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

Sun Jul 25 10:18:49 UTC 2010

Aphaia, a great deal of confusion has been created with regards to
this project. I hope you'll allow me to attempt to clear it up.

These are NOT articles that were translated directly by Google
Translate. Rather, they were created using Google Translator Toolkit,
which requires human intervention by a speaker of the language -
someone to check and correct every single sentence translated, in the
case of languages where Google already has machine translation, or to
write entirely new _human_ translations, in the cases where no Google
Translate module exists (for example, Tamil), with the aid of
Translation Memory software.

I currently work as a translator and have found that Google Translator
Toolkit is great for speeding up and improving the consistency of
translations, and at least the results of my work are usually better
with it than they would be without (I'm glad for the consistency - if
I'm translating a large document, I'd like to make sure to translate
the same phrases the same way every time they occur rather than using
slightly different wording the second time around). Since they're
revised and corrected by a human, they _should_ have the same level of
grammatical correctness, comprehensibility and translation quality as
a pure human translation. If they don't, this is the fault of the
person using the toolkit, not the software itself.

-m.

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Jon Davis <wiki at konsoletek.com> wrote:
>> I think the answer is "Yes and No".  As with any new
>> project/concept/idea/trial there are pro's and there are con's.  The real
>> question is: Do the pro's outweigh the con's?
>>
>> From just reading what you linked (And not in any way being involved with
>> these language projects) and my own personal experiences of how I work on
>> Wikipedia.  Yes, I think it is a good thing overall.
>>
>> From what I've seen, it is much easier to convince someone who has never
>> edited, to fix grammatical, spelling or other "simple" mistakes.  Generally
>> people don't dive in and write/translate entire articles - it is simply too
>> high of a barrier to entry.  These pre-translated articles give people an
>> "in", they are already there, and have obvious errors that are easy to fix.
>
> In my experience at Transcom and my own as translator, people
> appreciate pre-translated articles only in a good quality, there are
> pre-translations in too bad quality which contains too many obvious
> errors not easy to fix in time frame.
>
> I've seen several requests, both on meta and on language projects,  to
> delete this kind of bad quality "translation" which people think
> better to scratch a new version.
>
> And in my observation Google translation is still in this level in
> many languages. And even if you handle Western languages, unless one
> of them in English, results may be in poor quality (e.g. they cannot
> keep the distinction between tu/vous, du/Sie etc.)
>
> Cheers,
>
>>
>>
>> More "ok" content is better than no content, at least if I have my druthers.
>>
>> -Jon
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 23:12, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jon
>> [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
>> http://snowulf.com/
>> http://ipv6wiki.net/
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>
>
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko
> http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
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