wiki-phrase, and indeed you don't have to; the trouble is, the slogan takes one only a very short distance before original research supervenes. I recall a fine T-shirt slogan at a palaeontology conference: "Geologists take NOTHING for Granite." All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:32, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
Much the same goes for the examples given in the Carroux section. We can't connect Carroux's "Elb" to Tolkien's strictures in the 'Guide' unless a scholar somewhere has made that connection. The use of direct primary sourcing to Carroux would (at a pinch) be enough to support the claim "Carroux said X" but in that case all of the commentary about how good X was would be WP:OR, so we really can't go there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
