[haiku-development] Re: [haiku-doc] Re: Machine translation (was: Re: Wiki for translation/localization teams)

  • From: "Jonas Sundström" <jonas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:23:35 +0100 CET

Sean Healy <jalopeura@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Jonas Sundström wrote:
> 
> > I resent the idea of having a single language - likely English
> > - as a master language which one has to use for content creation
 ...
> And as for your resentment of English as a "master language",
> that really is not the fault of the field of machine translation,

I don't mean to put any blame on machine translation for the
state of the world. And I don't mean to knock computational
linguistics. I'm assuming though that the common and most 
economic use of machine translation includes promoting a single
language to source language, from which translations to other
languages are generated. Nothing wrong with that for a business
entity. We, however, are more multi-national than any multi-national.

(Pardon the hyperbole, but by the above I mean that we have an
obligation to ourselves, our languages and cultures to express
ourselves, and none of the obligation businesses have, e.g. to
shareholders, to cut costs by streamlining collective expression.)

I'm just trying to push the idea that we can create tools and
set up procedures to make documentation and translation an
equal opportunity no matter what set of languages one does or
does not command. Content creation in any language. Translation
from any language, to any language.

I would like to avoid creating tools, web services and protocol
that enforce content creation in English, which block people who
want to create new content in e.g. Spanish, or people who must/
prefer to do direct translation from e.g. Spanish to Russian.

So, do I honestly think I can alter the state of English as
the informal lingua franca of computer science? Heck no, but
I can sure try to resist its elevation to formal standard.

 ...
> I just wanted to point out the problems inherent in the 
> approach, and offer my help if the team decided to go that way.

And even though I'm seemingly butting heads with you I'm glad
to have you in our midst. :) Where would computer science be
without linguists!

Regards,
Jonas.

(who for the record is a huge fan of many things British and 
American, including the language)


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