# விக்கிப்பீடியா:ஆலமரத்தடி/தொகுப்பு46

## The Hindu on Google (and other) Translation projects

Using Wikipedia to change the language of the Web --சோடாபாட்டில்<sup>உரையாடுக</sup> 09:59, 5 சனவரி 2011 (UTC)  
:நன்றி சோடா. நான் கூறிய இருவேறு கருத்துக்களைத் தவறுதலாக இணைத்து விட்டனர். பெரிய தவறு இல்லை. த இந்து நிருபரின் கேள்விகளுக்கு நான் எழுதிய மடலில் இருந்து (குறிப்புக்காக):  
>In your opinion, in this mid to get content on, to enrich their software, do
>you think the quality of Wikipedia gets sacrificed?  
The short answer is yes. Though the companies do have an intention of adding
more content to Wikipedia along with serving their business interests, quality
suffers. The problems are at several levels, technical, operational, and
philosophical. I'll address the philosophical part in the next question.  
The translation tools have certain limitations: a) they do not lend themselves
well enough to translate wikitext -- text interspersed with wiki syntax. Because
of this, for example, we faced an issue of spurious red links to non-articles. I
wrote a patch to pywikipediabot in order to fix the mess the tools created
(cf. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3017517&group_id=93107&atid=603140)
b) due to their business requirement of enriching their "translation memory", a
machine learning technique, they've built the tools to do more aligned
translations i.e. line-by-line. This creates a highly mechanical and unnatural
translation unsuitable for the consumption of native speakers.  
At the operational level, the issues are:
1. the kind of freelance translators that they hired seem to have experienced
only in localisation of software or sometimes do not have any professional
translation experience
2. the company measures output in terms of number of articles and words added to
the corpus, with zero interest to the quality of translation
3. the third-party companies that get the contracts are incentivised only to
dump articles and not use community feedback to improve the articles or future
translations as would normally happen with volunteer editors  
>Do you think it somewhat compromises on the community wisdom part of Wikipedia?  
Yes. The process followed here is uncharacteristic of the way content gets added
to Wikiprojects. A typical article would be created as a stub by a volunteer,
then they would place a request for help in its talk page. Others will chip in
to improve the article and offer suggestions at the talkpage. The original
author and others will expand, copyedit, wikify, classify, enhance with pictures
and videos, and rewrite parts of the article. Whereas with contract work, the
translators dump the text and not even look back at how it has come up. They
didn't take talkpage feedback until we complained enough with the companies and
worked out a process for feedback and rating.  
All said, there is still a chance to make it work by resolving the issues and
keeping wiki project requirements for quality and process as inviolable.
Ravishankar Ayyakkannu, a Tamil Wikipedian,
with inputs from other Tamil Wikipedians including me, has done a presentation
about this issue during Wikimania 2010. You can read the abstract
at http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_Review_of_Google_Translation_project_in_Tamil_Wikipedia:_Role_of_voluntarism,_free_and_organically_evolved_community_in_ensuring_quality_of_Wikipedia and
approach him for more details. Both of us were the initial co-ordinators for
the project and USer:Sodabottle is the primary contact
now. They can give more information.
Arjuna Rao of Telugu Wikipedia has also interacted with
the Google team and he'll surely add more. Hari Prasad Nadig
of Kannada Wikipedia has started dealing with this, I think.  
DISCLAIMER:
1. Most of these, though deriving from community views, should be deemed
personal.
2. The above opinions entailed the Google translation project
(http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Google_translation) alone.
Microsoft Research's Wikibhasha is yet to be employed. I have noticed a few
improvements in their software. More details
at: http://www.mail-archive.com/wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg00963.html  
3. The intentions of all involved are bona fide, just that the priorities are
not in alignment.  
[...]
Bangla Wikipedians had issues with the project and it has
been stopped there at present, I believe.
See an update on that
at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-December/001381.html Ragib
Hasan and Belayet Hossain are the
contacts there.  
For Google's side of the story, you can contact Dimple Batra
and Michael Galvez.  
-- சுந்தர் <sup>\பேச்சு</sup> 08:01, 6 சனவரி 2011 (UTC)