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

[Ray Saintonge]

Fajro wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Ragib Hasan <ragibhasan at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> (The tool used was Google Translation Toolkit. (not Google Translate).
>> There is a distinction between these two tools. Google Translation
>> Toolkit (GTT) is a translation-memory based semi-manual translation
>> tool. That is, it learns translation skills as you gradually translate
>> articles by hand. Later, this can be used to automate translation.)
>>     
> Another issue: The resulting translation memory is not free

This is a red herring.  Some real and important issues have been raised 
about machine translations, but this is not one of them.

The fact that the source codes for the translation processes are not 
free does not make the results of such machine translations unfree.  Key 
to anything being copyright is that material must be original and not 
the result of a mechanical process.  Machine translations are mechanical 
processes.  Another person using the same software with the same text 
should have the same results.

It is also important that the allegedly infringing text must have been 
fixed in some medium.  A person issuing a take down order must show, as 
an necessary element of that order, where the material in question was 
previously published.  Two identical texts by different authors need not 
be copies of each other.  With human efforts two such identical texts 
are highly improbable, but this need not be the case with machine 
translation. Indeed if the same software keeps producing different 
results I would question its reliability.

Ray