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

Today, Friday 31st, 2009, 3:56p, Sean Healy wrote:
>Double posting this to the development and doc lists
>
>Star's seed wrote:
>> I tested a translation software software to
>> translate the documentation: OmegaT (java / gpl)
>
>Machine translation is nowhere near good enough to provide adequate 
>translations
>of arbitrary text. Especially considering that one of the desired target 
>languages
>is Hungarian, which doesn't even belong to the same language superfamily as
>English, and is significantly structurally different.
>
>(...)
>
>Essentially, this is a lot of work up front. But IF we can get it all set up, 
>and
>IF our doc writers stick to the restrictions, then it's fully automated 
>afterward,
>and any >updates to the English docs are immediately reflected in the target
>languages. So it's >either a lot of work up front, or little bits of work every
>time a change is made to keep >the translations up to date.
>
>So it depends on what resources the doc team has, and where it's willing to 
>spend
>those resources.

Even though the translation uses "Simple English" (as in 
http://simple.wikipedia.org/), Pragmatics play a very important role. The same 
word (although simple) can have more than one "plain" meanings, depending on 
the context: "save" has two different meanings when in a game or in a word 
processor.

This machine-translation had been used by SIL (http://www.sil.org/) in order to 
translate documents to many languages. They found out that if you add "Good" 
plus "night" you do not get the meaning that "Good night" conveys in many 
languages: that intention is not put with those words. 
(http://users.elite.net/runner/jennifers/gnight.htm)

Extra consideration must be had in the "value" that "night" has: for example, 
evening/night does not consider the same time amounts between Indoeuropean 
languages, please, do not expect it to happen in other languages. Also, there 
are times when a word is "plain", but it cannot be next to some others: they 
convey together rude/pejorative/sexist/unappropriated meanings.

When people translate to a foreign language, we occasionally make mistakes (or 
we use phrases that just are not natural although you understand them). You can 
tell immediately when we are not native speakers. When you see our messages you 
see my point.

Please, give a second (and a third) thought in this matter. It would be a shame 
to give a bad impression, even when it has very good intentions. Me think your 
consideration will play a better band (as another example).

Thank you.

Miguel Zúñiga

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