[Foundation-l] Push translation

[Michael Snow]

Aphaia wrote:
> Ah, I omitted T, and I meant Toolkit. A toolkit with garbage could be
> called toolkit, but it doesn't change it is useless; it cannot deal
> with syntax properly, i.e. conjugation etc. at this moment.  Intended
> to be "reviewed and corrected by a human" doesn't assure it was really
> "reviewed and corrected by a human" to a sufficient extent. It could
> be enough for your target language, but not for mine. Thanks.
>   
I think then it's not just about the capabilities of the tool or the 
qualities of the language, but also the abilities of the human being who 
is counted on to "intervene" in the translation. As with Wikipedia 
editing generally, we don't really have a good mechanism to ensure that 
a given individual has a particular skill level, we rely on their 
mistakes being corrected by others. The only guarantee that the editor 
of an article understands its subject matter (or even, in this case, 
knows the language in which it is written) is for each of us to be aware 
of our own limitations.

It's quite likely that for some languages, current translation tools are 
not usable. It's possible that in some cases they never will be usable. 
Speakers of a given language should evaluate and decide for themselves. 
But it's certain that some people shouldn't be using these tools, if 
they're not doing enough to clean up the machine translation word salad. 
I know that I'd hesitate to use them in languages that I've studied but 
am not particularly fluent in, like Spanish or Italian (not that those 
Wikipedias need this kind of contribution from me anyway). If the tools 
are being used indiscriminately, it might be best to persuade people 
that they should work in areas they understand, not simply reject the 
tool outright.

--Michael Snow