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

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2010/7/25 Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>:
> 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.

At the same session at Wikimania a very sensible approach was
presented by Mikel Iturbe from the Basque Wikipedia:

* They didn't use Google Translate, but an academically-developed
tool, which also happened to be Free Software - which diminished the
arguments about commercialization.

* The editors community was involved throughout the whole process.

* Articles were not uploaded without correcting mistakes that the
translation software made.

* What's also important, the corrections were reported to the
translation software developers, so they would try to improve it.

Of course, not every language community can afford developing
Free-as-in-speech academic translation software, but the other points
are useful to everybody.

Mikel Iturbe's presentation:
* http://www.slideshare.net/janfri/wikimania2010

The academic papers related to that project:
* http://ixa.si.ehu.es/openmt2/argitalpenak_html
* http://ixa.si.ehu.es/Ixa/Argitalpenak/Artikuluak/index_html?Atala=Artikulua_Itzulpen_automatikoa

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore