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FAOL anew

WP:FAOL lay dormant for a long time and was rightly consigned to history. However, I always maintained that the idea was a good one. I have therefore had a play and come up with a more interesting approach, currently at User:Violetriga/FAOL. The basic premise is to identify significant content disparities between the English and other language Wikipedia (French, in this example). In theory all the articles linked to on that page should be of rather high quality and thus excellent sources of information. Comments here or on the talk page are very welcome. violet/riga [talk] 15:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Translating public domain texts

Does the Wikipedia accept translation of public domain texts (poems), or would translation fall under WP:OR? Should they go to Wikisource? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Answer to self: Wikipedia:OR#Translations_and_transcriptions. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

What if a translation is controversial?

Per my comment above, translations by wikipedians are allowed. But what to do if a translation proves controversial? Do we have a copyediting template for that? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

An invitation to Wikipedia Open Translation Project

Hi, we are the operations team for Wikipedia Open Translation Project. (Plz let me know if such messages are not allowed to be posted here, thank you)

We are looking for people interested in joining the Wikipedia Anime/Disaster translation activities?

As you might know, there are much less articles in English on Anime and Manga than in the Japanese Wikipedia. Our goal is to close this gap and make the articles equally available in both languages by promoting Wikipedia translation activities.

We created a small-scale Wikipedia page with state-of-the-art translation tools and discussion pages. The discussion pages in the Wikipedia Open Translation Project site enable users with different language abilities to communicate with each other using machine translation.

For example, when translating a Wikipedia article on Anime and coming across a translation problem that even Google cannot solve, English speaking translators can use English to ask help in the discussion pages, where Japanese speaking experts can share their knowledge to help understand these problems. At the same time, English translators can master more authentic Japanese and improve their translation ability quickly. Translators can also make use of the Page Dictionary to include hard to translate words, and help future translators in their efforts.

Finally, we hope to lower the language barrier and bring together translators and experts all over the world to enhance the quality of the multilingual Wikipedia.

Besides Anime, we also imported Wikipedia articles on Natural Disasters. Please have a glance on them if you are interested in contributing to the translation activities. Our project is in it's early stages and we hope to receive your precious advice and comments.

Please refer to the details by accessing to the URL as follow: http://pigeon.ai.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/wotp/en/index.php/Main_Page

Contact: E-mail: wikiopentran@gmail.com Gtalk: wikiopentran@gmail.com — Preceding Lelia 00:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Translation from English

I do some work with volunteers wanting to translate articles from English, into other language Wikipedias, and am often asked for a quick guide, so have set up a page mirroring this one: Wikipedia:Translate us. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:21, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

A new(?) method to post translations' requests

First of all look here: it:Wikipedia:Traduzioni

Now if I would like to request a translation I must spend time to prepare an lifeless stub, more an hook for a translator than other BUT scattered into the Wikipedia, then I have to wait it is reviewed like it is an article proposal and even if I specify it is just a translation request with also a reference to the procedure requested in this page I have also to propose it twice or more specifing that better because it is declined because it is not a complete article or WTH the reviewer(s) asks to get just a translation of an article that is in another language wiki. I have problems when I ask a translation from Italian language that is my mother languange. What have I to do now that I would like to ask a translation from Czech language which I cannot speak of cs:Zdeněk Adamec????

Inventing an even worse stub than usual and wait the usual reviewer.... WHAT????

Wouldn't it better doing like the Italian method: a page which posting a link in to a requested translation with some note and leaving that to be picked up by an eventually interested translator????

I suppose the list would become soon VERY large, but wouldn't that be more manageable?

(Even if I am not a newbie in the Wikipedia, I cannot exclude this one was a method already used and then withdrawn because the list was then thought too large.)

Mormegil 87.19.76.35 (talk) 04:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I have taken note such a translation can be asked in joint with an article request.
However an autonomous page is still needed. (Take a glance to this topic in translation page Discussion section.)
---
It would need also a page for requesting translation TO other languages.
E.g.: I want to ask for a translation of something in English to a new Arabic page or for integration of some existing Arabic one.
I can ask for that is accomplished by some Arabic Wikipedia editor like nowaday on the Arabic Wikipedia, but also I could ask for that FROM the English Wikipedia (and also a generic request of translation to all the OTHER Wikipedias.)
That could be very useful, especially for other Wikipedias though, because is easier, e.g., a Magyar speaker can speak Russian than vice versa, so the translation, e.g., of a Magyar page could find a translator quickly and better (of course it can be furtherly edited on the recipient Wikipedia) on the same Wikipedia than FROM the Russian Wikipedia.
Of course Wikipedia editing is a trans-language possibility so, again, the Magyar-Russian speaker could look for translations requests in the Russian Wikipedia straightly, but maybe she can either concentrate on a single language Wikipedia version or take a little more than a flying glance on the other and not look for translations in the other Wikipedia translation request pages.
The request fullfillment proceeding should also be cohordinated on the both (or more) Wikipedias' Project sections.
---
I shall make a concrete example:
in it:Wikipedia:Traduzioni translation requests from Arabic, Català etc. (but also from English, well indeed) languish;
are not there, e.g., Arabic-Italian speakers consulting just or mostly the Arabic Wikipedia that could fullfill the translation?
---
Mormegil 87.18.254.169 (talk) 19:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Translating medical content

I am in discussions with Translators Without Borders [1]. Both they and I are interested in working on a collaboration to translate medical articles first into simple English and then into other languages. Are there others here interested in helping? Please visit here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Medical_translation if you are. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

is there any project on tranalting english pages into foreign languages?

because i'm interested in doing that. i will also try to translate spanish pages into english --Crossovershipper (talk) 06:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Per a recent discussion on the Wikipedia mailing list (yesterday, actually!), it's my understanding that Wikipedia does not welcome translations into foreign languages unless explicitly requested by the Foundation staff. That said, you're welcome to translate a Spanish page to English, but unless you're a native speaker of Spanish, the community would prefer you did not translate pages into Spanish. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Bob, I do not follow and couldn't find the discussion on the mailing list. The community has always encouraged translations, both from and into English, as long the editor is capable of translating between the languages. Right? jonkerz ♠talk 06:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Crossovershipper, Wikipedia:Translate us has some info on translating pages from English into other languages. But the best way to start is probably just to start; find a page and translate it! ;)
es:Wikipedia:Taller idiomático on the Spanish Wikipedia and Category:Articles needing translation from Spanish Wikipedia may be of interest. Keep in mind what Bob said: it may not be the best idea to translate content into Spanish unless you're a native speaker of Spanish. Also remember to be careful with spelling and capitalization when you're working on articles. Best luck, jonkerz ♠talk 06:52, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Translation of text in images.

Resolved
 – I added the image to Commons:Template:Requested translations#Japanese to English. mabdul 22:55, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it appears that this page only outlines how to request a translation of a specific page. I would like to ask that a specific image containing text in a foreign language be translated into English. Specifically, this one:

How do I go about tagging that for translation? Is that even a matter that can be handled here, or would I have to take that over to the folks that handle image requests? Thanks. 204.220.158.52 (talk) 05:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

WPCleaner

Hi, I've added functions to WPCleaner for automatic translation of internal links, categories and templates based on interwiki links. Examples on the French wiki for translating Battle of Midway from English to French. --NicoV (talk) 22:16, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Outside of the usual scope, but...

Does anybody feel like translating a survey from English into, well, practically any language at all? :) We've had some great response from Meta translation teams, but there are many languages not yet complete and some not yet begun.

The Wikimedia Foundation is preparing to launch a survey that it hopes will be helpful in discussing the future of how projects are funded on Wikipedia and sister sites. (More information about this can be read at meta:Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Resource list and meta:Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Recommendations, but you don't need to read it to help out here. :)) We would like input from as many people as possible, but the survey translations are not yet completed in many languages. The English version of the survey is at meta:Survey of how money should be spent/Questions/en. The only languages that are 100% complete, as of this writing are: Arabic, Catalan, Danish, German, Formal German, Spanish, Persian, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, and Turkish.

Can you translate English into any other language than that? Want to translate a shortish survey?

Translations are done using the "translation tool". If you go to this special page, all you have to do is select your language from the pull-down menu, alphabetical by language code, and click "fetch". It will bring up a table. You can easily see what has been translated and what has not, because untranslated sections are green. Click on the blue text in the left column next to content that has not been translated to open up an editing box. Above the box, the English version is shown, and you can simply enter in your language translation beneath it.

The survey is pretty short, so I hope we can get it completed in time to send it to as many editors as possible in their own language. Thanks for any help you can offer! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Another request outside of scope

There's been a recent discussion at the talk page of the article for the Internet meme All your base are belong to us. The topic was made famous for the gruesome Engrish translations in the original video game, and the article provided a somewhat more accurate translation along the original text.

The discussion could benefit from a review of the accuracy of these translations as it appeared in this recent version, by someone with fluency in Japanese and experience dealing with editor-made translations at Wikipedia.

Any advice on how to find help for that? (I've asked at Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English too). Thanks for your time. Diego (talk) 14:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd post at WT:JAPAN to find a Japanese speaker willing to help. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:06, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Repurposing Template:Translate?

Right now our translation request system uses a bunch of different templates ({{Expand Spanish}}, {{Expand French}}, etc.) which are all based on {{Expand language}}. With the status quo, it's hard to maintain the variety of different templates all in use, and making global changes is a pain. I have figured out the coding for one master template that would incorporate the functionality of all these various templates (see User:Calliopejen1/Expand language sandbox) and think that this should replace all of the mess of templates we have at the moment. I think the best place to locate these (seeing as "Expand" isn't a very logical title for translation requests) would be Template:Translate, which is currently a redirect to Template:Not English. This redirect seems to be very seldom used. Would anyone object to using this new title, then converting all the existing Template:Expand language-type uses? The new syntax would be something like {{Translate|French}} which would be converted by HelpfulPixieBot to {{Translate|French|article=Chien}} with optional additional parameters like {{Translate|French|article=Chien|fa=yes|topic=sci}}. The end result would appear identical to the current Expand language-type banners. Thoughts? Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:07, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with this really. Template:translate is not in use so much at the moment because template:notenglish isn't in use so much either, for a good while now we've kept it at around 10-15 articles, but non-english articles are often tagged with template:translate, it just makes sense really for editors who haven't come across a non-english article before to tag it with {{translate}}, as in "please translate this page", as much it makes sense to tag it with {{notenglish}}--Jac16888 Talk 20:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that {{Translate}} is a reasonable alternative title for the {{Notenglish}} template, but the problem is we don't have a good title for translation requests from other wikis. {{Interwiki}} is already taken. Any better ideas? Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I wouldn't dare to change that either so how about {{import}} for an interwiki translation request? That would also make it obvious that we don't necessarily have to replace an entire article with a translation but certain parts from other language articles may be useful too. De728631 (talk) 22:08, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Okay, {{Import}} is fine with me for now. I may be back to lobby to change the target of {{Translate}} at some point... Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:11, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Polish counterpart

I tried to find this page on Polish wiki but I could not find it. I could not understand how to create a request for this page to be translated into Polish. Can someone either do this or alternatively point me in the direction of very clear instructions as to how to put the request on Polish wiki? I think that this is a key page which could also help transators come forward. Isthisuseful (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

The Polish translation page is at pl:Wikiprojekt:Tłumaczenie artykułów. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:50, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Grammar Gulf in Discussion

Apologies if this isn't the best place for this question, but I'm having trouble communicating with a non-English speaker whom I believe is well-intentioned. If you check out my Talk page, I'm trying to discuss problems with material they'd like to add to the article on Asus, but I'm having difficulty understanding what they're trying to say, and thought someone who speaks their primary language might be able to assist. Based on their userpage I believe their primary language is Farsi. Is anyone able to help, either in terms of intervening directly on my Talk page or suggesting a course of action? Thank you very much! Doniago (talk) 20:26, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Not sure how to classify this

What about if you have a quotation in an article in a foreign language, and you also want an English version alongside it? I'm actually asking this because of an article I created (Bei der Hitz im Sommer eß ich). Double sharp (talk) 10:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Here's one way to do it: Lili Marlene. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Universal concepts with local usage , sometimes limited by lack of vocabulary.

Hello ,

I wanted to talk about this subject , since I think that in light of the scope of this encyclopedia , the global impact it has and the fact the world is "getting smaller" , this particular effect of it is often overlooked.

Languages , geographical area's often have concepts , things that impact those area's but don't have words for in other languages. Those things "exist" and need an entry in an encyclopedia of this magnitude even though in some languages there are no adequate words for it . It would not imo be wise to come up with a word , group of words for it just for a databases's key's sake , but imo it does need a way to be entered into Wikipedia in those langauges.

An examples for this:

In Belgium we have "warme bakkers" and "koude bakkers" I am not aware that these concepts exist in other languages , and am not convinced I should be the one to introduce the construction "Warm Baker" by creating an entry for it in English Wikipedia , when linking it to the dutch part of Wikipedia. For an English speaking person , walking around in Belgium , a "warm baker" exists just as it does for any Belgian ..

I would Like it if cross language concepts could be introduced in Wikipedia in a standardized way without contaminating a language by making up words for them on the spot. Even a literal translation of what's used in the original language is not an excuse for forcing the word/words upon the world.

Something in the form of "What is known in Belgium as a (warme bakker)" instead of a literal translation of the words. For Japanese for example I've seen people add phonetic equivalents to the Japanese words in English Wikipedia which also seems very forward.

These are just a few examples. Concepts and realities which definitely exist but are alien to most English speakers need a standardized way to be entered in Wikipedia . And making up terms by -albeit very helpful and friendly people- the person adding the entry is definitely not the way to go imo.

Discussion beyond yes/no agree/disagree also welcome and appreciated.

Kind Regards Phoenixxl (talk) 08:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Another good example : http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattentaart A Mattentaart has no english word , but it does "exist" ergo it needs a place in an encyclopedia. But we don't need the guy doing it inventing an english word for it. 83.101.79.66 (talk) 09:07, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Identical words / phrases / concepts often have a slight difference of meaning in a different language

As a person who speaks a few languages , I use Wikipedia quite often , not for translation per se , but for seeing different viewpoints about the same subject . I see a lot of concepts in one language that aren't represented in another but really should. Sometimes there are terms that exist in multiple languages but have come to mean or always meant different things but are still linked together. I am sure a lot of work goes into making these things fit but I'm sure some things really do need an abstraction layer -something like an intermediary page when clicking on the language button of entry X , stating , in the language you come from , X tends to mean this , in the language you go to X tends to mean that - in order to make things easier to understand for everyone and foremost avoid miscommunication.

kind regards Phoenixxl (talk) 08:19, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Expanding the breadth.

Digital media have the profound advantage of only needing a single place of existence , there often is no physical to it leaving only the author's act of creation as the only needed action for it's birth.

Wikipedia is huge. It could be bigger (indulge me for a second before hairs start standing on edge). As it is now , for a lot of subjects end entries , the language in which it's written is chauvinistic about it's content. So let's say I want to know about the "introduction of the railroad system" I would go look up railroad , railways , steam engines etc.. and fill up on information from there.

The thing is ... If i want to know about how railways got introduced in let's say France , or Japan or Germany , I know for a fact the Japanese , French and German parts of Wikipedia are going to contain a lot more of that specific content.

Because of this ,I often find myself sticking whole Wikipedia pages in the Google translator to find out more specific info for that subject for the locations where that language is spoken.

I really think , Wikipedia should expand to a more internationally focused incarnation of itself . The English Wikipedia for example should , in the trend opf the language bar on the side , have a country bar on the top somewhere which details certain subjects with the information specific to those countries.Even if , for starters they only contain straight translations of the pages in other languages. Where adding every piece of info about the railroad as it happened in every country of the world would inflate articles beyond usability , organizing them in a standardized way , with (maybe a country bar on top) would keep the most objectively relevant information centralized and the -way more interesting imo- area specific information easy to find.

Railroads may not be the perfect example here , but more obscure subjects definitely need this to be able to look past one's own front yard.

Again ,any discussion about this subject would be very welcome.

Kind Regards Phoenixxl (talk) 08:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Reverse of Template:Translated page

Hi. We have {{Translated page}} but does the reverse exist? This could be used on article talk pages to note that they've been translated and created (from the English article) in other language Wikipedias. Such information could be useful in further improving articles on foreign subject matter, where natives may add further info/sources to their local version without contributing to other language versions. -- Trevj (talk) 11:44, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Expand Template

Is there a template that says you use the expand template on certain articles(translations)?--Lucky102 (talk) 11:52, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

You can use it on any articles. So long as the text translated is supported with reliable sources.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:08, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I mean to put on your user page.--Lucky102 (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Long French Translation

Who is willing to translate Pages 167–172 of "Saura, Bruno (2008). Journal de la Société des Océanistes. 128. Musée de l'Homme." for me? It will be a lot of work. I can email the scan pages and provide a less than perfect/incomplete written version on one of my userspaces.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

The Futurist Manifesto

Dear Wikipedians, the Futurist Manifesto as found here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Futurist_Manifesto has problems, it featured copyrighted versions of the manifesto and currently no translation is provided. As a document of art in early 20th century that is now over 100 years old it's crazy to me that there is no version on wikipedia to be found. There are versions that exist online but this should be available on wikipedia.

Translations vary - Point 11 of the manifesto reads: “we will sing of...greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives...deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing...”

Another translation provides for a touch more flair: “We will sing of ...the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers...great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle”

Yes, there some dark elements to the original work but as a notable document it should be available, a good respectful translation will be widely used and referenced. Please, and if I have written too much here I apologize. Thank you, please feel free to inquire should I be able to help in any way, Haddon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhaddonpearson (talk • contribs) 15:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Importing required?

German Wikipedia requires to import articles before translating them. How do you do this around here? --Flominator (talk) 14:28, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Translation between Wikipedias need not transfer all content from any given article. Because Wikipedia licensing requires attribution, the translation source must be credited to avoid copyright violation. Attribution in the edit summary and placing the template 'translated page' on the article talk page are the recommended ways to credit the source of the translation. (See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia). Lectonar (talk) 15:14, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Can you maybe add this to the help page? Thanks in advance, --Flominator (talk) 11:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

It is also unclear if importing is required *before* or *after* the page is translated. This page states "Before you start translating an article, please request an import here: Wikipedia:Requests for page importation" - but the import request page has a few entries that say (for example) "Note by importing administrator: Not done; I can't import pages directly into the main namespace. Please submit your translation first. "Departement" should be "Department" in the title. I won't be able to directly do this import myself, but I'll ask someone who can once you have submitted the translation as an article the regular way." In short - i don't get it. --TheAnarcat (talk) 13:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The normal method on German Wikipedia is to request import of the article to User:YourUserName/ArticleName, translate the article there, and then move it into main namespace. --Boson (talk) 16:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
So here I have requested import to the real page, and did the translation in my user page (User:TheAnarcat/Liberation_Day_(Italy)) - how does that sound? Should the documentation be updated to reflect those practices? --TheAnarcat (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Spanish Translation

Hi,

I've some scans I took from some Spanish language books. Would I be able to get some help in the translation? I have some Spanish skills but to be honest I would struggle and I would like an accurate independent translation. Wee Curry Monster talk 19:27, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Duolingo

Hi, I was wondering if there is an effort/plan to use Duolingo as a means of translating pages between wikipedias? I think it would be a very good idea to have a system of uploading pages to Duolingo and then to the relevant place when it has been translated.

A selection of tags would probably be needed to let people know when a page was in the process of being translated by Duolingo and for it to be checked by a native speaker when it has been uploaded from Duolingo etc.

Most of this could probably be done by a bot...

I don't really know much about how this works, but I searched everywhere I could think of and didn't find anything properly linking Duolingo and Wikipedia except for this forum post Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 14:07, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Late to the discussion here but I think this is a great idea, would love to know more about the technical and effective aspects of it. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 12:35, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Cool, there has been no other response here, do you know a good way to start, or a better place to move this discussion to? Moohan (talk) 09:46, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Translation from English to other language

Hi, I either write on te.wikipedia or translate from English to Telugu. Is there a userbox for me. Please suggest. Veera.sj (talk) 13:32, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes; type {{User Translator|te}} on your user page. Graham87 14:49, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to help, when I do that, I get the badge, "This user translates from Telugu to English". But what I want is the opposite "This is user translates from English to Telugu." Any help? - Veera.sj (talk) 16:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Oops, sorry about the mixup. After a bit more digging, I found {{User Translator 2}}, which does what you want. I've mentioned it on the main page. Graham87 08:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
Great! It works!! Thanks!!! - Veera.sj (talk) 14:57, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Need help for translation for an svg map

Hello,

I need some help to translate an svg map from french to english. The ask is here: Talk:Church of Saint-Sulpice, Jumet#Need help for translation

Thank's

--H2O(talk) 20:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:SVG help would be a better place to ask this question. I can't find an answer for you off-hand, but I don't know much about images because I'm totally blind. Graham87 04:44, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Small translation

Where can I request translation of a few words or phrases? Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 09:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps try the language reference desk, or look in Category:Wikipedians by language for somebody who speaks the language you're looking for. Graham87 14:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Life is a Dream: Translation/copyright issue for student editor

Hello, editors. One of the students in a university class that is assigning a Wikipedia project has an interesting question about including translated lines from a Spanish-language drama. If anyone has experience in this area, please comment on this translation/copyright issue at Talk:Life Is a Dream, near the bottom of the page. Thanks for any guidance! -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:57, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

WP Countering Systemic Bias in the Signpost

Comment below is reposted. Djembayz (talk) 22:57, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Medicine Translation Project Community Organizing

I'd like to ask of you to take a look at a Wikimedia IEG grant a few of us over at Wikiproject Medicine as well as here are behind. You may likely have heard of the translation of medical articles that is being done (if not please take a look at w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation Task Force). The goal of the grant is to get the translation and integration process to run smoothly, and to assess which articles are the most important to translate. We've come far at w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT, but to get further we feel there is need for some form of organization, preferably by someone who can devote significant time to the task.

I'm very hopeful that I can provide real benefit with this grant, as there are so many articles on Wikipedia that could help people all over the world.
It's even more important when you take into account drives such as Wikipedia Zero, and readers who might not have access to any medical information at all can benefit.

Please take a look at the grant page: Medicine Translation Project Community Organizing, and add a comment or give your ideas on how we can best benefit the other Wikipedias.
Thanks, -- CFCF (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

a new article about EXPO Krakow translated from polish wikipedia

Hello,

I've just translated an article from polish wikipedia. It's here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MegKrk/sandbox What should I do now? Who should I ask to verify this for me?

MegKrk (talk) 14:52, 30 June 2014 (UTC)MegKrk

The article should have some citations to third-party reliable sources (e.g. newspapers, magazines, etc). Also, Wikipedia's guidelines and norms on conflict of interest are much stricter than those on most Wikipedias; if you have one relating to the International Exhibition and Convention Centre EXPO Krakow, it's probably not a good idea for you to be creating an article about it. Graham87 04:34, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


Hi Graham,

Thank you for your reply. I've added some references to the article. Is it ok? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MegKrk/sandbox

MegKrk (talk) 09:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)MegKrk

@MegKrk: I've started to clean up the article (mostly the English) so it's ready for the main namespace, but I've run into a problem: the first reference is a dead link. The references to tofairs.com can probably be replaced by the link to the official calendar; I'll do that once you've found a reference to replace the first one. Graham87 14:27, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Graham87: Do you mean this one http://www.eibtm.com/en/Exhibitors/232276/EXPO-Krakow ? Because I've just checked all references and all links work. I've also added the reference to events calendar.

MegKrk (talk) 07:08, 7 August 2014 (UTC)MegKrk

Yes, I did indeed mean the first link ... that's bizarre, it does indeed work now. I'll work on the article some more. Graham87 07:34, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@MegKrk: I've cleaned it up some more and moved it to EXPO Kraków. Graham87 08:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Graham87: Thank you so much for your help!

I've deleted reference wrongly added to Book Fairs. 

MegKrk (talk) 11:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)MegKrk

RFC regarding translation of poorly sourced articles

I recently translated Juan Carlos Zorzi from Spanish Wikipedia, where the article was lacking appropriate citation. After its creation, it was subsequently tagged with insufficient citations on English Wikipedia. Per Wikipedia:Translation, "an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing", but is a translation that creates an article with citation problems (or other problems) worth translating? Upjav (talk) 01:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It really depends, I think on what kind of problems. For example, copyright violations should be speedied on the spot. Attack pages as well. But if it's a bit promotional and seems to be notable...just fix what you can, tag what you can't and move on. Though translating borderline notabile articles should be up to you, if there is a doubt of its notability then I would not translate it to put it on en.wiki. What's acceptable on other wikis is pretty much deleted on the spot on this wiki. Tutelary (talk) 00:19, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I think the practice of refusing to use machine translations an error; it is relatively easy for anyone with some knowledge of the subject and some common sense to fix most of them, so they at least read like English. They still need to be looked at by someone with a good understanding of both languages to avoid errors in meaning. But this is the English WP, where about one-third or our editors do not have English as a first language, and a few of them a level of knowledge that would bring disgrace to Google Translate. We're used to dealing with these, and we can deal with the machine translations also. Of course, it is important not to leave either of these types of poor English unimproved.
Many of our articles are formulaic. I can, for example, usually rewrite the machine translation of an article about a school from many languages: what is needed is knowledge of the educational system of the place being described, in order to find the right equivalent words -- or to know there is no equivalent and use the original names. I can similarly work with the biography of a politician--but only if I know the political system involved, (and there is often help from comparison with articles for which there are good articles in both languages). For scientists and businessmen, their careers are very similar in every country. It's often cultural knowledge rather than language knowledge which is essential.
for citations, the difficulty comes from the practices of some even good Wikipedias of using a different format: where we list a person;'s books, the French or German WPs usually just link to a listing in the national bibliography. Most articles have something to use, and the advice is to add what is there even if it means leaving it untranslated, while waiting for better references. If there is nothing at all, I usually will insist on finding something to at least verify. Aften all, except for BLP, having no references is not a reason for deleting an article, but looking for references.
There are very few people here with the sort of language fluency expected of educated people in non English speaking countries. Indeed, most of the ones who are here, are people who primarily work in and know a non-English language, We must make do with what we can, just as we make do with other sorts of non-expertise, and hope for the process of improvement. DGG ( talk ) 01:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this RFC is somewhat poorly structured. Is this RFC's subject 1) machine translations or 2) translation (by hand) of unsourced articles? These issues are really quite distinct and should be separated IMO, before we get too many commenters here... Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:31, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Edits to a major template about translation

I just edited {{notenglish}} to place a {{noindex}} on the page that carries it. My reasoning is explained at Template talk:Not English#Noindex. Please comment there if you disagree, or if I screwed it up. Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:21, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Mention of active/passive

I don't see good reason to specifically mention active/passive. There are many language features that a good translation has to respect and proper use of active/passive might even not be as important as others. I suggest this section be either shortend (to something like "proper use of language features" without mentioning active/passive) or enhanced with more examples (translate expressions/idioms properly, avoid unclear wording (happens a lot in translations), in general not translate literally / word for word but rather meaning; and many other criteria that make a good translation). --92.72.8.208 (talk) 19:36, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Creating a page in another language

Friends, I'm from Brazil and I need to create a page in English, but I couldn't find out how to create a page in another language. The translation system (beta) didn't work either. I have sent my original text to an English native speaker, so the language is perfectly reviewed, but I created a new page and Wikipedia saved it as if it were in Portuguese, since I'm in Brazil. I changed my preferences, set Wikipedia to be in English, but it didn't work either. I couldn't find anything on Google either.

Please, help me. Thank you! Juliana — Preceding unsigned comment added by Julianafronteiras (talk • contribs) 15:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean when you say "Wikipedia saved it as if it were in Portuguese"? What were you expecting to see, and what was different about what you actually saw?
Did you check to see whether you were saving it to Portuguese Wikipedia (https://pt.wikipedia.org/) or English Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/)? If the article is in English, it should be the latter. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:37, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Also, please sign your messages on Talk pages or other discussion-type pages. See Wikipedia:Signatures for details. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:39, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Julianafronteiras -- you appear to have created an article successfully at Frontiers of thought. However, the article lacks reliable sources. It is likely to be deleted if you do not add some. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:51, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Translation and notability

It seems to me that the main Wikipedia:Translation page needs to make clear that the existence of an article in another language isn't a guarantee of acceptance here. In particular, it needs to state that different Wikipedias have different notability guidelines, and that notability has to be established according to our criteria. I'm tempted to just add wording to the page to this effect, but it seems wise to ask for comments first. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:18, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me. Go for it. Graham87 14:25, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I've added a passage on this - feel free to reword it if it needs clarification. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:48, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Swedish translation needed

I know this is the wrong place for this request, but I'm desperate. :)

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:22, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Never mind. Done. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Template to request proofread of a rough translation?

1/ The page isn't clear, if one already has a rough (or machine) translation of an article, and wants to request proofreading and correction, which is the best template to use? This is what I need :) Thanks!

2/ Also, something that might improve this page might be a table like this:

Situation Action
Article or section exists on another language Wikipedia but not in English, you would like to request an English translation what you should do...
Article or section exists on another language Wikipedia and is poorly translated, you would like to request an English proofreading what you should do...
Article or section in English Wikipedia is not in English what you should do...
Source document not in English, you would like to request an English proofreading what you should do...
Article is outside Wikipedia, you would like to request an English translation what you should do... (or "not something we do" if relevant)
You want to join the translation/proofreading effort what you can do
... ...

This would be quite helpful for users not familiar with translation aspects of Wikipedia. FT2 (Talk | email) 06:43, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Some of your questions are answered at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, which suggests the use of {{Cleanup-translation}} for your situation. Graham87 07:37, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Policy, guideline or not?

Is this page a Wikipedia policy or guideline? It would be good to add the appropriate template to the page. Thisisnotatest (talk) 02:16, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Images/Files

There are no references to images/files on this page. As someone relatively new to translation, I (and I'm sure others) would appreciate some guidance on how to deal with images when translating a page into English from another language's wikipedia.

For example:

  • Should we simply download the file and re-upload to EN?
  • Should we always transfer the file to Wikimedia Commons if it will be used by multiple languages?
  • Should we put an interwikimedia link to the file in the other language's wikipedia? (is this even possible?)

I would appreciate some guidance for myself and also for the article (Wikipedia:Translation) to be updated with this information to help future users. Thanks! Kidburla (talk) 13:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know much about images because I'm blind, so I don't feel comfortable adding to the actual translation page, but the answer to your first two questions depends on whether the image is free content, plus whether it it is appropriately licensed in all relevant countries (which is almost always the case except for older images). If the answer to both questions is yes, it hould beon Commons; if not, it should be uploaded locally. Images cannot be displayed using interwiki links. Graham87 14:53, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal of a WikiProject Translation studies

Good evening to everybody. I have just proposed a WikiProject Translation studies in order to cover an interdiscipline in its own right. Anybody willing to support it? Please sign here. Best regards, --Fadesga (talk) 00:27, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Can I request a translation?

I'm very confused, by the rules and the format of translation. Can I please request a translation? WIKIPEDIARUS (talk) 01:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

There are two approaches for an article that isn't already here. Have you looked at the section WP:TRANSLATETOHERE? One route is to create a very short article (stub) and then put a tag on it that invites others to expand it with material from the article in the other language. The other is the regular procedure for requesting an article on any topic, except that you can offer the article in the other language as a useful source. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Identifying translated articles

I would have guessed that if an article in one language is created by translating the same subject in another language, that we would require some notice on the page, such as a category or maybe even a note in the article identifying the source (something more than an edit summary). Is that not the case?

This question was prompted by Franck Lepage popping up as a possible copyright issue, as the initial edit is a copy of the fr version.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:18, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly, this is covered right here, at Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. The source should have been acknowledged in the initial edit summary but, at a minimum, the {{translated page}} template should be placed on the Talk page of the translated article. Largoplazo (talk) 01:43, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Are you involved in another language Wikipedia?

There's an effort to collect information about smaller Wikipedias at m:Tell us about your Wikipedia. If you are involved in some other Wikipedias, please look through the list there and see if you can provide more information about other Wikipedias. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Edited machine translations

WP:MACHINETRANSLATION says: "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing." (emphasis added)

My question is: Is an edited machine translation worse than nothing? A little better than nothing? Totally acceptable?

Edited machine translations can cause their own problems, especially if the copy-editing is performed by monolinguals. A discussion about this is open at Wikipedia talk:PNT#monolinguals and translation copy-editing.

(I wonder if that discussion wouldn't fit better here, now that I think about it.) Mathglot (talk) 01:51, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Help with an article that I've translated

I have just translated the article in the Italian Wiki La Strage di Rovetta into English; this now appears as Massacre of Rovetta. I've done various other translations in the past but cannot now remember how to indicate in the left-hand column (the side bar?) that this article can also be read in Italian. By the same token, I would like to indicate in the left-hand column of the Italian article that the article can be read in English. I have tried to do this but fear that I may have made a dog's breakfast in the "Languages" tab of both articles! Could someone pse look at the articles and repair any damage that I may have caused. Also pse explain how I can make the necessary changes to any other articles that I translate in the future. Thanks in advance.Mikeo1938 (talk) 08:43, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I've just done this for you, and made other changes to the article. To add an interlanguage link, go to the original article and click on the "Add links" link in the languages sidebar, type in the site name (in this case en), type in the article name, then click save. Graham87 14:41, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

New article notice

I think we should automatically insert notice "If you started this article as a translation from a Wikipedia article in another language read Wikipedia:Translation" when a user Created a new page if that article already exist in other languages. --Gstree (talk) 09:17, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Translating articles that aren't sourced properly

Hello! Can someone advise me on this, please? I'm thinking about creating some articles for important classical scholars, and on many of these (even for British and American classical scholars) there is much better coverage on the German Wikipedia than here. Although I wouldn't rely on them entirely (partly because my German isn't absolutely excellent), some of the German Wikipedia articles are reasonably good, and I would like to incorporate material derived from them.

The only problem is that some of these articles are unsourced (To take a random example, [2]).

Where this is the case, is it alright to use the material and credit the German Wikipedia article, according to the procedure described here at WP:TRANSLATION - or is that not appropriate because the original material is unsourced? Dionysodorus (talk) 15:50, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I think it'd be fine. Graham87 03:36, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
It's kind of OK to generate the material - but you can't cite wiki.de as a source, so the content would still be unreferenced and liable to be deleted. From memory, foreign language references are OK, so could be transferred across if they exist, but it would be better to have at least some EN references too. Is there any formal guidance on this, because it seems to me to be the major issue with translating articles from other wikis? 4u1e (talk) 09:43, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
Yep, your memory about non-English references is correct. Graham87 14:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Duolingo has dropped its Immersion translation system; perhaps Wikipedia can get it; it's far better than machine translation

I already posted this to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, but realized that this may be a more appropriate place.

I know that there's been problems with Wikipedia's current translation system and the overuse of machine translation. Duolingo had the model of crowd-sourcing translations. I have often contributed to Duolingo translations from non-English Wikipedias and found that crowd-sourcing can lead to high quality translations. Perhaps Wikipedia can look into getting Duolingo's system. Lots of Duolingo users are upset about the loss of Duolingo's Immersion translation system. I think Wikipedia has an opportunity to step in and offer a crowd-sourcing translation system (either get Doulingo's or develop our own). This is also a win-win situation both for Wikipedia and the fans of Duolingo's Immersion tool who spend a lot of time translating articles for free. Duolingo's system was very general and went between any two languages they supported. This system had some features that encouraged people to think through their translation. --RJGray (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I came here with the same thought. To be honest, I'm not sure Wikipedia needs any different functionality, just an active transation wikiproject to create a community and let people organise themselves. The normal Wiki type incentives (WP:BARNSTARS etc.) could be used instead of levels. This area doesn't seem terribly active - am I missing where all the translation activity is happening? 4u1e (talk) 09:49, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
It's happening at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, and also through the efforts of individual editors, some of whom are listed at Category:Available translators in Wikipedia. Graham87 14:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks - I've had a play with the translation tool as well now. Helps, I think, with removing some of the barriers to entry for those not familiar with wikipedia. 4u1e (talk) 15:51, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Questions

I have a couple of questions:

  • How does this translation effort address the issue of notability? Do we accept that if an article is notable enough to exist in another language wiki, then it is notable enough to exist here? I'd hate to put the effort it to translate an article that is then (correctly) deleted as being insufficiently notable to remain on en.wiki.
  • And then a related point: what about referencing as mentioned above? I'd scanned through some of the articles listed for translation, and the level of referencing is not always acceptable. Do we then need to go and find suitable references? Is it OK to use foreign language ones?

Unless I've missed it (possible!), I think this page is missing definitive guidance on these questions, which have given me pause a couple of times when considering translating articles. Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 16:59, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I note that Graham87 has answered part of the referencing question above already - sorry for bringing it up again, Graham. 4u1e (talk) 17:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Help with professional translations

Forgive me if this is an inappropriate place to ask, but I'm not really sure where else to take this question. I already asked over at Wikipedia:Translate us (which seems fairly inactive), but if anybody has any other suggestions, I'm happy to hear them. I have a paid COI in regards to Bottega Veneta, disclosed on the talk page and my userpage, and I've been tasked with ensuring that some of the foreign language versions of the article are as up to date and accurate as the English-language one. They've provided me professional translations of the article in the respective languages, but as I'm not a speaker of any of them, I can't verify their accuracy on my own. It seems like a rather unique predicament in that I have the material, but since I can't speak well enough to interact on the other Wikipedias, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to find the right people to help. That being said, since I have the translations on hand, would anyone here be able to help out, since they can verify the accuracy by translating back into English? I'm mostly just trying to avoid inquiring with individual volunteer translators, but don't know of another relevant noticeboard or wikiproject that fits the bill. Thanks for any help you can give!--— Preceding unsigned comment added by FacultiesIntact (talk • contribs) 20:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@FacultiesIntact: Major language Wikipedias tend to have an equivalent to a Local Embassy, where you can ask for help if you don't speak the language of the Wikipedia site. See the interlanguage links for the embassy page. Graham87 03:23, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Translation Wikiproject anyone?

I've been thinking of trying to organize something where someone who needs help from a Fooish speaker can ask for help (to translate, check a reference etc), and which people who speak Fooish can put on their watchlist. I saw @4u1e: mentioned a WikiProject up the page, maybe my system could form part of that. Any thoughts on functions and organization? This is differnent from WP:PNT and Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki It will go at Wikipedia:WikiProject Translation (now a redirect) if it gets off the ground. Siuenti (talk) 13:25, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Siuenti: I thought we already had something like that? WP:Translators available? --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:26, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
Ah I knew I'd seen something like that. At the moment it seems like you'd have to contact the translators directly... Can it be adapted so people can post requests on a page and translators can put it on their watchlist? Siuenti (talk) 20:31, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
You would probably need some sort of hybrid between WP:Requested articles and WP:Translators available, i.e. WP:Requested translations. I however doubt it will gain much attention from the translators' side. The fact that we already have a huge backlog at WP:PNT says to me that dedicated translators are hard to find, especially for such big tasks as translating entire articles. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Please include me in this discussion, as I think it may be a place to discuss reordering the workflow. Elinruby (talk) 03:27, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Machine-translations

The following had been added to the Wikipedia here: "Translation takes work. Recent progress in neural machine translation (artificial intelligence) has reduced translation errors by up to 87%[3] and often produces decent-quality results. Consider decent-quality machine translation as an efficient way to start. (See [4] as an example.)

"Previously, a Wikipedian stated that Wikipedia consensus was, "an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing." However, this statement was made at a time when it was essentially correct- machine translation was of such poor quality it was comical. This situation changed dramatically in late 2016.[5]

"Many languages lack millions of fundamental articles, and decent-quality machine translation can create enormous growth in user engagement within these languages by providing content which can be understood and may need a few corrections.

"Although some users can easily access machine translations anyway, such links engage the user with a Wikipedia in a language foreign to the user, often to en.wikipedia.org, whereas a decent-quality machine translation article in the user's native-language Wikipedia allows the user to engage and click edit if they notice an error.

"As the accuracy of machine translation continues to advance with the rapid progress of artificial intelligence, Wikipedians are exploring the use of sophisticated tools and/or bots to make translation within Wikipedia more efficient.[6]"

I rather disagree with the changes, and have reverted them, so at the moment there is no consensus. Please comment. Lectonar (talk) 21:50, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption of Valladolid is a Catholic temple located in the city of Valladolid with category of cathedral, seat of the Archdiocese of Valladolid. Conceived in the sixteenth century as the last work of Philip II and designed by the architect Juan de Herrera, it is a Herrerian style building with baroque additions. It was to be the largest cathedral in Europe, 1 although it is built in 40-45%, 2 due to the lack of resources for such a project and the expenses caused by the difficult foundations of the temple located in an area With a large difference in ground.

  • I also disagree with the (now-reverted) changes. See for example Matthew Kushinka's concerns in the Washington Post's comment section, in addition to everything still appearing very preliminary. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not, I would invite @Daniel.inform: to spend some time tidying up the massive backlog of badly machine translated articles at WP:PNT before suggesting such changes--Jac16888 Talk 18:16, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: I agree with Lectonar. Thanks Lectonar for posting, and like others, I agree with you, and disagree with the User's changes to WP:Translation. I followed up on their talk page requesting that they provide a rough indication of their language skills, which, based on two translations that I was able to find (one each from Spanish and French), I judge to be about equivalent to that of machine translation. Mathglot (talk) 08:07, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • OK I concur, some translations might be ok-ish but a lot of them are complete garbage. If someone is not able to assess the quality of a machine translation they shouldn't be posting it. Siuenti (talk) 08:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I support continuing to strongly discourage the posting of machine translations because they are often so poor that they can't be effectively fixed. They often contain words and phrases which make no sense in their context, and yet your average editor isn't going to have any idea what does belong there. So such material needs to be removed. The remainder, even if largely intelligible on a sentence-by-sentence basis, may be completely incohesive and, therefore, as confusing as it may be helpful. At WP:PNT, I have often put non-English articles into Google Translate to find that the translation is so unclear that I couldn't even tell whether the article was a reference article, a relatively information-free paean to some admired figure, or the minutes of a political convention. I exaggerate, but only slightly. My point is that the noise-to-signal ratio was so high I couldn't even tell whether the article was an A7 or a G11 or an attack page. Largoplazo (talk) 14:49, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Largoplazo, thank you for this input. I am curious, did you noticed any difference when Google Translate changed in Nov2016 or in Mar2017? You would have only noticed a difference if you were translating to and from English to any of these languages: (beginning Nov2016) French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish (and beginning Mar2017) Hindi, Russian and Vietnamese. Daniel.inform (talk) 13:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
And what has that to do with the price of tea? Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. Lectonar (talk) 13:41, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Nothing to my knowledge, and I am not particularly concerned about the price of tea in the context of this topic. ;-) Daniel.inform (talk) 14:06, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Given the diversity and irregularity of my use of Google Translate, I certainly didn't notice anything special in regard to particular languages in specific months. I do know that I've run across miserable translations even in the past month. Largoplazo (talk) 15:07, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Reply from daniel.inform

Fellow Wikipedians above, thank you for your comments. Lectonar, thank you for applauding my WP:BOLD attempt with your message on my talk page. So far it seems my attempt was a bit too bold for the five (5) people above. I have been thinking about how to accelerate translation within Wikipedia for seventeen (17) years.

So here is my next, less bold idea- I propose that we try an experiment, in order to empirically test the statement, "an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing."

Experiment:

  1. Find a decent-quality article in Language A that is missing in Language B.
  2. Use a machine-translation tool to create the missing article in Language B.
  3. Put a notice at the top of the missing article, "This article has been translated from the [Language A] Wikipedia by [the tool used]. Please feel free to correct any errors by clicking the edit tab above."
  4. See how long it takes people to fix the errors.
  5. If this accelerates the translation process within Wikipedia, then the stated current consensus "worse than nothing" is lacking.

Note: It's probably best to start with higher-traffic articles. (Of course traffic/interest of an article in Language A may be much different than traffic/interest of the article in Language B.) It will be interesting to find out at what traffic level the technique ceases to be useful.

Also note: People in Language B who see the article, but have never edited Wikipedia, may sometimes feel frustrated when they read the glaring errors/grammar. But such frustration can inspire a person to click edit and then have the epiphany that they can contribute. This is a great thing for Wikipeida- increasing viewer engagement.

Final note: The stated current consensus "worse than nothing" is so strong, it seems vulnerable as a potential logical fallacy. How do we know this is still current consensus?

Cheers, Daniel.inform (talk) 10:37, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Well...concensus is built by having discussions like we do now. And I do not think we need an experiment while the backlog at WP:PNT is reaching back to 2013....you may indulge yourself. Lectonar (talk) 10:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Lectonar. Regarding consensus via discussion, indeed. I will wait for any replies regarding the "worse than nothing" issue. Regarding your opinion, "I do not think we need an experiment while the backlog at WP:PNT is reaching back to 2013...," I do not understand what you mean. Regarding, "you may indulge yourself," indeed, thank you, I'll give it a go. Cheers, Daniel.inform (talk) 11:12, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
As Lectonar says, I see no need for an experiment to prove what the backlog at PNT already clearly shows, that machine translations do not get tidied quickly. Speaking as somebody who does their best to keep the backlog down, tidying a bad translation is much harder than just doing a fresh translation, and when somebody creates as vast machine translated article, as happens often, the task of tidying is so daunting that it simply doesn't happen--Jac16888 Talk 17:43, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

RFC

Near unanimous consensus to maintain the status quo.There are un-animous concerns of introducing un-intended factual errors and creating drastically inferior forks using un-edited machine-translation.Winged Blades Godric 17:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

At this point, WP:MACHINETRANSLATION states "an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing".The community is requested to opine over whether the standard is set too high or is perfect esp. w.r.t certain recent advances in machine translations.The prev. sections may be of some interest to the participants.

Cheers,Daniel.inform (talk) 11:56, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Text and sections refactored to make the RFC a bit more neutral by 16:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC) at Winged Blades Godric.

Please note, there is a related phabricator task (phab:T138711) to enable machine translation to the translation tool, pending community consensus. — xaosflux Talk 04:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Survey/short discussion

  • A machine translation creates mistakes. Some of these are basic obvious errors in grammar and such, and yes they are easily fixed and could potentially create new editors. However they also create errors that are not obvious, without understanding nuance or context a machine can and does alter the very meaning of a sentence - you are proposing that we knowingly encourage a use of process that introduces not obvious factual errors. To follow your lead, a machine translation is used to create the article in Language B:
  1. Editor doesn't know the language, but using google adds a featured article from another Wikipedia - this will not be a small article
  2. Editor happily goes through the article and corrects all the grammatical errors
  3. Editor is not capable of realising that they have introduced a number of discreet factual errors into the article
  4. Editor goes on their way, safe in the knowledge that they have made Wikipedia better, meanwhile the errors remain for years because the number of SME's viewing the article are low and no bilingual editors or readers decide to compare the two different language articles (because why would they
In other words, yes, machine translation is measurably worse than nothing--Jac16888 Talk 17:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree. Machine translations are worse than nothing because of the inability of the translator to check whether or not meaning is altered. There is a high risk of introducing factual errors because of that. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:02, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I too agree. Machine translation can introduce factual errors into the text, and readers are perfectly capable of accessing machine translation through widely available tools. There is no need for us to cut and paste machine translation here. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Daniel, I also applaud your enthusiasm for questions of translation. But reading what you have to say here gives me the impression that you are talking all around the subject without necessarily having hands-on experience with it. I have some specific comments or questions I'd like to make about what you wrote above, but before I do, I'd really like to hear your response to the question I posed on your Talk page about your familiarity with foreign languages and your experience in translation. Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Reword but keep - I think the phrasing in WP:MACHINETRANSLATION "worse than nothing" could look at an update. If nothing else, that this was stated in 2006 is causing it to be questioned and a 2017 update would make it obviously current. For another thing, the phrasing "worse than nothing" comes off as extremist vague melodrama rather than a sober guideline pointing to specific concerns and giving more positive suggestions. I'd suggest the phrase instead be simply "unacceptable for the WP translation effort this article refers to" instead to highlight this guideline is about a formal request to port an article. I'm also thinking that there are a number of issues other than the tech here. Above talks about an unsourced wiki page which I'd hope WP porting would balk at a WP:V failure. Above also talks about bulk transhipping of wiki pages which is contrary to the desire of language-specific wikis and that editing of bulk produced content after-the-fact could be such a major burden and backlog that the only feasible handling would be mass deletion of all such. As mentioned above, folks can already put the text to a translator without us so it's not adding a value. As a more positive guideline to put in, I would say translators should use machine translations as a tool on the section titles but even here they should step in and WP:PARAPHRASE into the new language and phrasings of that language. Markbassett (talk) 05:42, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I just did a Rfd for a Latin American hospital where I advocated saving the article. It was a stub article and I said I would try to fill in the article. I will fill in the article using Google translate. But machine translation is not yet ready for prime time. I had to edit the article. I suggest waiting until translation software gets better. Perhaps someday, there will be no need for wiki editors. The machines will write all the articles and also engage in edit wars.Dean Esmay (talk) 22:19, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep - I think this is perfectly accurate, especially considering the advances in machine translation. When you paste in a machine translation, that creates an inferior fork of the original and locks it in place when any future visitor can just use the same or a better translation application to create a new translation on the fly, and that new translation will be in sync with changes to the original article.
An unedited, pasted-in machine translation is unambiguously worse than no translation, with the sole exception of people who may have access to some non-public machine translation utility that is significantly better than things like Google translate, and even then it just changes it from "unambiguously worse" to "probably worse". The point of that clause is not that machine translations are bad (though generally they are), it's that since everyone can generate one on the fly, you're providing no additional value over leaving the article untranslated, plus imposing the cost of separating the original article from the translation. An edited machine translation is different because it provides additional value in exchange for that separation (i.e. it's hand-corrected in a way that would be time consuming for future visitors). 0x0077BE (talk · contrib) 15:50, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Detailed discussion

Worse than nothing essentially means that the machine translation is not useful nor informative to any readers of Wikipedia in that language and that it's not useful to advancing Wikipedia in any way. Logically that is a very high bar.

Let's consider some possibilities.

Suppose a decent-quality article exists in Language A but does not exist in Language B:

  1. An Internet user of Language B (not a Wikipedian) Googles a topic, and the Wikipedia article of that topic does not exist in their language. They see various Google results lacking the concise/coherent information as usually provided by Wikipedia.
    1. Many Internet users of limited skill/experience don't see a machine translation of the article from the Language A Wikipedia.
    2. Many other Internet users do see a machine translation the Language A Wikipedia article. They see the various translation errors in the article but if they click "edit" to fix an error, they don't contribute to the article in Wikipedia of their language.

Now suppose the situation changes because machine translation is used to create the article in Language B:

  1. An Internet user of Language B Googles the topic, and they see the article in the Language B Wikipedia. There is a notice at the top of the article, such as: "This article has been translated from the [Language A] Wikipedia by [the tool used]. Please feel free to correct any errors by clicking the edit tab above."
  2. Some of these users (who are not yet Wikipedians) are frustrated by the errors, click the "edit" tab, and have the the epiphany that they can contribute. This is a great thing for Wikipeida- increasing viewer engagement.

Daniel.inform (talk) 11:56, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

This is a problem that should be solved technologically, not by pasting in machine translations. Pasting in machine translations short-circuits the mechanisms by which machine translations can be improved, because new machine translations are not generated on-the-fly as the original article changes or as the translation engine improves, and it eliminates the machine-readable information about what articles do and do not have corresponding articles in other languages. What if I want to find a list of articles in Japanese that don't have a corresponding article in English? If you've gone through and copy-pasted translations into the English version, there are a bunch of old machine-translated articles masquerading as translations of the Japanese. This is among the many reasons why a copy-pasted translation is worse than nothing.
If you are concerned with people finding the page in their language, there should probably be a technological solution similar to a Redirect page, like "TRANSLATION: canonical-page", which may embed a machine translation of the original page or it could just link to a machine translation (depending on whatever is technically feasible/advisable), with a big link at the top saying "This is a machine translation of the original page in <language>, if you'd like to create a page for your language, click here..." I think pushing for something like that would be a much better use of time than encouraging people to copy-paste machine translations which will likely be some combination of hard to understand and out of date. 0x0077BE (talk · contrib) 16:09, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Creating a machine translation article achieves nothing?

Regarding this portion of the current stated consensus here Wikipedia:Translation#Avoid_machine_translations, "(This is partly because translation templates automatically carry links to machine translations, so readers can easily access machine translations anyway‍—‌pasting a machine translation into an "article" really achieves nothing)." [sic]

See the above section "worse than nothing"? Daniel.inform (talk) 12:28, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

How about "does not aid the reader" instead of "really achieves nothing"? Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:50, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Calliopejen1, that sounds like an improvement to me. Although I argue above that 'decent-quality' machine translation (for example this or this) may in fact aid the reader in some important ways:
  1. By connecting the reader to the Wikipedia in their language. (Instead of connecting them to, for example, the English Wikipedia.)
  2. If the reader chooses click edit to correct a translation error, they are contributing the the Wikipedia in their language, which is beneficial to the reader and beneficial to the overall Wikipedia endeavor.
However, noting the comments above from my more multilingual fellow Wikipedians, this all hinges on the translation being of decent quality as opposed to quality so poor it's worse than nothing. Daniel.inform (talk) 03:49, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel.inform:Please stop using the <mark>....</mark> template needlessly whenever you mention a certain phrase.Cheers!Winged Blades Godric 09:11, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
(Second that.) Mathglot (talk) 09:43, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel.inform: It seems to me you're still missing a crucial point. I have the impression that you might be confusing "good English" with "good translation". The two are not equivalent. Accuracy is part of translation, too. The exact same text that might get you an A+ in your English Composition class, might get you a D if you submit it in your Translation class. I grant that you, or any native speaker of English, can take a look at a piece of text and decide whether it is "good English" or not. We can all do that, because of our native competence in the language. But if you look at a text in perfect English, how are you going to determine if it's a good translation from French or a really terrible translation? Answer: You must have some skill in the source language, to be able to determine if a translation is good or bad, irrespective of the wonderfulness of the English result. You simply can't do it for a language pair you're unfamiliar with.
When you talk above about "decent quality" or "poor quality" translations above, I think what you are really saying is, "text that looks like decent quality English" to you, or "text that looks like poor quality English" to you. But you are using the wrong yardstick here. We all know what decent English looks like, anybody can do that. What we need is, people who can tell whether it's a good translation. Continuing the metaphor, you need to drop the "good English" yardstick, and pick up the "good Translation" yardstick.
So where you write above about how "the reader clicks edit to correct a translation error" I think what you really meant was, "the reader sees some bad English, and so he clicks edit to transform it into good English". But we don't want them to do that; that doesn't make it a good translation, that just makes it good English. For me, that is worse than it was before, because at least a reader viewing an article in crappy English will realize something is amiss, and distrust it; whereas someone viewing an article in perfect English that originated from a machine-translation that was later copy-edited by a monolingual editor will assume that the article is correct, and trust it. Big mistake.
One thing you said above is absolutely right: "it all hinges on the on the translation being of decent quality." Yes. And this has to be decided article by article, and sentence by sentence, comparing it to the original foreign-language source. There is no other way, that I am aware of.
About the wording: I can see your objection to the "achieves nothing" phrasing, and have no problem with Calliopejen1's suggestion of "does not aid the reader". Although I'd probably step it up a notch to "does not aid and may even mislead the reader". I might also add another sentence, about how having a machine translation might make it too tempting for editors to come in after it and copyedit it into good English, thus freezing factual errors generated by the MT in place, to the detriment of the accuracy and verifiability of the encyclopedia; but I'd have to think about how to word that. Mathglot (talk) 10:43, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Hear hear! Correct English does not necessarily mean that the machine-translated text conveys the correct message. In fact, it may even obscure factual errors as Mathglot points out. --HyperGaruda (talk) 17:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Translation tool has vanished

Where has the translation tool? suddenly gone? I've been working on a couple of articles and on this main page there are only redlinks to the tool. What's happened and will it be fixed soon? ww2censor (talk) 09:07, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Might still be a problem: see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_translation Lectonar (talk) 09:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, I did not know where else to ask. ww2censor (talk) 09:55, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Translation assistance with a source/reference

If we need translation assistance with a source, where's the place to request that?

There's an issue with a source in French being used in the Diane Kruger article. The accuracy is being challenged, and my French isn't strong enough to check it out myself. —C.Fred (talk) 14:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout#Placement of expand language templates that may be of interest to those watching this page. Thanks. TimothyJosephWood 12:09, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion: a banner add for Translation WP

Greetings, Wonder if it would be okay to post this banner ad to the main Translation WP page? Please add your discussion comments below. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 04:05, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Please add your discussion below.

Beautiful job, great technical skill involved, kudos. Please keep this new banner at least one thousand kilometers away from WP:TRANSLATION. Mathglot (talk) 06:09, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Mathglot - according info at {{Wikipedia ads}} page, this one was created by User:ObfuscatePenguin, and I thought to bring it here. Is there a spot, maybe underneath "User boxex" where this ad could be placed? Perhaps with content something like this section below. — JoeHebda • (talk) 06:28, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
User:JoeHebda please do not. At the very most, you could add a link like this:
  • "Please see {{wikipedia ads|104}} for a neato banner with all sorts of flashiing colors and language captions for your userpage."
Please don't embed the actual banner on WP:Translation. Mathglot (talk) 08:59, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Aaaaand ... these ads aren't accessible at all to sfcreen reader users like me, and they're probably not accessible to users with other challenges either. Graham87 14:31, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Translation Wikipedia banner ad

Here is a WP Translation ad that can be placed on your Userpage in an appropriate location.

Click 'show' to view ad.     (Warning: do not click if you are subject to PSE from flashing displays.)

This banner ad is entirely optional. Credit to User:ObfuscatePenguin for creating.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by JoeHebda (talk • contribs) 04:05, 8 June 2017 (UTC)   edited by Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Creating the English article

Currently, the advice says to "create the article on English Wikipedia as a stub article, explaining or defining the subject of the article in a sentence or two". I believe that this is no longer helpful advice, and that new stubs are not generally acceptable. I think that this page should be advising them to create the article like any other new article, i.e. to use the AFC process unless they are confident they can create an article which is acceptable first time; so it should direct them to WP:YFA. Thoughts? --ColinFine (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me; I've changed it accordingly. Feel free to tweak it further. Graham87 01:01, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
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