prasad gadgil wrote:
I have just joined, I am from mumbai, india. I would
like to get the
articles translated in marathi, my mother tongue. Looking at the effort
and no of volunteers, this will not be usable in any reasonable amount
of time.
I understand. According to Wikipedia, there are 68 million native
speakers of Marathi, and 3 million second language speakers. This is
comparable, for example, to Italian, with 70 million total speakers.
Getting Wikipedia content in languages such as Marathi is absolutely
central to our mission, and so I want you to know that I support you
fully in your desire to find ways to make this happen in a timely and
effective manner.
That has made me think of alternatives - machine
translation. A state
funded institute has a software available but I don't have access to it
yet.
Pl. comment about this approach. Has this been tried for any other
language earlier.
First, it is important to understand that for the most part, the individual
wikipedia languages are not mere translations. In some cases, of course,
contributors find it easier to just translate an article -- after all, for
many many topics,
en.wikipedia.org is the most convenient and best reference,
and the content is available for free. But it is more generally the case in
fr, de, ja, it, etc. that the articles are independent constructions from
scratch.
Second, machine language translation is typically quite poor. It is not
likely that the tool you are talking about can do a good enough job.
At the same time, I absolutely think that if you can find a way to get
access (is there some way that I can help, for example by writing a
letter to some authorities, or giving you a signature on an
application, or even paying money, if it is not too much?) for
wikipedia contributors to this state-funded agency's tool, then if it
helps a small number of contributors to work faster, then I am all for
it.
What I would envision is that you would have to do a machine
translation and then immediately edit it to correct grammar and
meaning mistakes. Whether that would be faster or slower than either
writing the article from scratch or doing a human-translation
yourself, I do not know.
--Jimbo