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Welcome to the Judaism community on Codidact!

Will you help us build our community of learners? Drop into our study hall, ask questions, help others with answers to their questions, share a d'var torah if you're so inclined, invite your friends, and join us in building this community together. Not an ask-the-rabbi service, just people at all levels learning together.

Comments on What is our policy regarding using non-English languages in a post?

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What is our policy regarding using non-English languages in a post?

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  1. Should we allow users to write questions in non-English languages?
  2. Should we allow users to write questions in specifically Hebrew or other Jewish languages like Judeo-Aramaic, Yiddish, and Ladino?
  3. Should we require the question to be written entirely in English where possible?
  4. In instances where a word cannot be fully translated into English (particularly legal or technical terminology), should we require the word to be at least transliterated into English, or should it be left in Hebrew script?1
  5. In instances where a word cannot be fully translated into English (particularly legal or technical terminology), should we require an in-line translation of the word as well?1
  6. When citing Judaic literature in a non-English language, should we require users to include a translation of the excerpt as well?

  1. On the back burner is a dictionary of these types of terminology. Whatever policy is decided upon here may at some point in the future be revisited upon the rollout of that feature, if and when it is published. ↩

discussion policy
posted over 4 years ago
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DonielF‭
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A slightly different take on AA's idea to use the Categories feature:

Maintain two categories of Q&A with the same scope and rules, but with the language of discourse in one (Q&A) being English, and the language of discourse in the other (שו"ת) being Hebrew. Whatever accessibility rules we have that assume knowledge of English apply in שו"ת with the assumption being knowledge of Modern Hebrew.

If possible, use a set of tags in שו"ת that are in Hebrew, but are synonymized to their English counterparts in Q&A, so that tag searches bring up related results from both. (I expect this would require code changes.)

On Meta, keep the language of discourse in English. As much as possible, make FAQ and Help pages bilingual.

To make this work, we'd need to make sure that the moderator team includes at least one moderator who's fluent in Modern Hebrew.

This setup would allow us to host Q&A for much more of the Jewish world, while ensuring that in each Q&A space, all of the posts are baseline legible to those reading them.

posted over 4 years ago
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Isaac Moses‭
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Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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We'd need to make it clear that the two categories are not merely translations of the same content, as a naive browser might assume otherwise. (And should somebody be motivated to translate a question to the "other" language, we'd want them to be linked together.)

AA ‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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I think it would be confusing to have this category in addition to one about Hebrew language, if we make one of those. One category called עברית and one called שו"ת? If I see a tab for עברית my instinct is "roughly the same stuff in Hebrew"

DonielF‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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I don’t know how this would play out long term, but let the record show that I speak conversational Hebrew, but not technical Hebrew.

Isaac Moses‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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@AA I don't think we should segregate scope into Categories. I agree that if we did segregate out Hebrew language scope as a Category, that would conflict with the plan in this answer.

Isaac Moses‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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@MonicaCellio I think the CC license would require such a link anyway (on the derivative side), but yes, I agree that it would make sense to have an explicit rule that intentional translations of content from one side to the other must be linked.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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The license would require it from a third-party translator. If the author decides to post it in both languages the license wouldn't require linking, but it's good practice and something we could set as a site policy. That's actually the easier issue; the harder one, I think, will be conveying that the categories have different content. I like the idea to let people ask in both languages (support the whole community); just need to figure out some guidance (and moderation :-) ).

msh210‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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The language of scholarship in Judaism for millennia has been not modern Hebrew but… I'm not sure what it's called. In any event, that is the language more likely known to Jews outside of Israel who don't know English but are interested in asking questions about Judaism. Modern Hebrew is more likely known to Jews in Israel. I recommend that if we have a Hebrew category then it allows for both dialects and that we have a moderator fluent in both.

Isaac Moses‭ wrote over 4 years ago
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@msh210 I'm not sure I agree about the relative prevalences, but good point. I suspect that fluency in written Rabbinic Hebrew would be easier to find among primarily English-speaking Judaism scholars, anyway. What concerns me is making sure there's a mod who can rapidly and fairly understand and respond to nuanced writing in Modern Hebrew, including in contentious situations.