I'm a minor Brazilian contributor to the Portuguese Wikipedia (that is mainly a Portugal's Wikipedia), and I hope I can shed some light in this discussion. (In fact, that's the main reason I assigned to this forum.) In advance, I apologize for any misuse I may make of the language of Shakespeare...
I think the primarily question to answer is: Will the Portuguese Citizendium be a translation from the scratch of the English Citizendium, or will it be a separate spin off taken directly from the Portuguese Wikipedia, that is only in part a translation of the English Wikipedia? At first glance, it would be better to use all the work already done in
Wikipédia (as the Portuguese Wikipedia is named in Portuguese - the "e" like it is in "get" and "set"), instead of reinventing the wheel. But by doing so blindly, one would import also all the problems that already exist in the
Wikipédia, that would latter be difficult or even impossible to solve.
As pointed earlier, this problems arise form the distinctions between the two main variations of the Portuguese language, the Brazilian and the Portugal's one. The distinction is greater than the one that exists between the American and British English - at least it seems to be for a non-native English speaker like me. If you have the patience and the interest, I'd like to explain why.
(In Brazil we don't say "European Portuguese", but "Portugal's Portuguese". The redundancy sounds awkward, but is more precise, in the same way "British English", in spite of the awful echo "ish-ish", is more precise than "European English". And, I must confess here, is somewhat a pejorative joke too, suggesting that the Portuguese spoken and written in the very homeland of the language is itself as awkward as the redundant expression is.)
For Brazilians who knows English a little, the differences between American and English are minor ones. The respective accents are like the ones from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the two major cities of Brazil.
Cariocas (the natives from Rio) and
paulistanos (the ones from São Paulo) have no trouble comprehending one another, although they joke a lot in the way each other speak. (I'm from Rio, by the way.) But between Brazilian and Portugal's varieties of Portuguese the discrepancies are so great that Brazilians sometimes have trouble in comprehending what a native from Portugal say. Indeed, Portuguese actors who sometimes come to work in the famous Brazilian soap operas have to undergo a short language course, with even some phonoaudiological support, to "brazilianize" their speaking, so that they can be perfectly understood by their broad audience!
The reverse situation, however, does not apply: Portuguese natives usually have no trouble in understanding Brazilian speakers. The reason is the way the Language evolved in the both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In Portugal, by influence of vicinal languages, the vowels in time were reduced, even truncated, and the general speaking became quicker, more gutural and, to Brazilian ears, somewhat "curled". In Brazil, however, the vowels were not only preserved but in time reinforced by the influence of several Amerindian and African languages, and the resulting speaking became slower, softer and, to Portuguese ears, somewhat "stretched". (A short example is how Portuguese speakers pronounce "Rio". By the spelling of the word, originally it should have been pronounced "rEE-o", almost like you English speakers say, "rEE-ow".
Cariocas themselves say "rEE-yoo", while Portugal natives say only "rEEw" - the "y" and the "w" considered, in Portuguese, semi-vowels, and not consonants. Try to say it and feel the difference!) And, in any language, fast-curled-speaking people are hardly understood by slow-stretched-speaking ones, although these later can easily be understood by the former ones. So, if any of you ever want to learn Portuguese, and want to be well understood both in Portugal and Brazil, do the Brazilian way!
The differences between the written Portuguese in Brazil and Portugal, which are more crucial for projects like Wikipedia and Citizendium, are lesser than in the spoken language, but again they are greater than the differences between the American and the British English. In English flavours there are only few ortographical and morpho-sintatical variations, because the very own structure of the language is somehow rigid. In Portuguese, however, although the Ortogaphy is more standardized, the Grammar rules are far more flexible than in English. For example, a phrase like "Where are you?" in English has no other way to be said and written than... "Where are you?". In Portuguese, however, the corresponding phrase can be correctly said and written in several acceptable ways: "Onde está você?" (the corresponding, word by word, to the English phrase), or "Onde você está?", or "Você está onde?", or even the less common ones, "Está você onde?" and "Está onde você?". And this is a phrase with only three words! Just imagine the great majority of the other ones...
With a so flexible sintax, we have several words, declinations, verbal tenses, noun placements, pronouns usages, etc., that are characteristic of Brazilian Portuguese, and other ones that are typical of Portugal's Portuguese. Brazilian speakers are also more receptive to words imported from other Languages (French in the past, mostly English nowadays), just adapting their pronounciations immediately, and their spellings some time latter, in spite of protests of some purist grammar writers; while Portugal's speakers are far more nationalists and xenophobics in this subject, proning to use obscure pre-existing terms with new meanings, than to simply import and adapt new words. These differences are not to the extent of making a text written in a side of the Atlantic unreadable in the other side, but they do make it seems "weird" across the Ocean. So, how this mutual weirdness is addressed in
Wikipédia?
I think that articles related to Brazil should be written in Brazilian Portuguese, articles related to Portugal in European Portuguese. In others articles, should be written in the language of the main author / editor.
Just like this way! It seems perfect, but it causes unsuspected troubles. First of all is the name of the articles themselves. The Cambrian geoglogical period, for example, in Brazilian Portuguese it is "Cambriano", in Portugal's it is "Câmbrico". This can easily be solved with proper redirects, and in fact it is solved this way in the specific example. The major problem, however, is that, as a polite rule,
Wikipédia administrators (the majority of them from Portugal) established that an article created in a variant of the language should remain in these forever; that is, there cannot be "translations" from Portugal's Portuguese to Brazilian Portuguese, neither vice-versa, of course. So, a Brazilian editor who wanted to edit an article created in Portugal's Portuguese, or a Portuguese editor wanting to edit an article created in Brazilian Portuguese, would both of them have to write in a non-natural way for themselves. The result is that Brazilian editors refrain from editing articles written in Portugal's Portuguese, and so the Portuguese editors do to the articles written in Brazilian Portuguese. Therefore, there is no real colaborative work of Brazilian and Portuguese speakers in the articles; each group have ultimately its separate domain in
Wikipédia. It is in fact a hybrid, chimeric, two-in-one Wikipedia! Needless to say how this aparthaid situation sets down the potential and even the very purpose of the
Wikipédia.
I don't think there's other way to avoid this situation in Citizendium than having two separate projects, for Portugal's and for Brazilian Portuguese. Two distinct projects will surely take a longer time to iniciate and to mature than just one for the language as a hole, but I think each one will develop in a more solid, sound, consistent way.
