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As someone who’s done a fair bit of translation on Twitter’s crowdsourced translation dealio (https://translate.twitter.com/ https://translate.twitter.com/), I

As someone who’s done a fair bit of translation on Twitter’s crowdsourced translation dealio (https://translate.twitter.com/ https://translate.twitter.com/), I can say that Twitter’s deliberately ambiguous use of language (for various reasons, e.g., as here, avoiding any explicit specification of tense, as well as of gender, number, &c.) can be very difficult to parse in a precise and accurate manner, especially without enough context.

stfu 13y ago
I was wondering ... what exactly motivated you to dedicate time and effort towards improving the service of a $US10 billion valuated company for free? I'm not trying to be sparky or anything, it just baffles me. Is there any reward structure in place or interactions with other translators?
- BoyWizard 13y ago
  Translation is one of those things where crowdsourcing makes sense - there's not always a 'right' way to translate a particular phrase, so a consensus between multiple people helps.
  - cleis 13y ago
    Agreed. Although in my experience it can go badly wrong... http://opensignal.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-apology-to-our-korean-users/ http://opensignal.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-apology-to-our-kore...
    - eridius 13y ago
      Wow, some people are really immature. Although this seems like a good example of why, when crowdsourcing translations, you want to get multiple people doing the same language so you can compare their results.
      - corin_ 13y ago
        > Wow, some people are really immature. One man's immature is another man's hilarious. In this case I side with you, but I'm pretty sure if they'd come up with something wittier than "All Koreans are stupid" I could find myself laughing at it.
        eridius 13y ago
        I think that, regardless of what they write, intentionally defacing someone else's site, especially in a way that they're unlikely to be able to easily detect, is rather immature.
    - BoyWizard 13y ago
      Wait... they crowdsourced the translation of their Terms and Conditions? That seems like, I don't know, a bad idea. For user content or interfaces sure, but T&Cs are essentially a legal document.
- cead_ite 13y ago
  Well, mine’s the case of a minority language (Irish) where, even on the off chance that some professional outfit were paid to do the translation, it’d more than likely be of very low quality. Basically either (a) it wouldn’t get done or (b) it’d be really bad, so in the end I’d rather just do it myself, even for free.

stfu 13y ago

I was wondering ... what exactly motivated you to dedicate time and effort towards improving the service of a $US10 billion valuated company for free? I'm not trying to be sparky or anything, it just baffles me. Is there any reward structure in place or interactions with other translators?

BoyWizard 13y ago
Translation is one of those things where crowdsourcing makes sense - there's not always a 'right' way to translate a particular phrase, so a consensus between multiple people helps.
- cleis 13y ago
  Agreed. Although in my experience it can go badly wrong... http://opensignal.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-apology-to-our-korean-users/ http://opensignal.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-apology-to-our-kore...
  - eridius 13y ago
    Wow, some people are really immature. Although this seems like a good example of why, when crowdsourcing translations, you want to get multiple people doing the same language so you can compare their results.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      > Wow, some people are really immature. One man's immature is another man's hilarious. In this case I side with you, but I'm pretty sure if they'd come up with something wittier than "All Koreans are stupid" I could find myself laughing at it.
      - eridius 13y ago
        I think that, regardless of what they write, intentionally defacing someone else's site, especially in a way that they're unlikely to be able to easily detect, is rather immature.
  - BoyWizard 13y ago
    Wait... they crowdsourced the translation of their Terms and Conditions? That seems like, I don't know, a bad idea. For user content or interfaces sure, but T&Cs are essentially a legal document.
cead_ite 13y ago
Well, mine’s the case of a minority language (Irish) where, even on the off chance that some professional outfit were paid to do the translation, it’d more than likely be of very low quality. Basically either (a) it wouldn’t get done or (b) it’d be really bad, so in the end I’d rather just do it myself, even for free.