Project:Quality policy

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Introduction

The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is committed to ensuring the highest possible quality of the texts that are available on our website.

Our "mission statement" and practical goal is to make Wittgenstein's texts freely available online – where "freely" means both for free and with a free licence – in as many languages as possible. We are painfully aware that free content has an inherent potential for very wide reach, to the point that, for example, a free translation may become the default precisely by virtue of being free and regardless of its quality – i.e., potentially despite not being as good as a non-free translation.

Therefore, we take the issue of quality extremely seriously and we strive to guarantee that all our editions of both original texts and translations meet high standards.

However, it should also be stressed that the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is inspired by the ethos of online free-culture projects such as the Wikimedia Projects, Project Gutenberg and others. While guaranteeing that our content is good is of paramount importance, and second to none among our editorial concerns, making a non-paywalled edition available to readers is more important to us than guaranteeing that the non-paywalled edition is of equal or higher quality than the paywalled one or ones. Considering, among other things, that translations can set themselves different goals (by choosing, for example, the faithfulness to the original over the naturalness of the rendition, or the opposite) and that assessing the quality of a translation is subject to a certain degree of taste, we programmatically prefer publishing content that is good instead of not publishing content that is not excellent.

How we work

Originals

As far as original-language texts are concerned, our approach is to identify, among the available editions, a reliable source for the text. As the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project focuses on Wittgenstein's writings that have previously been published in book form, the text is then reproduced with no changes, except the occasional correction of a typo (which is not indicated) and very rare editorial interventions (that are indicated in the colophon of the individual text or in a dedicated footnote).

Of course, our own procedure for converting books into HTML pages may sometimes cause typos, formatting errors or other issues to appear in the text. We encourage readers to report any issues via the button with an e-mail icon which is available next to each text in the web version, in order for us to promptly correct them.

Translations

Extant translations

Some of the translations that are available on this website were purpose-made for and by the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project (see below, § Original translations). Other translations had already been published elsewhere and have either entered the public domain or were originally released under a free licence that grants others permission to reuse the text.

These translations, such as Ramsey's English translation of the Tractatus or Sergio Sánchez Benítez's Spanish translation of Philosophie, were published according to the procedures and criteria of traditional publishers or journals, and are therefore to be considered reliable and high-quality. On the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project's site, they are marked as "Scholarly Approved" (see see below, § The "Scholarly Approved" label).

Original translations

Since the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s scope is more similar to that of a publishing house than to that of an academic journal, the procedures that ensure the quality of those translations that were made on purpose for this site do not involve a peer-review.

After researching the best practices of publishing houses, we elected to rely, most importantly, on trusted translators. This approach is grounded in the idea that no number of qualified revisions can make a poor or mediocre translation into a good one. Translators are usually selected among young scholars with translation experience and a strong background in Wittgenstein studies.

All translations are edited and proofread by members of the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project team. With few exceptions, the translations are proofread by more than one person, before and after typesetting.

The "Scholarly Approved" label

Additionally, in order to provide a simple way for readers to confidently trust a given translation, an evaluation system was set up within the framework of which some translations are also examined by established scholars who have a standing within the Wittgensteinian academic community. These translations are marked with the "Scholarly Approved" label.

The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is grateful to the British Wittgenstein Society for their support sourcing the necessary expertise.