Talk:Das Kapital
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 | Text and/or other creative content from this version of Das Kapital, Volume III was copied or moved into Das Kapital with this edit on 24 July 2024. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
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Requested move 22 November 2019
- The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: No consensus. (non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Das Kapital → Capital (book) – WP:CONSISTENT with Capital, Volume I; Capital, Volume II; Capital, Volume III; and the Capital, Volume IV redirect. It's completely bizarre that we're using conflicting titles for multiple articles about the same work. I'm suggesting the English titles per WP:USEENGLISH, but don't feel strongly about it; I suppose it's possible the WP:COMMONNAME is actually Das Kapital, and the other three articles should move instead. However, it seems to me that we might actually consider a merge, or at least selective merging and some cleanup; the Vol. I–III articles are looking more and more like WP:CONTENTFORKs rather than WP:SPINOFFs. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:15, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- Note: There was an RM in 2018, in which I supported the current name on the basis of WP:CONCISE and accepting at face value the COMMONNAME vs. USEENGLISH claim made by the nominator, but without knowing we had a whole series of articles with conflicting, and entirely English, titles. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:18, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. In all my life, English-speakers here in England have known this book mostly as Das Kapital. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose Per Anthony Appleyard. Obvious WP:COMMONNAME of an incredibly famous book.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 05:15, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose per above comments and support moving the articles on the Volumes to the CommonName form. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. Oh come on! One of the most famous books ever written and known overwhelmingly by its German name. WP:UE doesn't mandate slavish translation of everything. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
- Support Regardless of the anecdotal evidence of the above commenters, Capital is the most common name for the work in English, as is shown by this google ngram search. Standard google searches yield similar results. Furthermore, while it may have been publish in English under Das Kapital at some point in the past, all standard modern editions of the work (e.g. Oxford World's Classics, Penguin Classics, Wordsworth Classics) are published under Capital. Scholarly discussion of the work also overwhelmingly uses Capital (for confirmation of this, see the "Further reading" and "External links" section of this very article). ThessalonianR (talk) 13:15, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- Try this one instead, given "Das Kapital" in English sources will almost invariably refer to this work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- The problem with comparing the frequency of the strings "Das Kapital" and "Marx's Capital" (which is done in your link) is that in only one of them is the name of the book preceeded by "Marx's". You are not comparing like for like. The reason why I prefixed "Marx's" is to control for the fact that "Capital" alone (which it would be reasonable to compare to "Das Kapital") refers to many other things besides the book. Other words can also be prefixed to ensure that only uses related to the book are counted. With "first volume of" prefixed we obtain much the same result. ThessalonianR (talk) 17:58, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- As I quite clearly said, "Das Kapital" in English sources will almost invariably refer to this work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:12, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- I understand what you're saying, and I don't dispute it. The problem is that the same is not the case with "Capital". We want to compare the use of these two terms only when they are used to refer to Marx's work. Google ngram is a good way of comparing these things (it searches very large corpora of books and its use is recommended in Wikipedia:RM); however, in situations in which one or both of the terms has other referents we must control for this. This graph would not be a very good argument, would it? That is why, as I previously explained, it is necessary to prefix some words to form a phrase that can only be used to refer to the work in question. I have already provided two such searches, one that uses the phrase "Marx's Capital" and "Marx's Das Kapital", the other "first volume of Capital" and "first volume of Das Kapital". Both of those only show a subset of the use of each term, but they show comparable subsets. The problem with the search that you linked to is that it compares the entire set of uses of "Das Kapital" with a mere subset of the uses of "Capital" to refer to the work -- just those that are prefixed by "Marx's". As I said, this does not compare like for like. Does this really strike you as a fair comparison? If so, please give your reasons. I apologize if my previous comments have not been clear enough and hopefully this will help. ThessalonianR (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
- One problem is that the resulting data is not consistent enough to show which is more common in other contexts. For example, see this ngram in which "Das Capital by Karl Marx" consistently outpaces "Capital by Karl Marx". Dekimasuよ! 15:34, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
- Given that the frequency of the strings you have compared are a whole order of magnitude less frequent than the ones I linked to earlier, I'm not sure how significant this is. Incidentally, removing "Karl" yields the opposite result, and both pairs of strings put into a regular google search give more results when including "Capital". In any case, this argument was only one of those I made in my original comment. What do people have to say about the fact that in English it is published under Capital? Or that in nigh on all academic discussion of the work it is known as Capital?
- To step back for a moment, if consensus cannot be arrived at on what the common name is (although I believe the evidence is very much in Capital's favour) then other criteria such as the use of the English and consistency should surely take precedence, in which case the page should be moved to Capital anyway. As the opener of this discussion made clear, consistency is his main concern. And to insist on the use of German when it is not clearly the common name seems perverse to me. ThessalonianR (talk) 19:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
- One problem is that the resulting data is not consistent enough to show which is more common in other contexts. For example, see this ngram in which "Das Capital by Karl Marx" consistently outpaces "Capital by Karl Marx". Dekimasuよ! 15:34, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
- I understand what you're saying, and I don't dispute it. The problem is that the same is not the case with "Capital". We want to compare the use of these two terms only when they are used to refer to Marx's work. Google ngram is a good way of comparing these things (it searches very large corpora of books and its use is recommended in Wikipedia:RM); however, in situations in which one or both of the terms has other referents we must control for this. This graph would not be a very good argument, would it? That is why, as I previously explained, it is necessary to prefix some words to form a phrase that can only be used to refer to the work in question. I have already provided two such searches, one that uses the phrase "Marx's Capital" and "Marx's Das Kapital", the other "first volume of Capital" and "first volume of Das Kapital". Both of those only show a subset of the use of each term, but they show comparable subsets. The problem with the search that you linked to is that it compares the entire set of uses of "Das Kapital" with a mere subset of the uses of "Capital" to refer to the work -- just those that are prefixed by "Marx's". As I said, this does not compare like for like. Does this really strike you as a fair comparison? If so, please give your reasons. I apologize if my previous comments have not been clear enough and hopefully this will help. ThessalonianR (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
- As I quite clearly said, "Das Kapital" in English sources will almost invariably refer to this work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:12, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- The problem with comparing the frequency of the strings "Das Kapital" and "Marx's Capital" (which is done in your link) is that in only one of them is the name of the book preceeded by "Marx's". You are not comparing like for like. The reason why I prefixed "Marx's" is to control for the fact that "Capital" alone (which it would be reasonable to compare to "Das Kapital") refers to many other things besides the book. Other words can also be prefixed to ensure that only uses related to the book are counted. With "first volume of" prefixed we obtain much the same result. ThessalonianR (talk) 17:58, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - While I've never heard it called "Capital", it seems that this is a common form of the title in English. However, the English form is not the primary topic for the word "capital" and would need a disambiguation. Given this situation, I would think that "Das Kapital" would fall under the directive to use natural disambiguation instead of parenthetical disambiguation wherever practical. --Khajidha (talk) 13:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
- Followup note: I will RM the other articles, then, to match this one's title. I didn't really care which title we used as long as it's consistently used. That said, I think ThessalonianR has a good point, and I also have to observe that how famous a work is has jack to do with what title our article should have. No one questioned whether Capital / Das Kapital is "an incredibly famous book" or "One of the most famous books ever written". This sort of emotional venting is not helpful at RM or any other consensus discussion. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)