Topic: Tag Alias: translation_check -> translation_request

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

Aliasing translation_check → translation_request
Link to alias

Reason:

Same as partially_translated, this gives no extra information, but as I'm finding more and more, does serve as a flag that someone has done something wrong. We all screw up, and no supposedly completed piece of translation work wouldn't do well to be reviewed by another competent person to check for forehead-slappers or general agreeability. But if you know what you're doing, you shouldn't feel especially compelled to point out the need for review. And if you don't know what you're doing, chances are you're not helping anything at all with your efforts. This tag solely occupies the non-existent space in between those points. I'm almost done eliminating it now, but it would be better if it weren't encouraged in the future. When you have an image with a handful of notes already on it, it's slightly annoying keeping track of which ones you still need to fix that make no sense, and which ones you've already gotten to.

EDIT: The tag alias translation_check -> translation_request (forum #248273) has been rejected by @Millcore.

Updated by auto moderator

That's exactly what I'm saying. Lots of posts currently are tagged with both translated and translation_check. That should never happen. And if you're going to say translation_check in the first place, all you're really saying to begin with is translation_request, i.e., "I have not translated this. Someone else please do so." And worse yet, some of those posts were ones that had zero notes on them, where someone had written in the description "see the parent post for the translation." I'm saying that, in an ideal world, every single translation ever done by anyone ever needs double checking. But the only people generally using the check tag are the ones who're either doing machine translation, which is worthless, or randomly making things up, which is even more unproductive. To optimize our extremely limited resources, there can't be room for saying "I have no clue what I'm doing but that's better than having done nothing." We're in a situation where your skill level is either such that you don't need to call special attention to probable flaws, or you really aren't providing any value for your effort. Binary. No need for in-between tags.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

notnobody said:
That's exactly what I'm saying. Lots of posts currently are tagged with both translated and translation_check. That should never happen.

I don't get what you're saying.
If it's not translated, then there's no translation to be checked. Translation_check can only be applied to translated posts.

If it's getting mistagged for posts that haven't been translated, report the tagger(s).

Updated by anonymous

What I'm saying is - if you're fluent in both the source and destination languages of a post that you're translating, you should do the work and transition it from translation_request to translated, with no special request for a check, on the assumption that as a competent translator, your work bears no more need for review than a baseline measure of sanity. On the other hand, if you aren't fluent in one or both of those languages, you should never be tagging that transition ever. If your skills are such that you can't confidently claim that you've finished the work without special need for review, you should leave the translation_request tag in place so that it gets reviewed when someone reaches it in the queue. There's no point to creating a gray area, because only the negative holds meaning. That is to say - translation_request does affirm that something needs to be looked at, whether or not someone's made an attempt to work on it, success or fail. But if we don't hold tagging translated to a standard, that tag does not equally tell people looking to find translated works that they'll find that. It only tells them that they'll find works people have written some notes on, with no bearing on whether those are actual translations. In that sense, translation_check degenerates to "I should not have changed this to translated from translation_request because I cannot certify that I have satisfied this request. Someone else please do it" - or, in other words - translation_request.

Edit: I take one thing back. It doesn't even tell them there'll be notes. I encountered like eight posts where someone tagged translated because even though there were no notes at all, some other totally separate post was a hard-translated (and yet different in content) version of the same image.

Updated by anonymous

notnobody said:
What I'm saying is - if you're fluent in both the source and destination languages of a post that you're translating, you should do the work and transition it from translation_request to translated, with no special request for a check, on the assumption that as a competent translator, your work bears no more need for review than a baseline measure of sanity. On the other hand, if you aren't fluent in one or both of those languages, you should never be tagging that transition ever. If your skills are such that you can't confidently claim that you've finished the work without special need for review, you should leave the translation_request tag in place so that it gets reviewed when someone reaches it in the queue. There's no point to creating a gray area, because only the negative holds meaning. That is to say - translation_request does affirm that something needs to be looked at, whether or not someone's made an attempt to work on it, success or fail. But if we don't hold tagging translated to a standard, that tag does not equally tell people looking to find translated works that they'll find that. It only tells them that they'll find works people have written some notes on, with no bearing on whether those are actual translations. In that sense, translation_check degenerates to "I should not have changed this to translated from translation_request because I cannot certify that I have satisfied this request. Someone else please do it" - or, in other words - translation_request.

That's not how things work. At all. People willing to put forth effort put forth effort. Sometimes, they're wrong. Sometimes, they're right. Especially when you're freshly learning something, the more effort you put into participating in using (or translating) it, the more fluent you become.
What you're suggesting, that they don't bother at all, would result in the stagnation of multilingual practices.

Updated by anonymous

I'm suggesting that people try and work if they want to, but not claim that they've finished the work if they can't do it.

It would be akin to taking your car to some random unqualified person for a state inspection and asking them for tags. If they "were learning a lot about cars," maybe at best they could tell you what to expect to need to do before getting it certified, but you wouldn't expect to get the actual inspection stickers until you took it to someone who definitely knew what they were doing.

I'm not sure how adding incorrectly translated text as notes to a post helps anyone learn. It would be way more interactive and helpful to do that in a forum post or something, where those of us with some some time could talk about it with you. I love talking about language. I'd be super in to doing an ongoing post about the linguistics of translation and stuff. You won't learn much by spitfiring words into notes and then declaring posts finished, though. All I'm saying is, there's only one point to those two tags, and it's to mark whether a post is or is not done being translated, and if it's wildly wrong, which is super common for learners making attempts, it's not finished, and I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't initially even realize the check request existed. I just kept running across really inexplicable notes. Language learning rules, but that's not a way to help with it, and it's only making some tasks harder.

Updated by anonymous

notnobody said:
I'm suggesting that people try and work if they want to, but not claim that they've finished the work if they can't do it.

It would be akin to taking your car to some random unqualified person for a state inspection and asking them for tags. If they "were learning a lot about cars," maybe at best they could tell you what to expect to need to do before getting it certified, but you wouldn't expect to get the actual inspection stickers until you took it to someone who definitely knew what they were doing.

Why yes, that's exactly correct. And it's also the opposite of what you're suggesting here: A person who lacks the proper qualifications should be saying they lack the qualifications. Otherwise you, as the person bringing your car in, think "oh hey they're qualified, so it's all good! I'll mark that as done now." Similarly, people see the translation request tag and notes on the image, and because there'd be no tag to say "I'm not super sure on these translations" (that is, translation_check), people think they're good and finished.

I'm not sure how adding incorrectly translated text as notes to a post helps anyone learn. It would be way more interactive and helpful to do that in a forum post or something, where those of us with some some time could talk about it with you. I love talking about language. I'd be super in to doing an ongoing post about the linguistics of translation and stuff. You won't learn much by spitfiring words into notes and then declaring posts finished, though. All I'm saying is, there's only one point to those two tags, and it's to mark whether a post is or is not done being translated, and if it's wildly wrong, which is super common for learners making attempts, it's not finished, and I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't initially even realize the check request existed. I just kept running across really inexplicable notes. Language learning rules, but that's not a way to help with it, and it's only making some tasks harder.

Not everybody hangs around in all places. If you're using forums to talk it over, people don't ever see it in the first place. Less people see it in blips. If you're using comments, people see it, sure, and go "Looks good to me!" and just throw it on despite being less qualified to say it's right.

Updated by anonymous

I'm saying that if you write notes on an image, wrong or right, and then post a comment saying you don't know what you're doing, how does that help you learn? That's no different from trying to get better at darts by closing your eyes, throwing a handful of darts in a random direction, and then walking away forever. Your purpose of trying to learn why what you did was right or wrong and how isn't served by doing it. If you just feel like writing notes, then whatever, but if you're more interested in learning, you're much better served by asking people you have access to for help - especially if those people are interested in working on it with you. Notes are no place for that. It just isn't the vehicle for the intent.

Updated by anonymous

notnobody said:
I'm saying that if you write notes on an image, wrong or right, and then post a comment saying you don't know what you're doing, how does that help you learn? That's no different from trying to get better at darts by closing your eyes, throwing a handful of darts in a random direction, and then walking away forever. Your purpose of trying to learn why what you did was right or wrong and how isn't served by doing it. If you just feel like writing notes, then whatever, but if you're more interested in learning, you're much better served by asking people you have access to for help - especially if those people are interested in working on it with you. Notes are no place for that. It just isn't the vehicle for the intent.

Wow, such cynicism. The purpose of the tag is so that the people who do check it can tell you what you did wrong. Creating a comment on top of adding the tag helps increase the likelyhood of them doing so, but creating a comment without adding notes will only lead to confusion.
To correct the metaphor, it's like throwing darts and then asking the people there how to improve. When it comes to tags, you may not get such an immediate answer, but it's definitely comparable.

Updated by anonymous

It's not cynicism; It's an observation of the resources we have here. Near as I can tell, there're four of us here who speak Japanese in particular fluently. How often do you think any of us are making an effort to search through the hundreds of thousands of notes here to see whether they're all the same thing we would've written if we'd done it ourselves? And when it does happen, do you expect us to DM whoever originally wrote it to explain the difference? That happens zero times. So who do you thing you're asking how to improve by doing that? All you're doing is writing maybe right but maybe wrong notes, and either getting feedback from nobody ever, or based on some random selection of comments I've looked at over time, from people who can't help you anyway.

Updated by anonymous

notnobody said:
It's not cynicism; It's an observation of the resources we have here. Near as I can tell, there're four of us here who speak Japanese in particular fluently. How often do you think any of us are making an effort to search through the hundreds of thousands of notes here to see whether they're all the same thing we would've written if we'd done it ourselves? And when it does happen, do you expect us to DM whoever originally wrote it to explain the difference? That happens zero times. So who do you thing you're asking how to improve by doing that? All you're doing is writing maybe right but maybe wrong notes, and either getting feedback from nobody ever, or based on some random selection of comments I've looked at over time, from people who can't help you anyway.

Actually, I have gotten some responses. If you don't have the time, that's fine, but again, you're not everybody. Different people behave in different ways.

Updated by anonymous

Honestly, most of the reason I never message people about things they previously did is to avoid sounding like a dick. Someone wrote something they either thought they were right about or knew they were stabbing in the dark at, and either way I'm not about to just message them getting all pedantic about why they were wrong. I'd respond if I got questions in messages, but that's because it would clearly be someone looking to talk about it - totally different from me just pushing potentially unwanted info at someone. Like the difference between walking up to someone at the gym and telling them their form is bad versus answering questions someone comes up and asks you. I've had the urge to say something about some particularly egregious ones, but I just throw my hands up and move on.

Updated by anonymous

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