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Automatic Google Translate?

Automatic Google Translate?

posted on #1
Girard
Membre
Posts: 113
Joined: 31 mars 2015
Dick, we know you are overwhelmed with ideas and requests, so this is just my thinking out loud. I fully understand this probably can't happen soon. But here it goes.

I think we have a language barrier problem on Wikiloops, preventing some aspect of the community from developing socially.

Is it possible somehow to:

1>Read the current language variable from the session for the logged in user, in my case would be English.

2>Use some embedded translator to convert other languages to English on all pages. (If a user was logged in under German, all other languages would be converted to German for them), in all comments, shoutbox forum etc...

3>Use my language English as the language to translate FROM so that German speakers will see my messages in German automatically in the comments, shoutbox etc...

Those languages were just examples, basically we'd have an auto-detect for languages, and then the translation is done into the language of the logged in user. Basically a Star Trek translator.

Is this sort of thing possible yet? I feel like we must be somewhat close to that reality with advances in translation software, or Google may have a way to use the technology in a site like this...

Is this way crazy???

I feel like the most important benefit of doing this would be to bridge the social gap occurring between people who feel uncomfortable talking maybe because of the language gap or the inconvenience of having to visit Google Translate for every comment in every conversation.

Just thinking out loud, we know how that usually ends lol. Thanks Dick!!!!

P.S. I guess there is room for misunderstandings and humor, but that is already the case by manually doing the Google Translate.
posted on #2
Dick Supporter
Posts: 2843
Joined: 30 déc. 2010
There is several things to take into account here:
fist of all, I would not go ahead and auto translate things if the user has not requested that - language detection may serve wrong results, and anyone able to read the original language should not get forced translation because of geolocation.
Secondly, I do have strong doubts about the quality of translation automatisms, I know they are improving, but to rely on them is still quite dangerous IMO.

Then again, one has to look at the price of such services. Even if they may be labeled "free", that doesn't mean they don't cost anything. Especially our friends at google are excellent at phishing user data in return for free services, and I decided against changing the wikiloops data privacy policy to match googles requirements, so embedding any google code is out of bounds.

What might be possible is to provide a "translate" link on top of each comment, that would lead to opening a new tab with the comment text pasted into some translators input field, if that is possible, that might be an improvement.
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posted on #3
Girard
Membre
Posts: 113
Joined: 31 mars 2015
Oh yeah your suggestion would go a long way! Thank you Dick for taking the time to explain all of this, and for the possible compromise.
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