On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:10:12 +0200 (MEST) "Ting Chen"
<Wing.Philopp(a)gmx.de>
wrote:
So, one technical solution could be we save the
articles always in
traditional form in the database. If a user has in his user-setting
simplified, then the server would convert that article into simplified.
After his edition, the server can compare the changes and only converse the
changed part into traditional and save it into database.
This last part is the only place, where the conversion could make failure
because it is possible, that one simplified character is conversed into a
false traditional character. But that is no problem, for one, we can place
some commonly used context related conversions into the program. Second,
the
other users can manually correct the failure.
I don't like this. It would mean that we run the risk of saving wrong what
the submitter has submitted right. I would prefer to translate to
traditional characters only where the translation is 100% certain, and keep
simplified characters elsewhere. Traditional characters would of course
always be kept. Then when seeing the page, there will be warning when one
looks traditional and there are some transcriptions from simplified that are
not 100% sure. As an option, one could (for example) show these in another
colour, and have the choice to declare the translation wrong or right.
Still, I don't know whether this idea of mine can work. It depends on the
number of 'doubtful' characters in an average simplified text. If it's 3 or
4 on a page, this can handle it. If it is more like 1 per line, declaring
transcriptions correct will quickly get boring for the users, and therefore
not be done. Can one of the Chinese give us an estimate of this?
Andre Engels