Editing 2168: Reading in the Original

{{comic
| number    = 2168
| date      = June 26, 2019
| title     = Reading in the Original
| image     = reading_in_the_original.png
| titletext = The articles are much shorter, but I assume that's because this version predates the merger with the Hawaiian text that created the modern Hawaiian-Greek hybrid wiki-pedia.
}}

==Explanation==
Many academics and aficionados argue that studying texts in the original language is more valuable than reading translations. The argument is that translations are rarely able to fully capture all of the nuances, linguistic subtleties and intent of the original author, and may even alter the meaning in some way due to the translator's interpretation and word choices. The drawback to this is that it requires the reader to be sufficiently fluent in whatever language the text is written. Critically, a reader of the original source also needs to understand the cultural and historical context of the original work, something a professional translator might deal with much better. This can even happen when working with archaic texts in the same language, as certain references and phrases may have had a significance which was lost over time.

Cueball's commenting that he read works "in the original Greek" implies a high-level of literary scholarship, as this phrase is associated with scholars studying ancient Greek texts, which form a significant part of the foundational works of Western literature.

A similar thing happens with dubbed movies or TV series/anime, with many people remarking that they instead prefer to watch the original version (sometimes with subtitles), instead of the dubbed version. 

The joke in this comic is that Cueball has apparently taken the time to learn Greek in order to read the [https://el.wikipedia.org Greek-language Wikipedia] in that language, believing it to be the "original" one. {{w|Wikipedia}} was originally launched as a single English-language edition encyclopedia, but Cueball apparently treats it as though it was originally written in Greek. (An [https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/grc Ancient Greek Wikipedia test project] also exists, but is not nearly as large as the modern Greek one and isn't available through the languages box.)  Wikipedia has editions in about 300 languages; the 'languages' box that Cueball mentions does link to the corresponding page in other languages when they are available, but such pages are not usually translations of each other, having been written separately. (The 'languages' box was indeed placed in the lower left of the page at the time the comic was published, but moved to the upper right in January 2023, when a [https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/wikipedia-redesign-vector-2022-skin.html new default Skin] was deployed.) Cueball's dedication to appearing to be a committed scholar is therefore contrasted with the ignorance of not understanding that Greek is not the original language of every text.  Megan, recognizing that Wikipedia articles were not originally in Greek, exclaims that "That's not how that works!"

The movie ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'' has a joke concerning someone speaking of a foreign "original" language of something that actually was originally written in English: Chancellor Gorkon says, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the [[wikia:w:c:klingon:Shakespeare|original Klingon]]." (In reality, Shakespeare lived in England, and wrote in English, not Klingon.)<sup>[<i><font color="blue">citation needed</font></i>]</sup>

The title text combines two jokes.  First, the reference to pages being "much shorter" is because the English language Wikipedia has the most editors and is the most developed; outside of areas of intense interest to Greeks, most pages would be more complete on the English Wikipedia, which would normally be a sign to Cueball that his interpretation that Greek was the original text is incorrect.  Second, the way he explains away this contradiction is an etymology joke, since "Wikipedia" was coined from two parts, "[[wikt:wiki#English|wiki]]", from Hawaiian, and "[[wikt:-pedia|pedia]]", from Greek. However, words having roots in different languages is common and does not signify any link between the separate languages; for example, while the word "Wikipedia" does have etymological roots in Hawaiian and Greek, it is not true that the site was originally composed of texts written in Hawaiian and Greek. In Hawaiian, [[wikt:wiki#Hawaiian|wiki]] means quick. In Greek, the suffix [[wikt:-pedia|pedia]] is related to learning, which makes Wikipedia mean "quick learning" when combining these two languages.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is addressing Megan. He is holding a hand with a thumb up out toward her. Megan is spreading her arms out as she replies.]
:Cueball: It's in the "Languages" box in the lower left. It took a while to learn, but I find I get so much more out of it by reading it as it was '''''intended'''''.
:Megan: That's not how that works!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:People get mad when I tell them I only read Wikipedia in the original Greek.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]