[WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
A claim made here about Duolingo and translating Wikipedia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367017 With 100,000 active users, von Ahn says Duolingo could translate Wikipedia from English into Spanish in five weeks. With one million users, it would take about 80 hours. Our article on Duolingo is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
PS. Forgot to say that this claim misses several points about how different language Wikipedias often have very different articles on the same topic (i.e. they are rarely direct translations if independent editing of the articles is being done). Also, I'm not clear if they are saying that this would be an improvement on machine or human translation or not. I think the claim is merely being used as an example of translating of a large amount of text relatively quickly using a form of crowdsourcing, rather than any intention to actually translate the articles, but maybe they do intend to do that? What I did wonder was whether the gaming approach reflects how things work on Wikipedia: Points are offered for each translation attempted; completing a round earns the user a shiny gold medal; and learners can follow each other, adding a competitive edge. Sound rather familiar... Carcharoth On 6/20/12, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: A claim made here about Duolingo and translating Wikipedia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367017 With 100,000 active users, von Ahn says Duolingo could translate Wikipedia from English into Spanish in five weeks. With one million users, it would take about 80 hours. Our article on Duolingo is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
And what's even worse, the very different templates used in each language version. 2012/6/20 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com PS. Forgot to say that this claim misses several points about how different language Wikipedias often have very different articles on the same topic (i.e. they are rarely direct translations if independent editing of the articles is being done). Also, I'm not clear if they are saying that this would be an improvement on machine or human translation or not. I think the claim is merely being used as an example of translating of a large amount of text relatively quickly using a form of crowdsourcing, rather than any intention to actually translate the articles, but maybe they do intend to do that? What I did wonder was whether the gaming approach reflects how things work on Wikipedia: Points are offered for each translation attempted; completing a round earns the user a shiny gold medal; and learners can follow each other, adding a competitive edge. Sound rather familiar... Carcharoth On 6/20/12, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: A claim made here about Duolingo and translating Wikipedia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367017 With 100,000 active users, von Ahn says Duolingo could translate Wikipedia from English into Spanish in five weeks. With one million users, it would take about 80 hours. Our article on Duolingo is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
On 20 June 2012 13:15, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: A claim made here about Duolingo and translating Wikipedia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367017 With 100,000 active users, von Ahn says Duolingo could translate Wikipedia from English into Spanish in five weeks. With one million users, it would take about 80 hours. See also Tom Morris's blog post on this: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/23789718674/duolingo-the-future-of-translation-for-wikipedia - there's some good notes in there about whether this sort of bitty translation is practicable, and how. One caveat that may be relevant to von Ahn's mention of Wikipedia: ...in the case of French, they are from the French version of Vikidia, a Wikipedia fork that’s basically a simple version of French Wikipedia intended for 8–13 year old children. There’s also Vikidia versions in Spanish and Italian. Sadly, Duolingo advertises these as being “Wikipedia” tasks rather than Vikidia tasks. There’s nothing wrong with translating non-Wikipedia articles, and it’s great that there is a more school-focussed version of French and Spanish Wikipedias, but it’s slightly deceptive to tell Duolingo users that they are doing a Wikipedia task when they aren’t. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
On 20 June 2012 13:22, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: One caveat that may be relevant to von Ahn's mention of Wikipedia: ...in the case of French, they are from the French version of Vikidia, a Wikipedia fork that’s basically a simple version of French Wikipedia intended for 8–13 year old children. There’s also Vikidia versions in Spanish and Italian. Sadly, Duolingo advertises these as being “Wikipedia” tasks rather than Vikidia tasks. There’s nothing wrong with translating non-Wikipedia articles, and it’s great that there is a more school-focussed version of French and Spanish Wikipedias, but it’s slightly deceptive to tell Duolingo users that they are doing a Wikipedia task when they aren’t. That's interesting. Why is such a fork apparently sustainable in French, Italian and Spanish but not in English? - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
On 20 June 2012 05:29, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 June 2012 13:22, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: One caveat that may be relevant to von Ahn's mention of Wikipedia: ...in the case of French, they are from the French version of Vikidia, a Wikipedia fork that’s basically a simple version of French Wikipedia intended for 8–13 year old children. There’s also Vikidia versions in Spanish and Italian. Sadly, Duolingo advertises these as being “Wikipedia” tasks rather than Vikidia tasks. There’s nothing wrong with translating non-Wikipedia articles, and it’s great that there is a more school-focussed version of French and Spanish Wikipedias, but it’s slightly deceptive to tell Duolingo users that they are doing a Wikipedia task when they aren’t. That's interesting. Why is such a fork apparently sustainable in French, Italian and Spanish but not in English? Because we run one already - Simple English? J. -- James D. Forrester jdforres...@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal capacity) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Duolingo and translating Wikipedia
On 20 June 2012 13:20, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: PS. Forgot to say that this claim misses several points about how different language Wikipedias often have very different articles on the same topic (i.e. they are rarely direct translations if independent editing of the articles is being done). Also, I'm not clear if they are saying that this would be an improvement on machine or human translation or not. I think the claim is merely being used as an example of translating of a large amount of text relatively quickly using a form of crowdsourcing, rather than any intention to actually translate the articles, but maybe they do intend to do that? Well, the other thing that is an issue with the Duolingo method is you'll end up with style continuity problems. If you translate sentences on their own, you end up not having a consistent style running through the article. In my blog post that Andrew Gray posted, I think I suggested what we could do with Duolingo if the people running it want to play ball: chuck articles in French, German and Spanish at it that don't have equivalents in English, and then have them stowed away in some kind of holding pen, perhaps an AfC like place where people can dip in, fix them up, add references and move them to mainspace. von Ahn is probably going a bit OTT in his claim, but it's potentially certainly a useful model. Even more useful would be English to other languages, and also once it stops just being the major languages like FR, ES, DE and PT. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
