[WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia

[Amir E. Aharoni]

And what's even worse, the very different templates used in each
language version.


2012/6/20 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>
>
> 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
> >
>
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