Smartesse's Blog

Lately i’ve been too mushy therefore, when my dear friend, Nico has spotted a translation issue in my blog i found it to be the perfect opportunity to reinforce my smart ass reputation. And so it goes: apparently Wikipedia, in its Romanian version has a problem with the translation/copywritting of it’s very tagline: “The Free Encyclopedia”. It has currently been translated as “Encyclopedia Libera” – reminding us, the Romanians, very much of a dear old friend from one of our darkest historical periods – “Europa libera”. “Liber” in Romanian only means free as in independent, and freedom. For ‘free of charge’ there’s another word – “gratuit”, a polisemic word :D, of course, which has also a strong  negative meaning of ‘cheap’. Apparently they chose to go with the independent aspect of the word, which i suppose was the right choice after all, however, it still sounds funny, and somehow revolutionary. Next possible tagline could be: Free Wikipedia! But let’s hope it doesn’t get to that! 😀