Im glad to see ther are two of you -- there is certainly an open debate about this. Your opinions are noted.
But the statement...
"dealing with such a machine translation would be WORSE for the writer than starting with a blank page."
...is a bit loosy-goosy.. It seems almost technophobic, and it misses some points, namely !. the general thrust of the wikipedia as collaborative, and interactive -- 2. that something on the page is most often better than *nothing on the page -- 3. that machine translation is improving at an extremely rapid pace. 4. this is the general consensus --that the WP take upon itself a more international scope .
I dont agree with "running everthing through Babelfish" -- this is not the best option, even if it were feasible -- (I think that was an oversimplification - not a well-crafted sentence.) The better options are a subject weve already mentioned -- namely a platform dedicated to cross-langa articles , and a means to make it more efficient to use our own personal translation ware... I suggested the use of the simple wiki for this -- there are some issues with that as well.
Ultimately, there is no generalized view of machine translation -- Systran (google) is rather good for one-way conversion between one European language and another. Even Jim Breen's kanji translator is good for at mass-converting Kanji to their meanings, in a list. That it would be too hard for a "writer" to connect the dots with some grammar, is also a rather fishy statement. Wikipedians are writers, anyway -- were *editors.
-S-
--- Arwel Parry arwel@cartref.demon.co.uk wrote:
In message 3F1662E7.1020701@planetunreal.com, tarquin tarquin=ivGM6J5ThX418oCzpIvf9w@public.gmane.org writes
Jason Richey wrote:
To this end, we might as well spawn a new
project... A project that
takes the en wikipedia data dump and passes it
through Babelfish or
the like.
Could we please return to the real world? Machine translations are sometimes vaguely useful
for getting the gist
of something. but by and large, they are pure crud. dealing with such a machine translation would be
WORSE for the writer
than starting with a blank page.
I quite agree, apart from the fact that I can't envisage Babelfish "or the like" ever being set up to translate many of the lesser-used languages we have wikipedias set up for.
-- Arwel Parry http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
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