[Wikipedia-l] Re: zh.wikipedia.org - having a single unified portal

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:10:12 +0200 (MEST) "Ting Chen" <Wing.Philopp at gmx.de> 
wrote:

>So, one technical solution could be we save the articles always in
>traditional form in the database. If a user has in his user-setting
>simplified, then the server would convert that article into simplified.
>After his edition, the server can compare the changes and only converse the
>changed part into traditional and save it into database.
>
>This last part is the only place, where the conversion could make failure
>because it is possible, that one simplified character is conversed into a
>false traditional character. But that is no problem, for one, we can place
>some commonly used context related conversions into the program. Second, 
>the
>other users can manually correct the failure.

I don't like this. It would mean that we run the risk of saving wrong what 
the submitter has submitted right. I would prefer to translate to 
traditional characters only where the translation is 100% certain, and keep 
simplified characters elsewhere. Traditional characters would of course 
always be kept. Then when seeing the page, there will be warning when one 
looks traditional and there are some transcriptions from simplified that are 
not 100% sure. As an option, one could (for example) show these in another 
colour, and have the choice to declare the translation wrong or right.

Still, I don't know whether this idea of mine can work. It depends on the 
number of 'doubtful' characters in an average simplified text. If it's 3 or 
4 on a page, this can handle it. If it is more like 1 per line, declaring 
transcriptions correct will quickly get boring for the users, and therefore 
not be done. Can one of the Chinese give us an estimate of this?

Andre Engels