[WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

PS. Forgot to say that this claim misses several points about how
different language Wikipedias often have very different articles on
the same topic (i.e. they are rarely direct translations if
independent editing of the articles is being done). Also, I'm not
clear if they are saying that this would be an improvement on machine
or human translation or not. I think the claim is merely being used as
an example of translating of a large amount of text relatively quickly
using a form of crowdsourcing, rather than any intention to actually
translate the articles, but maybe they do intend to do that?

What I did wonder was whether the "gaming" approach reflects how
things work on Wikipedia:

"Points are offered for each translation attempted; completing a round
earns the user a shiny gold medal; and learners can follow each other,
adding a competitive edge."

Sound rather familiar...

Carcharoth

On 6/20/12, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> A claim made here about Duolingo and translating Wikipedia:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367017
>
> "With 100,000 active users, von Ahn says Duolingo could translate
> Wikipedia from English into Spanish in five weeks. With one million
> users, it would take about 80 hours."
>
> Our article on Duolingo is here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo
>
> Carcharoth
>