On Tuesday 24 November 2009 12:16:03 Kent S. Larsen II wrote:
I am not a translator, so I can only report what our test translators and my
own experiments show.
At a minimum, a translation extension needs to present
the source
document/page and target text side-by-side in large blocks of text. The
target should allow complete wiki formatting, while the source should be
"locked" so that it can't be edited on the page. It must be very easy to
set up a source document to be translated and very easy to copy over the
formatting of that document when needed.
You get a 2-pane view of each segment - the source on the left and space to
translate on the right. As far as I can see the formatting automatically
follows exactly what the source uses. You do not need to do anything about it
at all.
Beyond this, it would be very useful to be able to
look up individual words
from the source document in various online dictionaries/glossaries (perhaps
clicking on a word brings up a new window with the definition(s) from
Google translate and other bilingual sources) so that the translator can
easily consult and choose among alternative translations.
In addition, a good system would include some way of accessing past
translations in other contexts, so that the translator can see how he/she
has translated the same word/phrase before, or, even better, how many other
translators have translated similar phrases (see Google's translation
toolkit or many of the translation software packages used by professionals
-- this feature is known as "translation memories")
These features are not present in on-line editing, but it does have the
ability to export a .po file which is, I understand, the standard format used
by translation programs. You can edit externally, then import the result.
The drawback is that it is slightly less controlled, in that you could
conceivably have one person translating an article on-line at the same time as
another person translates off-line. Clearly you would have to set up some
sort of control system to deal with that. But then in any system you need to
know that only one person is working on a file or page.
I'm not particularly well versed in how good
translation software works, so
there is likely other features that would be useful. But I think the above
covers the most basic needs.
I encourage those who need a translation extension or are involved in
programming one to look at Google's translation toolkit for an example of
the basics (Google's toolkit isn't particularly good -- the commercial
packages are much better -- but it does give an idea of what a translator
needs).
I much prefer to take the word of people who are professional translators.
Ours tell me that this extension is good. Siebrand did give you links to
further reading and examples. It doesn't sound as though you followed them.
Anne
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