Actually, Scott, it's quite the opposite. On the Category Names help page, it says, in part:
Locations in different languages
WikiTree has parallel category trees in other languages. It is not necessary for a particular location category to be created in every language. When a category exists in multiple languages, they are linked to each other so that people can easily find other languages for a particular category. For example, the top level category in English, Category:Categories, has links at the top of the page to the top level category in other languages....
Do not use different languages in the same category name, such as Category:India (भारत). Use Category:भारत or Category:India (en).
Now, granted, that's about locations, rather than Notables. But a couple of principles apply all across WikiTree:
- There are (or will be eventually) full category trees in all the languages which WikiTreers speak. (I don't actually expect to see a Latin category hierarchy, even though that would be the spoken language of a number of people in the Middle Ages. Then again, somebody might just surprise me by creating and populating one.)
- There is an accepted way to link together parallel categories across languages, although it is incompletely implemented.
- Category names must not mix languages.
I also remember another couple of principles, although I couldn't turn up the appropriate pages with a quick search.
One of those principles is that categories must link upwards until they reach the Categories category (or the equivalent in another language). If I remember correctly, one of Aleš's reports lists categories which don't link upward and eventually connect to Categories, and those categories which don't link upwards are subject to being deleted if somebody can't figure out where to connect them. So we can't just, for example, create a category of "Personnage remarquable de la France" and leave it that way. We need to have something like "Personnes notables" to link that category up to.
Which, actually, brings up something that I hadn't noticed before: the Notables category only links upward to the Notables Project category, which, in turn, links upward to the Worldwide Projects and Global Family Reunion Project categories (the latter of which links upward to Worldwide Projects anyway), and Worldwide Projects links up to Projects, which links up to Categories. So I'm thinking that the reason that the multi-language categories haven't been created for Notables (at least, not that I've seen) is because most projects (other than country-specific projects) are still pretty much English-only.
It seems to me that notables would be important to genealogists, whether there was a Notables Project or not. I don't mean that I want to get rid of the project. Far from it. But it does seem to me that people who are drilling down through the categories are likely to miss the fact that we even have a Notables Project or categories for notables if they don't happen to detour into the Projects categories. Looking at the Society category, I see that Aristocracy and Nobility and Awards and Honors are already listed there, so it seems to me like it would be a good idea to link the Notables category upward to the Society category, as well as the Notables Project category.
If we did that, then even if we didn't want to launch sub-projects of the Notables Project in other languages, then at least we could build down category paths like Catégories > Société > Personnes notables > Personnage remarquable de la France and so on.
Another principle which I remember seeing, but can't find right now, is that, not only are we not supposed to mix languages in category names, but we're also not supposed to mix languages in category paths. All English language categories must ultimately link upwards to Categories, all French language categories must ultimately link upwards to Catégories, and so on. So we're not supposed to, for example, link upwards from Personnage remarquable de la France to Notables, but we can (and should) connect Personnage remarquable de la France sideways to French Notables through that language menu system.
(I'm assuming that the reason for that rule is to avoid frustrating people who speak other languages by forcing them to poke through the English categories to find bits of their own language tucked away here and there, instead of just being able to drill down from the top of the hierarchy in their own language. Although it may be that there's some other reason for that rule that I haven't thought of.)
In any case, I'm thinking that that rule may have been what you saw in action, Scott. I know that when I was working through cleaning up the Occupations category hierarchy a few months ago, I ended up moving a number of non-English occupation names into the category hierarchies of the appropriate languages, where they belonged. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other people doing similar "cleanup" tasks in other category hierarchies.
