I wouldn’t say you were “at least as right” as Colibri. Quite the opposite. For starters, he did admit in the GQ thread that “both phrases are technically correct” for the purposes of a constitutional translation. You did not have to wait two years for an admission of that. Excalibre also admitted it in the pit thread.
But so far as I can see, you have not admitted once, not in the GQ thread or the pit thread or in this discussion right here, that “Castilian” is not technically a better way of translating the Spanish constitution.* You were not at all wrong that “Castilian” is valid in this context. But the vast majority of the time, that’s not what you wrote. You were wrong, repeatedly, when you explicitly asserted that “Castilian” is better in a technical sense in a constitutional context. This isn’t true. It is not better in a technical sense in a constitutional context. It is an equivalent choice.
I haven’t seen you admit this. In fact, you have repeated this fundamental error in this very thread. This means that you have consistently been wrong about a key point of contention. In stark contrast, I have found only one solitary instance of Colibri denying that “Castilian” is a correct translation, and it was only after he was so angry with you that he posted his first ever pit thread. And so the fact remains: If you still believe that “Castilian” is technically better in the context of the constitution, then you remain completely mistaken on that particular point.
This fact is very important, essential to the discussion, and I’d like to see you acknowledge it.
*If this is still somehow unclear, let me try to explain it more abstractly and in more detail.
Technically, the mathematical expression “one plus two equals three” can be expressed in countless equivalent ways. Apart from writing out the numbers like I just did, there are other notations (“translations”) available.
1 + 2 = 3
一足す二は三
1 + 10 = 11
And on and on and on. I could even make up a new notation that’s equivalent to all of these: i,ii iii
Which is “technically” better? There’s no answer to that. Technically, they’re all equivalent. Technically, they express the exact same underlying mathematical truth. Some math notations might be more easily understood than others, just as some translations are more easily understood. But no single notation has any technical superiority.
Another example: I could express Beethoven’s 9th with standard sheet music or I could come up with my own personal representation of the music. As long as my personal system accurately conveyed all the information in the symphony, it would be, like the sheet music, a technically correct representation of the sounds I hear when I pop in the CD. Sheet music is, of course, better than my own personal musical language, but this is not for any technical reason. Technically, the two versions are equivalent. Sheet music is better, but for the important non-technical reason that other people would have an easier time reading it. My own idiosyncratic representation would technically be flawless despite its difficulty. And even given its difficulty, a professional cryptographer would have little trouble “decoding” (or “translating”) it.
The technical equivalence of two different formulations is a relatively common occurrence. It is a basic semiotic fact, and it applies to natural languages as easily as to artificial ones.
In the sense, we can see that “Castilian” and “Spanish” are equivalent English translations of the Spanish constitution. We have the basic concepts of [The Bigger Nation on the Iberian Peninsula in Europe], [An Official Language], and [The Language at Issue, Spoken by about 400 Million People Worldwide]. We need to put these together to form our fact that [The Language at Issue] = [The Official Language] [“of” (or an equivalent grammatical marker of possession)] [The Iberian Nation at Issue] – that is to say, we need to express the fact that “Spanish is the official language of Spain”.
In our discussion, we’ve had two different ways of expressing the [Language at Issue], but that doesn’t matter. In their strict technical senses, both choices express the exact same underlying fact. In their strict technical senses, they both mean exactly the same thing. If one is better or worse, it is for matters of personal preference: readability, connotation, cultural flavor, or whatever. “Castilian” is valid, but it is not technically a better translation of the Spanish constitution.
It is simply not correct to say otherwise.
Note that you are free to prefer “Castilian” as the constitutional translation for other, non-technical reasons. You are not alone in that preference. You have plenty of people in your cites who agree, not to mention Excalibre himself.
But it is factually wrong to assert that these personal preferences constitute some sort of slight technical superiority. That was incorrect in the original threads, and it’s incorrect today, if you happen to still believe that. An admission to that effect is more than appropriate. It is essential.
