A proposal for 2026 ST

taking inspiration from the Oscar prize, why not give “foreign” ribbons, alongside the usual ribbons (which can, and should, remain “international”) ?

The idea came from certain issues inherent to non-english authors, which is not only related to their handling of english language, but also for allowing taking into consideration the social and cultural issues, which often differs wildly from the ones proper of the anglo-saxon protestant culture.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

What would we define “foreign” as? Not in English? English is not the author’s first language? Not from an English-speaking country? And how would we define those definitions?

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I wouldn’t be opposed to something like “Best Translation” or “Best Non-English Work”, but I don’t know if there are generally enough translations and non-English works submitted for that to really matter. And right now, judges can already submit those ribbons alongside their votes, if they think it’s meaningful in a given year.

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Agree with Daniel’s opinion and rationale of keeping informal and impromptu the “foreign ribbons”.

Also, a word of clarification to Hidnook: I thinked that the oscar prize example was clear, but to explain, I have taken as model the Oscar prizes, whose are, for example, best (domestic) movie, best foreign movie, best (domestic) actor/ess, best foreign actor/ess and so on, creating effectively two divisions (sport campionship sense), and is where the rationale of Daniel’s opinion is precise and correct, there’s indeed too few foreign IF works overall for jusifying a “foreign division”.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

Hi,

As a ‘foreigner’ I must admit, that the biggest pull factor in my participation is the feeling of acceptance as true member of the international group regardless of my mother tongue. I wouldn’t oppose to an individually given ribbon, as far as my work does not end up in a separate ‘foreign’ section.

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Some competitions (PyWeek for example) allow entrants to award each other medals. These are effectively small images you can upload and attach to someone else’s entry.

This can add an extra dimension of cameraderie between entrants. The images are often playful in nature. They usually reference some aspect of the game in a humorous fashion.

It would be a minor extension to this idea for an entrant to be allowed to award themselves, let’s say, one ribbon by which they could tag their entry with what they see as some defining characteristic. You could make this a national flag, or some cultural icon or whatever. Better still, the ribbon could have some metadata which captures that intention semantically.

Of course, Spring Thing has an aesthetic all its own which might not accommodate the display of random images. Also, someone has to implement this system and that’s a significant piece of work…

Spring Thing already lets judges award ribbons (of whatever sort they like) to their favorite entries, so I think letting entrants add those themselves would muddy the waters and make that whole aspect less meaningful.

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I say we non-native speakers are few, and when the voting universe consists of a low three-digit number of people no sub-categories should be defined where only 5 people are eligible to vote.

It’s a good idea to determine the best Swahili adventures, but Spring Thing is the wrong vehicle. A long-run election is needed so that one can collect at least, say, 20 votes. RL analogy: In market research, the minimum number of interviews to allow for a quantitative analysis is 50.

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