Clean Sheet?

[Peter Damoc]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:55:39 -0800, Jonathon Blake <jonathon.blake at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter wrote:
>
>> As in the translator can see how others translated the string in his/hers language or in a language that he knows
>
> If a person is not fluent in both the target and original language,
> then they should not be doing any translation work.  Let them create
> the spellchecker, write user documentation, and similar task.

well... you definitely ruled me out here since I'm not fluent in English a.k.a. "the original".
There is one area where I agree with you... Specialist applications... apps where there is a lot of a specific jargon. In these situations I agree, in order to make a usable translation the translator needs to know the jargon in both languages very well.

[...]
>> even a crooked translation might help.
>
> A bad translation won't help anybody.  More to the point, it hinders things.

well.. it someone translates
"Where should I put this file?"
with the equivalent of
"It's 4 AM and I am too tired to translate anymore"
or maybe with one of those "your mama is.." jokes... YES it does hinder things BUT
if the translation is the equivalent of... "Were put this file I should?" however crooked it might be it still offers some hint of what should the user do.

[...]
>> maybe assign fuzzy flag to all strings pending a translator review.
>
> It would have to assign a fuzzy flag, so somebody can correct all the
> errors that were made.  My working assumption is that all fuzzy string
> translations are grossly incorrect.

My assumption is that fuzzy strings need a second opinion, that they can be improved.

>> in my view exposure means more eyeballs... this should improve accuracy.
>
> Like the accuracy of Wikipedia?  Where articles are not internally
> self-consistent.  The highest quality/most accurate material is
> typically find in pages that have been "edited". [Look at the edit
> page, and pick something between the 25th and 50th edit.  That
> probably will have highest quality/accuracy.  [The exact edit to pick
> depends upon whether the people saved their work as they added
> material, or only after completing the material.]

a little OT but... would you like a world with Wikipedia or one in which such a site wouldn't exist due to accuracy concerns?

[...]
>
> Translation is not all that a L10N project does.

True... but that should be the first thing that a L10N team should do :)

> A Mongolian L10N project, working on OOo, would have to write/fix the
> code, so that one can correctly input Mongolian text, without using
> any kludges.  IIRC, AbiWord suffers from the same problem.
>
> For that, working with the home project web space makes far more
> sense.  It is much easier to integrate a web translation portal into a
> site, than to co-ordinate between two disparate sites.

hmm... that is debatable... if you see Rosetta as a service provider it might be easier to integrate that service into your website than to start you own...
I'm thinking about pressure of translation... certain worlds/phrases will surface as the best way to translate certain equivalents.
This is possible if you centralize all the available translations. The same effect will also be possible in a single app system especially if that app is of considerable size but it will still be less that what it can be in a centralized context.

> xan
>
> jonathon



-- 
Peter Damoc
jack of all trades, master of none
http://www.sigmacore.net/