Im glad to see ther are two of you -- there is
certainly an open debate about this. Your opinions are
noted.
But the statement...
"dealing with such a machine translation would be
WORSE for the writer than starting with a blank
page."
...is a bit loosy-goosy.. It seems almost
technophobic, and it misses some points, namely !. the
general thrust of the wikipedia as collaborative, and
interactive -- 2. that something on the page is most
often better than *nothing on the page -- 3. that
machine translation is improving at an extremely
rapid pace. 4. this is the general consensus --that
the WP take upon itself a more international scope .
I dont agree with "running everthing through
Babelfish" -- this is not the best option, even if it
were feasible -- (I think that was an
oversimplification - not a well-crafted sentence.)
The better options are a subject weve already
mentioned -- namely a platform dedicated to
cross-langa articles , and a means to make it more
efficient to use our own personal translation ware...
I suggested the use of the simple wiki for this --
there are some issues with that as well.
Ultimately, there is no generalized view of machine
translation -- Systran (google) is rather good for
one-way conversion between one European language and
another. Even Jim Breen's kanji translator is good
for at mass-converting Kanji to their meanings, in a
list. That it would be too hard for a "writer" to
connect the dots with some grammar, is also a rather
fishy statement. Wikipedians are NOT writers, anyway
-- were *editors.
-S-
--- Arwel Parry <arwel(a)cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
In message <3F1662E7.1020701(a)planetunreal.com>om>,
tarquin
<tarquin=ivGM6J5ThX418oCzpIvf9w(a)public.gmane.org>
writes
Jason Richey wrote:
>To this end, we might as well spawn a new
project... A project that
>takes the en wikipedia data dump and passes it
through Babelfish or
the like.
Could we please return to the real world?
Machine translations are sometimes vaguely useful
for getting the gist
of something. but by and large, they are pure
crud.
dealing with such a machine translation would be
WORSE for the writer
than starting with a blank page.
I quite agree, apart from the fact that I can't
envisage Babelfish "or
the like" ever being set up to translate many of the
lesser-used
languages we have wikipedias set up for.
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com