Talk:Speaker of the Knesset

Requested move

List of Knesset speakers → List of Knesset Chairpersons – The name in Hebrew is "Yoshev-Rosh Ha'Knesset", meaning "Chairman of the Knesset", or "Yoshevet-Rosh Ha'Knesset", meaning "Chairwoman of the Knesset", hence "List of Knesset Chairpersons". Virant (talk) 04:39, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Clear violation of WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME - we don't blindly translate the name of positions, otherwise we'd have "Head of Government of Israel" rather than "Prime Minister of Israel". The Knesset website refers to the position as "Speaker", and as an example for COMMONNAME, Haaretz has 2,850 hits for "Knesset speaker" and one hit for "Knesset chairperson" (there were also a further 65 hits for "Knesset chairman", but the ratio remains at around 43:1 in terms of the use of speaker to chairman/chairperson). Number 57 08:24, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

• There's no violation:

1. Other chairmen/chairpersons of Parliaments are referred to as such, e.g. Chairman of the Parliament of Albania, Chairperson of the National Assembly of Bulgaria, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (other examples can be found in Speaker (politics)), so that's not a "blind translation" but a known alternative in usage.

2. The Knesset website also refers to the position as Chairman, e.g. Basic Law: The Knesset - 1958, Basic Law: The President of the State.

3. Haaretz, with all due respect, is the least widespread nationwide newspaper in Israel. Ynet, the most widespread Israeli newspaper online (and a close second in print) has 1,790 results for "Chairman of the Knesset" and only 43 for "Speaker of the Knesset". Searching the exact phrase in Google will show 3,260,000 results for "Chairman of the Knesset" and 1,380,000 for "Speaker of the Knesset". So, yes, Chairman is the common name. Virant (talk) 12:50, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The Knesset website may refer to the Speaker as the chairman in one or two instances, but the common name is clearly the Speaker (303 uses vs 4) and the main pages about the position refer to it as the "Speaker". You have also made a rather big mistake in your Googling methodology - by searching for "Chairman of the Knesset", you get a lot of ambiguous results - the first two pages of hits for "Chairman of the Knesset"on Ynet are all for Chair of various Knesset committees (e.g. "chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee", "chairman of the Knesset lobby" etc), whilst in your generic Google search, 26 of the first 40 hits for "Chairman of the Knesset" are actually for committee chairs. You need to search for "Knesset chairman" to make it clear what you are seaching for. This gives a totally different picture:

Media source	"Knesset speaker"	"Knesset chairman"
Ynetnews	894	50
Jerusalem Post	3,200	132
Haaretz	2,840	65
Israel National News	1,570	495
Times of Israel	1,390	3
Total	9,894	745

If you also amend your generic Google search to adjust for the ambiguous results (i.e. using "Knesset Chairman" rather than "Chairman of the Knesset"), then the results are quite different, i.e. 124,000 vs 24,600. And anyway, you have requested to move it to "Knesset chairperson", for which there are only 996 hits on the whole interweb. Number 57 13:25, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, thet's more likely for an opposition. So, on the one hand we have "Chairman", which is the direct translation, is more common (Ynet, Google) and exists in the english wikipedia as an equivalent to Speaker; and on the other hand we have "Speaker", which is almost always used in the Knesset website and is more common in smaller newspapers/news websites. We'll just have to wait and see which option is preferred by other wikipedians.

Though looks can be deceiving, Dalia Itzik was the Chairwoman of the Knesset, so I chose Chairpersons over Chairmen, and that has nothing to do with statistics, and everything to do with english. Virant (talk) 18:43, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Did you not read what I wrote above? "Chairman" is not most common on Google and Ynetnews - most of the hits were actually for Chairmen of Knesset committees. Number 57 19:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, but I did. I just didn't realize you keep changing your response, and I referred to one or more of your previous versions, probably this one. Anyway, I noticed a major flaw in your searching methodology, but that will have to wait till the very end of my day. See (or read) you later. Virant (talk) 07:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to when I accidentally used your flawed methodology on the Ynet search and came up with more hits for Chairman? Number 57 08:17, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys. Not that I think that the lemma is important, but the Knesset website has under the heading "Basic Law: The Knesset - 1958": "Chairman and Vice-Chairmen. The Knesset shall elect from among its members a Chairman and Vice-Chairmen." [1] I guess, in 1958, political correctness regarding women was not an issue yet. As far as I know, but I may be mistaken, "Speaker" is the term in English speaking countries only, which of course leads to translating it as such into English. In many countries, such as France: French Parliament, Germany: President of the Bundestag, Switzerland: Federal Assembly (Switzerland) etc. it would be President, not Chairperson, nor Speaker. Therefore: Why "Speaker" for Israel? Because it was a British mandate? Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 09:08, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably - English was an official language until 1948. As you point out, the legislation referring to "Chairman" dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, whilst the modern Knesset website almost exclusively uses the term Speaker in its English version. Number 57 09:27, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

That may be so, but the question imo is, whether it is consistent with en.WP policy or not. My reference to the mandate was ironical, by the way. If the Knesset has used the un-British term "Chairman" in the 1950s, shortly after the mandate ended, but changed it later to "Speaker", British influence imo has nothing to do with it: It's called "Americanization". Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 11:09, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that the current title is in line with both WP:UE (as the Knesset's English version almost exclusively uses "Speaker") and WP:COMMONNAME (as shown by the table of usage in the Israeli media above). Number 57 12:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't know that this would be such an egregious violation of WP:COMMONNAME, to be honest. All the same, the common terminology in English has been "Speaker" for years. It's not ambiguous, nor is it confusing. I see no reason to bother changing it. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:27, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but only for English speaking countries. I should not like to be present, when you call the President of one of the French chambers of Parliament "Speaker", or even the German not to mention the Swiss. Contrary to what you seem to think, StevenJ81, the term "Speaker" in this sense, is not known outside the former British Empire, to put it bluntly. A "speaker" translated into French is a "porte-parole", in German it's a "Sprecher", which has a totally different meaning. But I agree that it is not important enough to move the page if there is no consensus. Cheers, Ajnem (talk) 15:26, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Ajnem, let me please rephrase my previous statement: "... the common terminology used in English-language media to refer to the regular presiding officer of the Knesset has been 'Speaker' for years." I don't for a moment assume that the term is used in other languages. But I see no need to change this usage for this purpose at this time. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:44, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

(continuation of the discussion with user:Number_57, regarding the message which started with "I assume you are referring...":)

Well, while my search methodology included other Chairmen of the Knesset along with the actual "Chairman of the Knesset", you're search methodology has two fundamental flaws, which divert the search results in favor of "Speaker" when combined:

• Your search methodology excluded most (if not all) of the results containing the terms "Chairman of the Knesset" and "Speaker of the Knesset", leaving only the results for "Knesset Chairman" and "Knesset Speaker". It means that all of your results are partial and very deficient.
• "Chairman of the Knesset" is a direct translation of "Yoshev-Rosh Ha'Knesset" in Hebrew. But while in English one can change the order of the words "Chairman" and "Knesset" and still get a valid expression ("Knesset Chairman"), attempting to do the same in Hebrew will produce a meaningless expression: "Knesset Yoshev-Rosh"/"Ha'Knesset Yoshev-Rosh" etc. make no sense in Hebrew. Why is it so important? Because when Hebrew speakers translate from Hebrew to English, they are very likely to both use "Chairman" and to use it in the direct translation "Chairman of the Knesset", yes, the one that you have excluded from your searches. So by excluding this term, you excluded the common and preferred one by Hebrew speakers.

Now, if we search Google for "Chairman of the Knesset" while excluding the words "Committee", "Caucus", "Lobby" and "Faction", although it will exclude cases in which the Chairman of the Knesset had something to do with any of them, we will still get 393,000 results. So, though it's not an accurate count, it still shows that the term "Chairman of the Knesset" is definitely common.

Finally, just because it was mentioned in your discussion with [[user:Ajnem], I must stress that for the vast majority of Israelis, the word "Speaker" means either a spokesperson or a loudspeaker. A very recent example will be the Hebrew subtitles for the film "Olympus has Fallen" (which is a pretty silly film, might I add). The official Hebrew subtitles used in cinemas all over Israel, refer to the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) as "The spokesperson of the White house" throughout the film, including when he becomes the Acting President. And trust me, the people who translated the film understand English better than the average Israeli, and they still didn't think for a second that it is very unlikely that the White House Press Secretary becomes the Commander-in-Chief. Funny or ignorant as it may seem, the reason is that most Israelis have no idea the a "Speaker" might be the administrative head of a parliament. No "leftovers from the British Mandate" in this case. Virant (talk) 22:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's a situation where I think I would handle this differently in English Wikipedia and in Simple English Wikipedia. For fluent English speakers, "Speaker" is an established term for their parliaments, and it happens also to be an established usage for the presiding officer of the Knesset. There should surely be a redirect from variants of "Chair of the Knesset", but the established usage in English, per WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME, is Speaker. And with all due respect—I have a son in the Israel Air Force—this Wikipedia does not have to change standard usages because Hebrew-speaking Israelis would choose a different term. At Simple English Wikipedia, on the other hand, I would prefer a different usage because Simple is aimed at people whose English is not as fluent. There I would use something around "Chair" because it would make sense to people whose first language is not English and who are used to different terminology in this setting.

Honestly, though, Virant: If you feel really passionately about this change, I won't lose sleep if you change this (as long as there is a redirect from "Speaker").StevenJ81 (talk) 00:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)