I thought it might be a good idea if we created a tool where we could translate articles that have been written in a separate language. We could simply, like a copyedit or stub, place a template on an article and it would be automatically redirected to a tool. I have seen many new articles come through like this as a categorizer and new article booster and believe this problem could be easily dealt with. What do you think? Hannah x:)
Could work very well and be useful. You’d need to be fluent in the language and ready to put in quite a lot of work though. Perhaps you’d need to pass a ‘test’, a bit like NAB or Welcomer, as otherwise I fear there would be A LOT of incorrect translations coming though.
Hibou8
3
@TammySin
totally agree. I can just see people plugging it through google translate.
Ceeg
4
I’m not sure what you mean by “a tool”, hannah – could you clarify a bit, please? Thanks.
system
5
This is the only “tool” I would approve.
Tool- eg Category Guardian, Picture Patrol, RC Patrol etc I think that even if people were putting it into Google Translate, it could still work because even if it didn’t sound correct, a copyedit template could be added to it? Thoughts? @Maluniu
, @Hibou8
, @Chris-Garthwaite
@TammySin
Hibou8
7
Google translate isn’t very good at all, especially when dealing with words that are homonyms in the source language- in my experience it almost always gives you the meaning you don’t want. (Example that comes to mind is when I wanted “nut” as in almonds and it gave me the one as in “nuts and bolts”.)
Yeah but wouldn’t that be quite obvious in the middle of an article?
Hibou8
10
Not to the people who don’t know a word of Italian and paste it in to translate it to Italian.
system
11
This is an interesting idea, but I don’t think it’s feasible. We have enough problems with people removing copyedit and format tags through the greenhouse tools without performing any edits on the articles. The people translating articles need to be fluent in the language the article was written in. It is absolutely not acceptable to use an online translator to do this kind of work, for the reasons hinted at above, and there are too many idioms and subtleties in language that must be interpreted by someone who actually knows it. The best thing to do? Place a {{notinenglish}} tag on it.
Okay, thanks for the contribution @Isorythmic
As someone who regularly does translations, I can tell you that it is often more difficult to fix someone’s bad translation than to do the translation yourself from the original language document. Plus, you end up getting into a “Chinese whispers” sort of game where you make changes without knowing what the original was… As for Google translate…if you are dealing with “minor” languages, very often you end up with gobbledy-gook.
I do see what you mean @Deniseke
. Thanks for the contribution
I don’t know how many foreign language articles are uploaded these days. However, I don’t think we get so many articles in other languages that we need a tool for it (I may be wrong. I’ve been inactive for months, so I’m not sure how many foreign articles are created). As Isorhythmic said, a {{notinenglish}} tag seems the best thing that can be done. Unless, you are proficient in that language (or you know someone who is proficient) to translate that article (but again, that would be a lot of work. Also, the quality of the article shouldn’t be affected).
Okay, thanks! @Gaurangprasad
There should be somebody who is fluent in this particular languare. Google, Bing and other online translators are not at all reliable. Translated text MUST BE verified to make sense. @Hannah
Banana xox, sounds like a good idea though if wiki had it work flawlessly. =) .
Yeah, I guess that is the unanimous decision @Laura7491
Giving @Hannah
Banana xox a big smile.
