Hi Bala,

Thanks for the stats.

On Google:

While we have no new Google articles for the last 5 months, around 600 articles get created every month in Tamil Wikipedia. So concerning Tamil Wikipedia's case, Google has not contributed much article number wise.

But all their articles are very lengthy and hence have contributed significantly to the total number of words in all Indic Wikis they operate. ( Precise stats of number of words can be obtained from Google's presentation in last Wikimania). Nevertheless, Google articles are still under review in Tamil Wikipedia. they may be moved to user namespace in bulk and will be moved back only after meeting quality guidelines.

While Google has contributed in some way in increasing article count, size in the Wikipedias it operates, it is a thing of concern as their sub standard translation can bring down the image of Wikipedias concerned. Also, small Wikipedias which don't have a well knot community won't be able to control Google's operation or improve the quality of the articles.

On Paid translation:

//Why should regular Wikipedians be motivated to contribute when Google pays to do the same ?"
//

This is a very easy question. Many of the regular Wikipedians are professionals of high calibre and their time is much more worth than what the translators get paid. It is not money that motivates them but the spirit of contributing / pleasure of doing something they like. So they will continue to contribute. Especially, when paid translators do sub standard work, they think better to stop it and just do it themselves.

Ravi






On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle@gmail.com> wrote:
In Tamil wikipedia, Google translated articles number 1,240 (barring one or two which we might have forgotten to tag). This translates to roughly 4.4 % of the total articles in Ta. wiki. Also about 100 or so of the translated articles already had stubs/fair sized articles, before google translators overwrote them.

 Creation of new google articles stopped on August 15, 2010 because of quality concerns. After an extensive quality review process we reached a deal with google. In this second phase - we picked the translators and the topics to be translated. They are done in the translator's user space and moved to article space only after review by tamil wikipedians. So far 25 such articles have been translated and are waiting in the userspace for the review to be completed.