Help:Translation

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This is a project information page for Landrace.Wiki. It describes the project's standards, processes, or structure. It is not an encyclopaedic article.

Most primary material on cannabis landraces is not in English. Pre-twentieth-century botanical works survive in Latin, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese and Italian. Contemporary news comes out of Khmer, Thai, Lao, Hindi and Bengali outlets. Farmer interviews and oral history happen in the speaker's first language. Translating that material into English is one of the most useful contributions a reader can make to the wiki.

Translation work on the wiki falls into five categories.

• Historical source documents. The Historical sources articles draw on early botanical, pharmacological and colonial-era works in Latin, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese and Italian.
• Accession traditional names. Each accession page carries fields for the name in its native script, a romanisation, an IPA pronunciation guide where possible, and a literal English translation of the meaning. Speakers of the source language are best placed to fill these.
• Regional-language news. Khmer Times, the Khmer-language Phnom Penh Post, Thai Rath, and Indian and Lao outlets cover enforcement actions and policy shifts that the English-language press often misses.
• Academic literature. Important secondary sources on cannabis ethnobotany are published in French (Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Bisiou, Crévost & Lemarié, Martin 1975, Taillard 1974), German, Spanish and Russian.
• Oral history and field interviews. A faithful English rendering is what makes a non-English interview citable. Original-language audio and transcripts should be retained where the speaker has consented.

Marking up a translation

Whenever an English passage is a translation of non-English material, the page must show that. The pattern is:

• Cite the original work with full bibliographic detail in the <ref>.
• Name the translator and the year the translation was made, in the citation or in the running text.
• Where the original wording is short and material to the point, include it in the citation alongside the translation.

Example, in wikitext:

According to Crévost and Lemarié, hemp cultivation in [[Tonkin]]
was confined to small household plots near settlements.<ref>
Crévost, Charles, and Charles Lemarié. ''Catalogue des produits
de l'Indochine''. Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient, 1917,
p. 142. Original French: "La culture du chanvre se borne à
quelques pieds plantés dans les jardins". Translated by E. Dillon,
2026.</ref>

For longer passages, use {{Quote}} for the English rendering and cite the original work and translator in the same way. Where a published English translation by a named scholar already exists, cite that translation directly rather than retranslating from the source.

Accession local-name fields

Each accession page can carry the following on its template:

• Local name: the name in its native script (e.g. ខ្មែរ for Khmer, हिन्दी for Devanagari, ไทย for Thai). Use Unicode, not images.
• Pronunciation: preferably IPA. A simplified phonetic romanisation is acceptable as a fallback.
• Vernacular translation: the literal meaning of the name in English, e.g. "village of the hemp-covered sand bank" for Ban Het Kansa.
• Synonyms: alternative names, regional variants and historical forms.

Speakers of the source language are encouraged to audit existing accession pages and correct or expand these fields. The Sheet column each field maps to is documented at Help:Documenting Accessions.

Standards

A translation is editorial work and is sourced like any other claim on the wiki.

• Cite the original. Page numbers, edition and date are required for printed works. The reader must be able to find the source text.
• Name the translator. For load-bearing passages this is required; for short factual fragments it is preferred.
• Translate, do not paraphrase. A close rendering of the source is a translation. A smoothed paraphrase is editorial commentary and should be marked as such in the surrounding prose.
• Keep the original visible where it carries weight. For coined terms, contested meanings or single-word descriptors, give the original alongside the English (e.g. bangue, djamba, kif) so other readers can check the rendering.
• Preserve the source's wording. Where a colonial-era or older author uses a term that reads as inaccurate or pejorative today, leave the original wording in the citation and address it in the surrounding prose.
• Review machine output before publishing it. Google Translate, DeepL and large-language-model output are useful drafting aids. Unreviewed machine output is not acceptable on the wiki and pages found to consist of it will be tagged or removed.

House style for translated text

The wiki uses British English: colour, organise, practising (verb), practice (noun). Translators working in American English by default should convert. Date formats are 28 April 2026, never April 28, 2026. The full house style is at Landrace.Wiki:Norms.

Native scripts are retained in Unicode wherever the source uses them. Pick the standard romanisation system for the source language, e.g. Pinyin for Mandarin, Hepburn for Japanese, RTGS for Thai, and note the system used.

Getting started

The most useful first contribution is to pick a single accession in a region whose language you read, audit its local-name fields against the linked source, and correct or expand them. Open Special:RandomInCategory/Accessions to find one.

Larger work, such as the coordinated translation of a historical source, is best scoped in advance. Raise it on Landrace.Wiki:Questions or contact the editor through the Patreon channel before starting.

See also

• Help:Sourcing: citation and reference standards
• Help:Accessions: accession template fields including local-name fields
• Help:Documenting Accessions: how to fill an accession page
• Landrace.Wiki:Norms: house style and tone
• Category:Historical sources: pages already drawing on translated material