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Glossary-building KudoZ (GBK): a new kind of KudoZ question
Thread poster: Enrique Cavalitto
slothm
slothm  Identity Verified
Local time: 09:24
English to Spanish
+ ...
Context and Wikipedia. Nov 26, 2008

1.- I agree with Mirra_. A clear context is vital for a correct translation.
2.- I disagree with Reino. Info provided by Wikipedia sometimes can be very dangerous to use. For highly technical translations, Wikipedia should not be consulted.

Regards.


 
Mats Wiman
Mats Wiman  Identity Verified
Sweden
Local time: 13:24
Member (2000)
German to Swedish
+ ...
In memoriam
English > Swedish???????????????? Nov 27, 2008

To comment, one needs to experience it.

Where is the above pair to be found?

Mats


 
R. Alex Jenkins
R. Alex Jenkins  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 09:24
Member (2006)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Some more information required, please... Nov 27, 2008

Well first of all, YEHAAAW, DARN GOOD IDEA !!!

It's early days, but this innovation is surely going to improve on a number of basic flaws present in the current kudoz system, such as: -

#1: Avoiding answers being chosen with net peer DISAGREES. I once had an answer that gained +6 peer agrees, for example, but an answer with -3 agrees was actually chosen. I know it was just a kudoz question, but this made me so angry at the time. The answer chosen was simply WRONG!
... See more
Well first of all, YEHAAAW, DARN GOOD IDEA !!!

It's early days, but this innovation is surely going to improve on a number of basic flaws present in the current kudoz system, such as: -

#1: Avoiding answers being chosen with net peer DISAGREES. I once had an answer that gained +6 peer agrees, for example, but an answer with -3 agrees was actually chosen. I know it was just a kudoz question, but this made me so angry at the time. The answer chosen was simply WRONG!

#2: Helping to limit the 'scatter-gun' approach. People who simply have a guess at EVERY question, in some form or other, right or wrong, knowing that statistically they will get awarded points over time. I admit to fully having a 'guess' at many questions in the past, but a wiser head tells me to refrain from this mass-marketing activity, although not to cut down on kudoz altogether.

It's a good idea, so well done to Proz staff on getting this implemented at this stage

Could I ask a question or two to the MODS or site staff, please?

When will these questions be available in the PT to EN pair? Thus far, I have seen none.

Will we get email notifications about these questions, similar to the current Kudoz system?

Keep it rolling,
Richard.





[Edited at 2008-11-27 16:15 GMT]
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Reino Havbrandt (X)
Reino Havbrandt (X)
Sweden
Local time: 13:24
Finnish to Swedish
+ ...
Punto Nov 28, 2008

I think that this discussion could be finsihed an concluded with the same line as it started. I quote from Enriques first posting:

"KudoZ is a term help network. A person in need of translation assistance posts a term or phrase, and in response, others suggest translations. The asker selects the most helpful response (and awards points for it).

The main goal of the system is to provide those in need of translation assistance with timely help. The fact that an archive of
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I think that this discussion could be finsihed an concluded with the same line as it started. I quote from Enriques first posting:

"KudoZ is a term help network. A person in need of translation assistance posts a term or phrase, and in response, others suggest translations. The asker selects the most helpful response (and awards points for it).

The main goal of the system is to provide those in need of translation assistance with timely help. The fact that an archive of previously posted terms with suggested translations has been built is a planned, yet peripheral, benefit."

Period. Punkt. Full stop. Punto. Point. Piste. Thats all there is to it.
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Reino Havbrandt (X)
Reino Havbrandt (X)
Sweden
Local time: 13:24
Finnish to Swedish
+ ...
Internet and Wikipedia Nov 28, 2008

[quote]slothm wrote:

2.- I disagree with Reino. Info provided by Wikipedia sometimes can be very dangerous to use. For highly technical translations, Wikipedia should not be consulted.

Reinos comment:

I do "highly technical translations". Mainly based on my engineering knowledge, and reliable databases, like TNC-term. But, all sources, even Internet searches, Wikipedia and the KudoZ archives, used with discretion, are potentially valuable sources. I have found Wikipedia very useful in many cases. But, as it is built pro bono by users, it is of course not 100 % reliable, which is true for all Internet resources. And the same applies to the GBK project; if it is developed by a translators community without quality check from proffessional staff, it will not be of better quality than Wikipedia.


 
Craig Meulen
Craig Meulen  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:24
German to English
Flaw in the system Nov 29, 2008

The primary purpose of this new question type is to enable the ProZ.com community to together find the best translation of a given term into a given language,


I'm surprised - this is a network of professional translators, and if there is one thing I have learnt in my career as a professional translator and language teacher, it is this:

There is no ONE best translation. CONTEXT is EVERYTHING !!

That's where KudoZ, despite its disadvantages and the abuses of the system, provides a valuable supplement to a good dictionary - we see the words in context and have a range of answers from a range of translators with a range of experiences of the language.

The final selection is mine. I don't need anyone who purports to choose the 'best' translation in advance.

This new glossary system will have no advantages for anyone who already possesses a good dictionary, and that should be everyone reading this.


 
writeaway
writeaway  Identity Verified
French to English
+ ...
Hear hear! Nov 29, 2008

Craig Meulen wrote:

The primary purpose of this new question type is to enable the ProZ.com community to together find the best translation of a given term into a given language,


I'm surprised - this is a network of professional translators, and if there is one thing I have learnt in my career as a professional translator and language teacher, it is this:

There is no ONE best translation. CONTEXT is EVERYTHING !!

That's where KudoZ, despite its disadvantages and the abuses of the system, provides a valuable supplement to a good dictionary - we see the words in context and have a range of answers from a range of translators with a range of experiences of the language.

The final selection is mine. I don't need anyone who purports to choose the 'best' translation in advance.

This new glossary system will have no advantages for anyone who already possesses a good dictionary, and that should be everyone reading this.


Couldn't agree more.


 
Textklick
Textklick  Identity Verified
Local time: 12:24
German to English
+ ...
In memoriam
Agree Nov 29, 2008

writeaway wrote:

Craig Meulen wrote:

The primary purpose of this new question type is to enable the ProZ.com community to together find the best translation of a given term into a given language,


I'm surprised - this is a network of professional translators, and if there is one thing I have learnt in my career as a professional translator and language teacher, it is this:

There is no ONE best translation. CONTEXT is EVERYTHING !!

That's where KudoZ, despite its disadvantages and the abuses of the system, provides a valuable supplement to a good dictionary - we see the words in context and have a range of answers from a range of translators with a range of experiences of the language.

The final selection is mine. I don't need anyone who purports to choose the 'best' translation in advance.

This new glossary system will have no advantages for anyone who already possesses a good dictionary, and that should be everyone reading this.


Couldn't agree more.


I agree with Craig, Writeaway (and indeed to whatever extent it is relevant/appropriate to concur with Siegfried's points further back in this thread.) IMHO, GBK may well be a "separate project", but is it indeed a separate issue in terms of the needs of translators?


 
Enrique Cavalitto
Enrique Cavalitto  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 09:24
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
How GBK works Nov 29, 2008

Craig Meulen wrote:

That's where KudoZ, despite its disadvantages and the abuses of the system, provides a valuable supplement to a good dictionary - we see the words in context and have a range of answers from a range of translators with a range of experiences of the language.

The final selection is mine. I don't need anyone who purports to choose the 'best' translation in advance.


The classic "help" KudoZ system receives one or more answers to a given question, provides a way of selecting the one the asker considered most helpful and then an entry is made in the KudoZ open glossary. When you do a glossary search you find the term, visit the question and have access to all the alternatives suggested and to all exchanges about them.

In the case of GBK questions it is the community of specialist who selects a "best" answer by means of peer grading. The corresponding term is entered in the GBK glossary and, when you find the term later, you still have access to the original question and all suggestions and discussions. To do so you only need to click on "Related KudoZ question". So you can still make your own decision.

Regards,
Enrique


 
Stéphanie Soudais
Stéphanie Soudais  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 13:24
English to French
Don't like it either Nov 30, 2008

As a Kudoz "addict" (both asking and answering), I must say that I don't really see the point of these questions, and will probably never participate. Simply because no interraction is possible with the "asker" and no specific context is provided.

So I am quite sure that the same questions will be asked in the future by askers saying something like "I know the answer is already in the glossary, but as there was no context, I don't know if this answer really fits in my case".
<
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As a Kudoz "addict" (both asking and answering), I must say that I don't really see the point of these questions, and will probably never participate. Simply because no interraction is possible with the "asker" and no specific context is provided.

So I am quite sure that the same questions will be asked in the future by askers saying something like "I know the answer is already in the glossary, but as there was no context, I don't know if this answer really fits in my case".

Personally I would be more interested in enhancing/cleaning the actual Glossary, e.g., editing all the "term A -> cf below" entries, suppressing all duplicates, and so much more.

Stéphanie
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Reino Havbrandt (X)
Reino Havbrandt (X)
Sweden
Local time: 13:24
Finnish to Swedish
+ ...
Why the GBK do not fit into Eng>Swe Nov 30, 2008

"Also, the first GBK questions have been pulled in the pairs:

  • English to Spanish
  • English to French
  • English to Portuguese
  • English to Polish
  • English to Swedish
"

Comment:
Please remove the questions from the pair English to Swedish.
See also my explanation in Swedish above.
My arguments in a nutshell:
1) It has no chance to work in this language pair

2) The questions so far are stupi
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"Also, the first GBK questions have been pulled in the pairs:

  • English to Spanish
  • English to French
  • English to Portuguese
  • English to Polish
  • English to Swedish
"

Comment:
Please remove the questions from the pair English to Swedish.
See also my explanation in Swedish above.
My arguments in a nutshell:
1) It has no chance to work in this language pair

2) The questions so far are stupid; ether they are so odd that no translator ever will encounter them, or else they are easy to find in other sources on the net.
3) To overflow our language pair with stupid questions makes it harder to find the real questions, and browsing gets slower.
4)
Nationalencyklopedin:
• 525 000 articles:
• 190 000 encyclopaedic articles
• 63 000 short art
Eng Wikipedia: 2 000 000 articles
Swe Wikipedia: 298 580 articles
3*360=1080 questions per year; to even get close to a result, you would need around 50 000 entries, which would take 50 years!
Answering time: 10 minutes/question+10 minutes for peer comments=>3 questions per hour > 330 hours/year. We have 25 answerers during last 3 month over 8 points, that would be 13 hours/year per person if equally divided workload. Unfortunately 80/20 applies, so 20 % of the people answer 80 % of the questions.

Another approach of describing the enormous volume: 50 000/3= 16 000 hours, if 10 of our best answerers would work *full time*, we could make this glossary in 9 months!
In Sweden we have Nationalencyklopedin, TNC and Datatermgruppen. To make something better than there already is, on a pro bono basis, is a dream (=nightmare).
Just translating Eurodicautom took several years to accomplish, by a number of workgroups and experts.
Quality aspects
If you disregard the enormous work volume, which already makes the project totally impossible, and focus on the quality: There are two kinds of main quality groups for glossaries:
1) Glossaries created by professional (paid) work by publishers (Engstrom technical dictionary), government supported bodies (TNC) and European Union supported glossaries (IATE). They are relatively reliable, as there are purpose, management and quality control involved. Even so, we all know, that these sources should be used with discretion, as context may vary, and there might be mistakes even in such glossaries.
2) Glossaries created by volunteers (without payment), e.g. Wikipedia. Despite its flaws, I would say that there is no better pro bono translator source than using Swedish/English wikipedia. Of course you have to be careful using things you find on the net that goes without saying.

Another example is KudoZ that builds on real problems from the real world of translator's everyday work. The value of KudoZ is the discussions, and that it is not an artificial collection of terminology. I would hate to see that approach destroyed.

Could the GB glossary be of better quality than Wikipedia?
Of course not, as answers are given by whomever, without knowing the persons references and background, and peer agrees also. And there would be an automatic bot that chooses the best answer based on number of agrees! The answers could be very good and correct, or in some cases worth nothing or directly misleading. All of us KudoZ freaks have seen that happen.

The conclusion is, that the quality of this GB glossary would not be better than Wikipedia.

So, please, staff, stop the at least the GB Eng>>Swe questions, we just don't have time or resources to deal with it.
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R. Alex Jenkins
R. Alex Jenkins  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 09:24
Member (2006)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Let's be more positive, shall we? Nov 30, 2008



So, please, staff, stop the at least the GB Eng>>Swe questions, we just don't have time or resources to deal with it.


I have to disagree.
If the GBK system doesn't seem at all useful then simply don't use it or participate in it.

Any way of improving the overall quality of the already in existence Proz Glossary, to me, seems like a good idea. I feel positive about it as a way of improving or, at the very least, experimenting with the structure of the current Kudoz system, which has many flaws.


 
Mary Georgina Hardinge
Mary Georgina Hardinge  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 13:24
links Dec 1, 2008

Copy-pasted links did not seem to be accepted when I tried posting an answer so I eventually gave up and posted a discussion message instead. Actually, I was quite happy about that because I think there is no one good translation for the term in question (as with so many others, it depends very much on the context) and also because you seem to think that the only valid sources are on the web, whereas quite a lot of reasonably accurate reference works have actually been published in print format ... See more
Copy-pasted links did not seem to be accepted when I tried posting an answer so I eventually gave up and posted a discussion message instead. Actually, I was quite happy about that because I think there is no one good translation for the term in question (as with so many others, it depends very much on the context) and also because you seem to think that the only valid sources are on the web, whereas quite a lot of reasonably accurate reference works have actually been published in print format over the years!Collapse


 
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Glossary-building KudoZ (GBK): a new kind of KudoZ question






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