----- Original Message ----
> From: Ragib Hasan <
ragibhasan@gmail.com>
> To: Discussion list for Bangladeshi Wikimedians
><
wikimedia-bd@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc:
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Fri, December 3, 2010 10:01:15 AM
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-BD] Updates on Google translation
>project in Tamil Wikipedia
>
> I agree with what Belayet mentioned about the Google translated
> articles on Bengali Wikipedia. So far, we have not been contacted by
> Google directly. Rather, we have dealt with the paid contractors who
> were hired by Google. As Belayet has said, the paid translators do not
> follow up with the translations (except for a single case). Which in
> turn, causes a lot of problems for us to fix the articles.
>
> Technically, we have not "banned" Google translated articles or
> contributors who use GTT. Rather what we have discouraged is the
> dump-and-run translators who just dump their malformed translation and
> never responds to our messages or makes a second edit to the article
> to fix it. In most of the cases we dealt with recently, we haven't
> even deleted the articles ... rather we moved them to user space,
> giving the user a chance to fix the article to readable Bengali.
>
> So, basically, here are the issues:
>
> 1. We'd love to work with Google if they collaborate with us and take
> responsibility of producing readable content.
>
> 2. Which means, translations can't be dump-and-run jobs. Since the
> translator toolkit is still horrible in English-to-Bengali
> translation, the Google team or their translators need to do fix the
> pages to make them readable and grammatically correct.
>
> 3. We can use the current system ... i.e., translators are free to do
> all of the sandboxing/translation experiments in their user space. We
> are very picky about the content that goes into the article space and
> don't want half-done, incorrect language articles to go there. So,
> after a translation article has been approved by the community, it can
> be moved to the main space.
>
> But to do any of the above, the Google team needs to contact us. We
> don't know who is or who isn't working for Google. Almost all the
> vendors/contractors we have dealt so far used thorwaway accounts that
> are used only once, and never again.
>
> Bottom line: we are happy to work with Google, but only if Google does
> not bypass the existing Bengali wikipedian community.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ragib
>
> User:Ragib on bn and en
>
>
> --
> Ragib Hasan, Ph.D
> NSF Computing Innovation Fellow and
> Assistant Research Scientist
>
> Dept of Computer Science
> Johns Hopkins University
> 3400 N Charles Street
> Baltimore, MD 21218
>
> Website:
>
http://www.ragibhasan.com
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Belayet Hossain <
bellayet@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ravi,
> > That's a nice process to deal with Google translation project. In Bengali
> > Wikipedia, if the translation is not in acceptable quality community also
> > shift content to the user namespace of that translator and ask them to
> > improve it. But there are very few examples that translator rewrite or
> > retouch the article to improve it. Translators are not coming back to take
> > care of their article. So a lot of untouched bad translated articles are in
> > the user namespace at Bengali Wikipedia.
> >
> > And from my experiences in Bengali Wikipedia the translators are not
> > consistent with their translations. If you rated someone for the first time
> > for his first translation, it is not be sure the second translation will be
> > same quality or better than the first one. So community have to re-rated
him
> > every time he post an article.
> >
> > Since the translators are not regular at Wikipedia and they are not
> > responsive. There is no other contact point available for the community to
> > communicate with them. We can create a translation coordination page at
> > local Wikipedia, but there is no way to inform the existing or new
> > translators to follow the page.
> >
> > I am very much interested to know, how Tamil community communicating with
> > the translators at Google?
> >
> > Belayet
> >
> > On 3 December 2010 07:12, Shiju Alex <
shijualexonline@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Congrats to Tamil community for trying to bring out a process for Google's
> >> Translation project.
> >>
> >> I really wonder how other language communities are handling this. Apart
> >> from Tamil, Google Translation project is going on at least in Hindi,
> >> Kannada, and Telugu. It is banned in Bengali wiki.
> >>
> >> I could see many articles are loaded to wikis each day. And for many of
> >> them the only contributor is the Google employee who translated it.
> >>
> >> Shiju
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala
> >> <
arjunaraoc@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Thanks a lot for the update.
> >>>
> >>> I think the updated process is similar with Open source community
> >>> philosophy when Commercial companies (like IBM, Sun etc) contribute
>source
> >>> code. Tamil Wiki has that kind of rigor in quality checking and is
able
> >>> to do a good job. Other Wikipedias may not be in a position to engage in
>a
> >>> similar way, due to policies and/or level of active wikipedians. One
more
> >>> comment below.
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Ravishankar <
ravidreams@gmail.com>
wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>>
> >>>> Some updates on the Google translation project in Tamil Wikipedia.
> >>>> --snip
> >>>>
> >>>> We did a quality review of these articles and found that only around 50%
> >>>> of them has an acceptable minimum quality regarding translation ( We
just
> >>>> rated the style of the language and accuracy in translation. We did not
>do a
> >>>> full review on the merit of the article).
> >>>> --snip--
> >>>
> >>> Can you elaborate more on the style? How did you measure the accuracy
of
> >>> translation? It may be desirable to adopt the English articles for the
> >>> target wikipedia, than verbatim translation.
> >>> How much effort was spent to arrive at the above conclusions? # of
> >>> articles, # of reviewers, time frame etc would help.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks
> >>> Arjun
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
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> >>>
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> >>>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Belayet Hossain
> >
http://www.facebook.com/bellayet
> >
http://twitter.com/bellayet
> >
http://bellayet.wordpress.com (Bangla)
> > Knowledge is universal
> > ...so share it.
> >
> > Hillel____
> > If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
> > If I am only for myself, what am I?
> > If not now, when?
> >
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