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Brazil Start‑class

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Military history: South America Start‑class

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I've been working on the English a bit. I don't know much about the subject, so I'm trying to be careful about my revisions. Hopefully I've made the writing clearer without losing any of the meaning. Everyking 03:07, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Strange banner they have -- it looks exactly like the modern German flag. --Saforrest 15:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The top color is green - can't tell from that picture, though.--Uac1530 07:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent Edits (Oct/06)

There has been some recent edits on this article that IMHO, are deviating a well-written and potential good article to a coloquial/unencyclopedic format. I think we should revise these edits. --Pinnecco 08:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

War of the Ragamuffins

I have moved the name of this article to "War of the Ragamuffins" (Guerra dos Farrapos) as it is the most used name in English for the rebellion (see: ). --Lecen (talk) 00:48, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This whole attempt of translating the word Farrapos is getting silly. I suggest making a small section explaining the meaning of the word Farrapo, and keeping it the title "War of the Farrapos" --Pinnecco (talk) 09:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

"farrapo" means "rag"; "raggamuffin" has a completely different connotation - its Wiktionary entry describes it, basically, as a "poor little sorry thing." Despite having been used by other authors or translators, the word is clearly incompatible with the idea "farrapos" carries. Having the word acquired a meaning of its own when used to refer to this war or some of the people who took part in it, I agree we should leave it as "Farrapos" and I am making the change. --I. N. Keller (talk) 14:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I am not autoconfirmed, so please move this page if you are able to and make "War of the Ragamuffins" redirect to "War of the Farrapos." --I. N. Keller (talk) 15:02, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I have moved the article back to where it was. Please open a RM discussion before moving it again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:21, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm reverting Lecen's reversion. It might be common to make that sort of translation in Portuguese, but not in English. We call it "Storming of the Bastille", not "Storming of the Fortress." --I. N. Keller (talk) 00:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I can live with "War of the Rags", but "Ragamuffin" is inconceivable. Wordnet defines it as "a dirty shabbily clothed urchin", and an "urchin" as a "poor and often mischievous city child." How do you make the leap from that to "cattle-raising rural warrior?" --I. N. Keller (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not a matter of what you can or not live with. "War of the Ragamuffins", that is, the name in English most used by English sources has 21,100 results on Google books. "War of the Farrapos" has 2,070 results.. --Lecen (talk) 01:25, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

You aren't exactly right. You need to search with quotes because Google is returning every book that containing all four words whether they are related to this or not. Searching for "war of the ragamuffins" with quotes gives us 126 results. Searching for "war of the farrapos" gives us 381 results. AniMate 01:53, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

If it's useful, Britannica calls it "Guerra dos Farrapos" and translates it parenthetically as "war of the ragged ones." See here. Also, JSTOR has 0 hits for "war of the ragamuffins," 4 for "war of the farrapos," and 22 (all in English) for "guerra dos farrapos." This seems to me to say that the article ought to be called "Guerra dos farrapos" since it seems to be the common name in English. Other possibilities are "Farrapos war" (here is the gbooks search on that, restricted to books in English, with 172 hits (although that's misleading, because some of them are for index entries like "Farrapos, war of the." "Farrapos war" gets only 3 hits in JSTOR. Is there a good reason not to use the Portuguese name, since that seems to also be the WP:COMMONNAME?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 03:55, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I actually get 31 JSTOR (total) hits for "guerra dos farrapos" but indeed 0 for "war of the ragamuffins". I suspect you only counted those in English-titled publications, but some of the articles in Revista de Historia de América (like Thomas Whigham's) are actually in English, so 22 is probably an under-estimate. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Some advice from WP:TITLE: On the English Misplaced Pages, article titles are written using the English language. However, it must be remembered that the English language contains many loan words and phrases taken from other languages. If a word or phrase (originally taken from some other language) is commonly used by English language sources, it can be considered to be an English language word or phrase (example: Coup d'état).— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 04:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to call it "Guerra dos Farrapos". This is the Misplaced Pages in English. The name used on Featured Articles like Empire of Brazil and Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias is "War of the Ragamuffins". That's the name widely accepted and I can not understand, even though I'm Brazilian and I'm a native Portuguese speaker, to call this Brazilian rebellion by its Portuguese name. --Lecen (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

But 30 hits on google scholar for "Guerra dos Farrapos" in English language articles and only one for "War of the Ragamuffins." This really does seem to be what it's called in English. Compare Cinco de Mayo, Revolta da Armada, and so on.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 05:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm sorry but what other Misplaced Pages articles call it is irrelevant. They are not WP:RS. The arguments by Animate and Alf.laylah.wa.laylah above are compelling that the current title is not following policy because it's clearly less common than several alternatives in WP:RS. I'm not sure just yet which of those variations should be adopted, but the one thing that is clear is that "farrapos" should appear in it, not "ragamuffins". Tijfo098 (talk) 05:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

How about Cabanada, Balaiada, Intentona de Yauco?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Even "Farroupilha Revolt" has more exact GB hits (254) than the current title (123). But it's not really common on JSTOR (only 4 hits). Tijfo098 (talk) 06:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, did anyone notice that the number of estimated and actual GB hits, even for the exact phrase, varies dramatically? If I click on the 2nd page for "War of the Ragamuffins" in GB, it turns out there are only 14 hits in total instead of hundreds. So the 1st page estimate in GB seems to be very misleading, although comparisons still seem valid as long as the estimate is used uniformly, e.g. "Farroupilha Revolt" returns 20 real hits. In contrast "Guerra dos Farrapos" goes on for 10 pages (I thing GB stops after that) so there are at least 100 real hits; granted, some of those are not in English. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I've also searched Google Scholar. "War of the Farrapos" has 22 hits while "War of the Ragamuffins" only 1. "Farroupilha Revolt" has 44 hits in GS however! Tijfo098 (talk) 07:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion it should be called 'War of the Farrapos'. The body of the text can explain the definition of the word farrapos as 1. 'tatters' and 2. ragamufins. In fact I was the one who started this article originally and decided to named it 'War of Tatters'. In hindsight I wouldn't try to translate the title. It was a STUPID idea, and I was young :) --Pinnecco (talk) 10:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. To me, it doesn't matter at all whether some writers or translators call it "Ragamuffins" (and it seems now very few do). The word is completely incompatible with the idea expressed by "Farrapos" and I believe that's an editorial decision we can make together. Misplaced Pages is not simply a copy-and-paste from the sources. The infamous "The Beatles vs. the Beatles" brouhaha is a good example of how the number of occurrences in other sources is not necessarily relevant. It's even less so in this case since the overwhelming majority of books dealing with the subject are written in Portuguese and its translations (as well as the translating skills of English-speaking authors themselves) are of unknown quality. Anyone who's familiar with translations knows bad ones are very common. I've read some widely read translations of Marx to Portuguese that I can only describe as excruciating. I see no reason why Misplaced Pages should borrow shabbiness just because it's available in printed form.

You are also ignoring that many sources might use more than one variant. They might use "Guerra dos Farrapos" in the title but refer to the "Farrapos War" in the text. Authors of history books like a little variety and there are also fluency and brevity issues to take into account. For that and many technical reasons, those search engine statistics are meaningless. --I. N. Keller (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It might not matter to you what anyone calls it, but if you want to get the name changed it's going to matter. Page titles are based on the most common name in English and search engines and uses in reliable sources are how we figure out what that is. Your point about variants is well taken, though. Does someone want to make a proposal for what the name should be and we can support or oppose it?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposals for name

Two terms are used interchangeably to refer to the war in Portuguese: "Guerra dos Farrapos" and "Revolução Farroupilha". Both seem to be equally common, but when mentioning the holiday and the weeklong commemoration people talk about the "feriado da Revolução Farroupilha (holiday of the 'Farroupilhan' Revolution)" and the "Semana Farroupilha ('Farroupilhan' Week)". In the American Revolution article, "revolution" is used to refer to the political movement and "war" to refer to the military event, but we would need to expand the article in order to split this one that way.

Revolução Farroupilha cannot be translated as "Farroupilha Revolution", only as "Farroupilhan Revolution", which is really weird (a good enough reason not to do it, in my view). So I suggest we use "Revolução Farroupilha", in the same fashion as "Cinco de Mayo". Since we don't have separate articles for the politics and the armed conflict, I believe we should go with the most encompassing one, and that is one that refers to the revolution. --I. N. Keller (talk) 17:54, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

This is very reasonable. On the other hand "Revolução Farroupilha" doesn't seem to be used as much in English as "Guerra dos Farrapos" does; e.g. 3 hits on JSTOR and 9 on google scholar, of which only two are actually using the phrase in the English text as opposed to in citations. I think in terms of the common name in English we'd be better off with "Guerra dos Farrapos".— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 18:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine with either. I note the Portuguese Misplaced Pages also uses "Guerra dos Farrapos". I'll now wait for the other opinions. --I. N. Keller (talk) 18:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I think "War of the Farrapos" makes the most sense for the English Misplaced Pages. It appears to be used the most in English sources. AniMate 21:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

(I found this debate via user talk pages) Just making a comment. We should use the most frequent name in English-language sources. If those sources use a Portuguese name, then we should use the Portuguese name and not a translation of the name. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The name "Farroupilha Revolt" seems to be more common in English-language sources. Kanguole 10:32, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Common Sense, Please

From Misplaced Pages:Article_titles:

(...) the ideal article title resembles titles for similar articles, precisely identifies the subject, and is short, natural, and recognizable.

The current article title is neither recognizable nor natural. People familiar with the topic would be clueless upon hearing it, and no one would likely search for it. It is also, obviously, not precise.

The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

This speaks to my point about how, in this case, the name most commonly used in English-language sources is not necessarily relevant (and is not the current one, either way). The article also warns that: "Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice on the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Misplaced Pages:Search engine test."

When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the criteria listed above. (...) If there are too few reliable English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on).

Again, this is what I have argued from the beginning; namely, that we, the editors, should reach a consensus. The most frequently used term is not obvious. I think we have also established that there are few reliable English-language sources, not to mention the research into those was inconclusive and some of the results inadequate.

If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.

"Rafamuffin" is far from established English-language treatment. In fact, it is not even the correct translation of "farrapos" (rags, tatters). User Kudpung correctly pointed out on his talk page that the best translation for "ragamuffin" would be "maltrapilho". We are not talking about mischievous city infants or street dwellers, we are talking about rural warriors who took part in a (failed) revolution. Therefore, the current title is a misinformation to English-speaking readers; it is not only plainly wrong, but also misleading.

And now to the final and most important guideline:

Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at Misplaced Pages:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made. Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Misplaced Pages." (...) "While titles for articles are subject to consensus, do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing points of view. Misplaced Pages describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.

User Lecen has changed the title at his whim, without discussion. In fact, he ignored attempts to discuss it - that was the reason I entered the edit war he started (I know all about why you hate them, and I did it on purpose). Instead of discussing it, he started an edit war, and reported me to the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents when, if any reporting were to be done, it should have been to the conflict resolution pages. (He's also a jerk and an ugly one at that.)

Can we now finally name it either "Revolução Farroupilha" or "Farroupilhan Revolution" (the only sensible titles) with "Guerra dos Farrapos" and "War of the Farrapos" redirecting here and anything with "ragamuffin" in it being sent to the limbo? Or do we have to wait for more edit wars and vandalism with multiple accounts and proxies?I. N. Keller (talk) 06:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

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