Hoi,

First, a specific spelling stands for an article. It can be in any language.  Each lemma in Wiktionary has its own translations. So you can do without descriptions and still have meaningful information. Yes, that only works when you are at least bilingual.

When a bot moves data between Wiktionaries, the validity of these translations exists because of it being moved from one Wiktionary to another. 

What is sad is that this is not  understood or considered as a valid resource.

Thanks,

       GerardM

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 at 11:53, Jan Wohlgemuth <linguist@spamcop.net> wrote:

Gerard and others,
hello greetings from the new guy.

I have to object an "anything is better than nothing" argument. Let's
just say the bot accesses an article "fork" and takes the first
definition. With some luck, something like "a tool for eating" will then
be translated as definition. That leaves out all other meanings of
"fork", like when a road splits up into two, but ok, that is a
completely different thread of discussion. But if "a tool for eating"
becomes the new lemma instead of the translated definition, that's when
the entries start becoming unusable, especially if translated again and
again. The bot programmer's fallacy is that there are 1-on-1 equivalents
in translation. Sometimes there are, more often there are not. Automated
"translations" liek the ones used in this case can not pick up on
one-to-many relations and can not adequately post them. Another thing is
register of synonyms. We certainly do not want any curse words to be
listed as the general term for certain body parts etc. This needs to be
verified by people who speak both languages or at least can make sure
the entry makes sense in the metalanguage (here Malagasy).
The review has shown that the output of these bot "translations" in
Malagasy Wiktionary are not good. Some of them might be acceptable (by
chance), but the majority must be considered questionable. The least
that should be done is mark them as unpatrolled bot translations and
hope that some speaker can check the accuracy.

Greetings from Depok,
Jan (Janwo)


Am 18.09.2020 22:12, schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
> Asaf,
> That is not how I understand it. First, I do not mind bots. When
> Wiktionaries have information on words in Malagasy, I am perfectly
> happy for the translations to be copied from one Wiktionary to
> another. When the descriptions are translated using machine
> translation, the question becomes only slightly different.
>
> The question becomes about the quality of the machine translation. Now
> I do not mind key words in Malagasy without definitions. With dodgy
> translations it is ok because it is still better than providing
> nothing. When the quality of the machine translation is such that it
> is understandable but not quite there, I am  of the opinion that it is
> much better than providing nothing.
>
> The biggest problem I have with the notion of perfection is that it is
> the enemy of the good. The good is to provide the best we can offer.
> When it needs work, it is acceptable because it is a wiki.
>
> The biggest problem with language support is that products that are
> perfectly functional like Special:MediaSearch are not promoted because
> "the next iteration will be even better". It  also shows the extend we
> have moved away from our Wiki roots.
>
> The notion that a bot operator is not people... really...
> Thanks,
>        GerardM
>

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