Why are machine translations not allowed ?

@Claverhouse: Pity. Anything's better than nothingness. ...

2018-04-13T21:17:50-04:00

Pity. Anything's better than nothingness. Forever.

@BrokenEagle98: > tapnek said: > > I think that's even worse....

2018-04-08T23:46:02-04:00

tapnek said:

I think that's even worse. The result you're describing is something that looks right but is very likely to be actually wrong. Those who don't speak the language won't know any better while the those that do will be annoyed and probably retranslate the whole thing.

Agree... the machine translation of Google and other places can be helpful, and I use it somewhat myself, but I also have studied the grammar and how sentences are put together.

It'd be like putting a car together from all of its component parts without knowing how it all gets put together. You might end up with something that looks like a car (English), but you most likely won't achieve something that runs like a car (original intent).

@tapnek: > Vezral said: > > Though in all honesty, you...

2018-04-08T23:27:55-04:00

Vezral said:

Though in all honesty, you could've just machine translate -> proofread the English -> add note in Danbooru + add check translation tag, and no one would be none the wiser that you're using machine translation.

They would know you're bad, but no one's dedicated enough to check everything you machine translate.

I think that's even worse. The result you're describing is something that looks right but is very likely to be actually wrong. Those who don't speak the language won't know any better while the those that do will be annoyed and probably retranslate the whole thing.

@inkoalawetrust: Nevermind then i should just stick to uploading...

2018-04-08T23:17:45-04:00

Nevermind then i should just stick to uploading images and hoping they get approved and stop asking questions for things that don't really affect my experience with the site.

@Vezral: Though in all honesty, you could've just...

2018-04-08T19:34:13-04:00

Though in all honesty, you could've just machine translate -> proofread the English -> add note in Danbooru + add check translation tag, and no one would be none the wiser that you're using machine translation.

They would know you're bad, but no one's dedicated enough to check everything you machine translate.

Giving credit where it's due though, google translate is pretty good nowadays unless you intentionally pick artists with a tendency for super long / vague / meme text.

@user_525419: > kittey said: > > I get the feeling that...

2018-04-08T13:14:24-04:00

kittey said:

I get the feeling that those are rarely actually checked. If I had the choice between translating something currently untranslated or dealing with someone else’s translation that maybe doesn’t even indicate what needs to be checked, I’d probably go for the untranslated post.

Yeah, I see your point now.
It would probably lead to a flood of translations/commentaries that need to be checked and the amount would make it pretty much impossible to chek.

@BrokenEagle98: > kittey said: > > I get the feeling that...

2018-04-08T13:05:56-04:00

kittey said:

I get the feeling that those are rarely actually checked. If I had the choice between translating something currently untranslated or dealing with someone else’s translation that maybe doesn’t even indicate what needs to be checked, I’d probably go for the untranslated post.

I've had a somewhat modicum of success with that by not only adding that tag, but also adding a comment explaining what notes are causing me to add that tag (using note #), and any translation notes I have for those to include the kanji/katakana/hiragana and their believed meaning.

@kittey: > Provence said: > > Dunno about that. > I...

2018-04-08T12:59:37-04:00

Provence said:

Dunno about that.
I mean even if a post would have garbage translation, man-made or machine-made: Wouldn't this be covered by the check translation tag?

I get the feeling that those are rarely actually checked. If I had the choice between translating something currently untranslated or dealing with someone else’s translation that maybe doesn’t even indicate what needs to be checked, I’d probably go for the untranslated post.

@user_525419: > kittey said: > > There’s also the issue of...

2018-04-08T12:50:40-04:00

kittey said:

There’s also the issue of pre-empting proper translations: If there’s already a garbage machine translation on a post, a translator might pass up on it because it looks already translated. So in the end, the post would never get a proper translation and the “placeholder” would stay.

Dunno about that.
I mean even if a post would have garbage translation, man-made or machine-made: Wouldn't this be covered by the check translation tag?

@kittey: There’s also the issue of pre-empting proper...

2018-04-08T12:49:08-04:00

There’s also the issue of pre-empting proper translations: If there’s already a garbage machine translation on a post, a translator might pass up on it because it looks already translated. So in the end, the post would never get a proper translation and the “placeholder” would stay.

@Lynx190: > Danielx21 said: > > One additional point:...

2018-04-08T12:08:39-04:00

Danielx21 said:

One additional point: Naturally, if someone would like to see some machine translations even if they are complete garbage, that person can always use a translation tool himself/herself.

There's no need to display wrong translations for everyone else.

This is what always gets me when people try suggesting a bad translation is better than nothing. At least on Danbooru there's soft translations so it's not as much of an issue, but in other cases (games, manga, etc.) all it does is eliminate the original text that someone with even limited Japanese ability might have been able to use for better context while doing their own machine translation.

I still remember 15 years ago the frustration trying to communicate with a Frenchman online who insisted on running his messages to me through babelfish and leaving me with gibberish to try to interpret, I could not convince him to just send me French which I'd have a better shot at understanding and could use a dictionary on if needed

@user_525419: Even a language that is extremely close to...

2018-04-08T10:46:52-04:00

Even a language that is extremely close to English (-> Dutch, German) would be translated very bad into English with translation tool. Sentences have another structure and while you could figure out the sentence from German to English it's basically impossible if you try the same with Japanese. I saw it very often that the right translation depends on the context given and no machine can help there. I'd say even users with knowledge about both Jap. and Eng. language have to figure it out before as well.

So, a big no to display machine translations, even as a placeholder. And that no would even stay if the main language of uploads wouldn't be Japanese but Dutch or German.

@Danielx21: One additional point: Naturally, if someone...

2018-04-08T10:40:17-04:00

One additional point: Naturally, if someone would like to see some machine translations even if they are complete garbage, that person can always use a translation tool himself/herself.

There's no need to display wrong translations for everyone else.

@tapnek: > inkoalawetrust said: > > That's why i said...

2018-04-08T09:45:36-04:00

inkoalawetrust said:

That's why i said as a placeholder because it would be better than nothing and because there are around 355000 posts with no translation.

Meaning is very important when translating and machine translations are very bad at getting that across.

@nonamethanks: > inkoalawetrust said: > > That's why i said...

2018-04-08T09:40:51-04:00

inkoalawetrust said:

That's why i said as a placeholder because it would be better than nothing and because there are around 355000 posts with no translation.

But it wouldn't. In fact it could be much worse depending on the sentence, because it could show a completely opposite meaning. Danbooru prides itself for quality over quantity, I don't see why we would want to ruin translations, which is one of the things people appreciate the most about this site, by adding useless "placeholder" ones.

The biggest problems I can think of are the following:

having it done automatically is insane from a technical standpoint given how bad kanji recognition software is for anything that doesn't use standard microsoft fonts, and doesn't address the question of "what if the translation's complete garbage?"
if it's handled post by post by whoever wants to do it (kinda like tagging), you could argue that whichever user is in charge of machine translating a post could "tell" if a translation is worth keeping or not, but that means that the user already has a good grasp of the japanese language, so they could just translate it themselves without resorting to a machine translation - and that's not even considering that often it's HARD even for mid-level translators to tell what's going on with certain sentences due to how the japanese language is constructed.

@inkoalawetrust: > tapnek said: > > Or any language for that...

2018-04-08T09:18:29-04:00

tapnek said:

Or any language for that matter. You can get the gist of result but you're better off getting an actual translator.

nonamethanks said:

There's a number of reasons, but do we need any more than "Because they're wrong"? Machine translations don't work for Japanese.

That's why i said as a placeholder because it would be better than nothing and because there are around 355000 posts with no translation.

@tapnek: Or any language for that matter. You can get...

2018-04-08T09:01:00-04:00

Or any language for that matter. You can get the gist of result but you're better off getting an actual translator.

@nonamethanks: There's a number of reasons, but do we need any...

2018-04-08T08:17:25-04:00

There's a number of reasons, but do we need any more than "Because they're wrong"? Machine translations don't work for Japanese.

@inkoalawetrust: Why can't they be used as a default placeholder...

2018-04-08T08:04:07-04:00

Why can't they be used as a default placeholder translation until (Or if) someone who knows Japanese translates it ?