[WG: I18N & L10N] Automagic translations (was: How long does it take to translate Sakai CLE)

Zhen Qian zqian at umich.edu
Tue Jul 2 08:32:10 PDT 2013


I will second here. The automatic translation could provide a base and save
a lot of FTEs for the community.

The precision rate is getting much better nowadays in macine translation.
Besides Windows products, Bing Translate has been used in places like
Facebook - with the default "Community and machine translators" setting,
users can submit their own translations and override the machine result if
they finds problem. Twitter is joining the group now: (
http://tinyurl.com/m7fkopv).

I guess we can follow the same route.

Thanks,
- Zhen


On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Steve Swinsburg
<steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>wrote:

> I think people would much rather just adjust one or two words than have to
> start from scratch.
>
> I actually spot checked the French translation that was provided to me
> from a native speaker against my automated one and out of 15 sentences,
> only one word was different.
>
> cheers,
> Steve
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Jean-Francois Leveque <
> jean-francois.leveque at upmc.fr> wrote:
>
>> My experience tells me that having a bad translation is worse than having
>> no translation. YMMV.
>>
>> My advice would be to have someone who knows well both the language
>> translated into and the portlets check the translation.
>>
>> cheers,
>> J-F
>>
>> On 28/06/2013 16:04, Steve Swinsburg wrote:
>>
>>> I just gave the Autoi18n app a spin and it still works, hurrah! I'm
>>> actually going to use it to do a bunch of translations for a few
>>> portlets of mine.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Steve Swinsburg
>>> <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com <mailto:steve.swinsburg at gmail.**com<steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     It was just a quick and dirty proof of concept. It doesn't identify
>>>     the ones that need translation but it would be daily simple to scan
>>>     the source and find them. Like I said, needs some work :) Any
>>>     automation here would be a good start IMO.
>>>
>>>     Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>>     On 26/06/2013, at 21:49, Neal Caidin <neal.caidin at apereo.org
>>>     <mailto:neal.caidin at apereo.org**>> wrote:
>>>
>>>      Cool! Does your program have, or is there a reasonable way, to
>>>>     identify all the files which need translating in Sakai? Or does
>>>>     one have to pass the properties files for translating one-by-one?
>>>>
>>>>     Might be a dumb question, I realize, but just curious.
>>>>
>>>>     Cheers,
>>>>     Neal
>>>>
>>>>     On Jun 26, 2013, at 7:30 AM, Steve Swinsburg
>>>>     <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com <mailto:steve.swinsburg at gmail.**com<steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>      I wrote a little utility that automatically translates a
>>>>>     properties file into various languages.
>>>>>
>>>>>     https://github.com/**steveswinsburg/auto-i18n<https://github.com/steveswinsburg/auto-i18n>
>>>>>
>>>>>     It's been neglected for a while and I think the API it uses has
>>>>>     been deprecated (oops) but it could easily be cleaned up. This
>>>>>     would give a legup to anyone starting on translations. I realise
>>>>>     that no amount of automation can replace a native speaker, but at
>>>>>     least you don't need to start from zero.
>>>>>
>>>>>     I am surprised it takes 6 months of time. That signals to me that
>>>>>     we need a far better i18n strategy. Centralised properties files,
>>>>>     reducing the number of duplicates, whatever it takes. A few
>>>>>     months of code to save hundreds of thousands of
>>>>>     dollars/euros/pounds/yen is a wise investment IMO.
>>>>>
>>>>>     cheers,
>>>>>     Steve
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Diego del Blanco Orobitg
>>>>>     <diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.**com<diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.com>
>>>>>     <mailto:diego.delblanco.sakai@**gmail.com<diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.com>>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>         As a first stimation, without enter in real measurement we
>>>>>         calculated some time ago about three months, 2 people working
>>>>>         on it. Translating and obviously testing the sense of the
>>>>>         translations and the correct behaviour of each screen.  For
>>>>>         sakai real trained people that knows code and functionality
>>>>>         maybe a little less.
>>>>>
>>>>>         Diego del Blanco
>>>>>
>>>>>         El 26/06/2013 12:17, "Jean-Francois Leveque"
>>>>>         <jean-francois.leveque at upmc.fr
>>>>>         <mailto:jean-francois.leveque@**upmc.fr<jean-francois.leveque at upmc.fr>>>
>>>>> escribió:
>>>>>
>>>>>             Hi fellow translators,
>>>>>
>>>>>             While I've been involved in translating, I haven't been
>>>>>             involved in
>>>>>             measuring the amount of effort of the group doing the
>>>>>             French translation.
>>>>>
>>>>>             Do you have numbers that could help potential translators
>>>>>             who want to
>>>>>             plan a translation?
>>>>>
>>>>>             Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>>             Jean-François
>>>>>
>>>>
>
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