DRAFT POSITION[edit]

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DRAFT POSITION[edit]

ISSUE:[edit]

The translation into English of the article title and unit name of the traditional French-Canadian “Royal 22e Régiment” is contested as not being consistent with English Wikipedia policy.

WIKIPEDIA POLICY includes 3 sections of particular importance to this issue: (1) when to change existing titles, (2) policy for government organizations, and (3) the need to choose names in common use.

(1) CONSIDERING TITLE CHANGES:[edit]

Section 10 of the Policy, (1) Considering titles changes, strongly discourages editing simply to change one controversial title to another, noting that there are many other ways to improve Wikipedia than such unproductive debating. “If an article title has ... not been challenged to a significant degree as well as not moved for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed”. The article on the Royal 22e Régiment reflects these stable conditions. The current change being pursued, when it becomes known, could well generate sustained “unproductive debate”.

The remainder of this paper deals with the issue of whether there are indeed “good reasons” to change both the article title and the regiment's name, despite the debate likely to flow from it.

(2) GUIDELINES FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES:[edit]

The Guidelines for naming government organizatiions are more restricitve than is Wikipedia policy on common names. They recommend that the official name of an organization be used, unless an agency is almost always known by an acronymn. When the native title is not in English, it should nevertheless be used “when reliable sources in the English language commonly use the native titles. For example, ... Bundestag (not Parliament of Germany)”. Thus, in establishing titles and naming government organizations, the need is not to demonstrate that one version of a title is more frequently used than an another. The requirement is simply to establish whether reliable sources in the English language commonly use the official native title.
This policy is widely followed in Wikipedia, as the following examples of naming non-English units demonstrates:

German titles: Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, Panzergrenadier, Bundeswehr, Waffen-SS.
French titles: French Gendarmerie, Maquis, Fusiliers Marins, Force de Frappe
Other nations: Italian carabinieri, Israeli Mossad, Russian KGB
Canadian titles: many French-language military units such as the 12eRBC, the FMR , Fusiliers de Sherbroke, Régiment de la Chaudière, etc. As well Quebec's provincial police force is shown by its French name, reflecting current practice in Canada.

(3) COMMON NAMES:[edit]

The WP section on common names gives advice on how to determine which of several alternative names is most frequently used by "reliable sources". The following data reflects observations of name usage as recommended. However, the time frame under observation was narrowed to reflect mainly the 21st Century (from 2000), the last five years and the past year. The reasons are: First, Following World War II, and throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, significant changes in language use occured, including legislation such as the Official Languages Act in 19xx, as well as changes in both education and attitude of Canadian society that made Canadians more open to the French language. Data on language use prior to this period would be most misleading in the determination of the commonly used current title for this French-Canadian regiment. Secondly, Internet search engines are unable to accurately quantify the date or the number of older references to the regiment. Users are warned not to rely on superficially scanned and indexed historic data. "Anytime" searches, giving millions of hits, disappear when a time-frame filter is applied. Users are warned not to rely on quantitative searches going back further than 2000.

The names in common use are:

Official title: Royal 22e Régiment (accent on é in Régiment is often dropped and the e on 22, that should be in superscript, is sometimes completely eliminated in English texts using the official title)
Anglicised title: Royal 22nd Regiment (was the official title until changed to a French title in 1928; it has taken several generations to implement this change amongst English-speakers.)
Nick name: Van Doos (or Vandoos) (a good-natured English reference, respecting the French nature of the "vingt-deux" soldiers)

Official Sources[edit]

It was observed that Government sources at all levels from the Queen, through the various echelons of government to the local offices, now use the official title of the regiment almost exclusively in English communications (90% - 100%).

The Queen[edit]

The Queen, Head of the Commonwealth (53 English-speaking countries) and Head of State of 15, is an incontestably "reliable source" in the English language, as used internationally and nationally, in regard to the names of the Regiments she has honoured by serving as their Colonel-in-Chief. The website of the British Monarchy, on its U.K. domain, [1] states: "The Queen (acts) as Colonel-in-Chief of various regiments (including)....Le Royal 22e Régiment ..."

Canada's Department of National Defence[edit]

The Directorate of History and Heritage at Canada's defence department, in an English document,[2] gives the name, history and status of the regiment, that has been known as the Royal 22e Régiment in both French and English since 1928.

Other clearly reliable official sources are the official histories that were published of the Canadian Army in World War II 1 and in the Korean War . In every volume of the histories, starting with those covering World War II (1939-1945),the regiment was described exclusively according to its official title in narratives, on maps, in tables of units, etc. This approach has continued to the present day.

Canadian Government usage[edit]

The domain ".gc.ca" is used by the many agencies of government. A "Google" search of English pages gave the number of hits for the official and anglicised versions of the regimental title for various periods, on this domain. Here it is shown that the official regimental title has reached a current level of use of 90% in English documents.

Time Period	Anglicised Title	Official Title (R22eR)	Nick Name (Van Doos)
From 2000	120	672	Not counted
Past 5 years	90	611	Not counted
Past year	35	320	Not counted

Reliable Sources: Encyclopaedias, Books and News Archives:[edit]

WP recommends a search of encyclopaedias, books and news archives in order to obtain the most “reliable” data. However, Encyclopaedia Britannica, using its own advanced search feature, showed no articles for our regimental title. The Canadian Encyclopaedia was examined; its main article on Canadian military structure and regiments identified clearly the name of the regiment by its official “native” title. However, other subsidiary articles had references to the Anglicised version, in historical articles, or references in biographies of individuals who had served at some time in the regiment, that resulted in a higher number of hits for the Anglicized title. The search of our own Wikipedia encyclopaedia showed significantly greater current detail on Canadian military units, with far more "hits" for the official title and nick name than for the Anglicised version of the Royal 22e Régiment .

In accordance with WP recommendations for reliable sources, a search was done of Google Books and Google News Archive. The Huffington Post was also added. All these sources reflect more frequent use of the official title of the regiment. The following summary of the search of encyclopaedias, books and news archives tends to show that reliable English sources not only use the native title, but in most examples, the anglicised version is in distinctly lesser use than the native title and even the nickname.

Source	Anglicised Title (R22ndR)	Official Title (R22eR)	Nick Name (Van Doos)	TOTAL non-Anglicised	Comments
Canadian Encyclopedia through Google domain filter	34	25	2	27	Main article uses official title. Hits of anglicised titles mostly 1920s history or separate articles on individuals who mention the regiment in a "bio." Results not limited by a date filter and reflect many old articles.
Wikipedia internal search (articles only)	14	62	30	92	Large number of hits undoubtedly reflects the dynamic up-to-date nature of Wikipedia and better coverage of military matters.
Google Books From 2000	346	604	488	1,092	”Anytime search” also shows official title in greater use than Anglicized version (22,770 vice 21,700),
Google News Archive From 2000	551	698	130	823
Huffington Post From 2000	43	52	205	257	If you like a liberal slant!

Search Engines, News Media and Social Media :[edit]

The more widely used media , while not necessarily reliable, nevertheless provide a good indication of the language used by the general population. Wikipedia recommends that it be searched as well. The following table summarizes the result of that search, confirming the common use of the official native title and indeed, the relatively lesser use of the Anglicised version.

Source	Anglicised Title (R22ndR)	Official Title (R22eR)	Nick Name (Van Doos)	TOTAL non-Anglicised	Comments
GOOGLE Search Engine					Google searches unlimited by language, dates, etc., give results of over 1 million hits for Royal 22nd Regiment, a clearly unusable result, influenced by 97 years of documented history and decades of partial Google scanning and indexing. It was determined that more firm parameters were required, starting with this century, shown below.
From 2000	39,800	45,800	33,380	79,180
From 2006	37,000	44,400	23,613	68,813
Past year	14,400	19,777	14,250	34,027
YAHOO Search Engine	-	-		-	YAHOO does not provide the same search filters as Google that allow time periods of several years to be quantified. Therefore fixed points were selected – years 2000, 2006 and the past year. Because the Anglicised title was so clearly a “non-solution” in this search, the nick name was not quantified.
2000	4,120	9,630	NOT counted	9,630	-
2006	4,110	8,480	NOT counted	8,480	-
Past year	5,910	12,300	12,300
BING Search Engine	-	-		-	As with Yahoo above, BING does not provide the same search filters as Google that allows time periods of several years to be quantified. Therefore fixed points were selected – years 2000, 2006 and the past year.
2000	5,890	16,498	NOT counted	16,498
2006	5,940	13,779	NOT counted	13,779
Past year	9,660	22,561	NOT counted	22,561
Globe and Mai From 2000	32	12	9	21	G&M internal index used
Past year	21	8	7	15
National Post From 2000 (using filtered Google)	31	20	23	43
Past year	25	17	13	30
Toronto Star From 2000 (using filtered Google)	59	49	40	89
Past year	15	38	14	52	In the last decade, the official title was slightly behind the Anglicised version, but in the past year it showed the greater use.
CTV From 2000 (using filtered Google)	862	37	36	73
Past year	228	32	20	52	An aberration. Either the data is wrong or CTV is completely different from most other sources.
CBC From 2000 (using filtered Google)	868	10,696	49	10,745
Past year	312	903	23	926	The native official title is used almost three times more frequently than the Anglicised version.
FACEBOOK “Anytime” (using filtered Google)	18	3,080	73	3,153	FACEBOOK’s data is all sufficiently recent that no separation is either necessary or possible.
YOUTUBE “Anytime” (using filtered Google)	109	574	519	1093	YOUTUBE’S data is all sufficiently recent that no separation is either necessary or possible.