[Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?

[Shiju Alex]

Hello All,

Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The
foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure
whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community
to know their views.

As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community
in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no
response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native
speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia?

Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to
create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?

One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That
might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
Wikipedia.

As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
translation of wikipedia articles:

   - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
   - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
   - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia

The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example
of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
English used google translator to communicate with us. :)

Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect
the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect
them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When
all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect
any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
killing the growth of an active wiki community.

Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But
only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
their wiki*.

I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*)
to view the status of google translation project.  Loads of junk articles
are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
articles is the edit by its creator and the  inter language wiki bots.

This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points
raised by a Swahali
Wikipedian<http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/>.
Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
community growth.

So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from
Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service
effectively or continue with the current article creation process.

One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open
source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow.

Regards

Shiju Alex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex