7 ms·

Reading between the lines, it seems obvious that Mozilla wishes to stop funding localization. Translations aren't even that expensive, especially relative to t

Reading between the lines, it seems obvious that Mozilla wishes to stop funding localization. Translations aren't even that expensive, especially relative to the cost of producing the docs in the first place. It hurts me to see MDN so starved of resources that they can't pay for even that small piece. MDN has been key to so many people's technical education. High-quality web documentation is an essential resource for those looking to elevate themselves into a technical career these days. Much of the world (20%, according to their own research) is set to lose access to this vital body of knowledge.

dmos62 6y ago
We shouldn't discount volunteer translations. Won't the new platform support that?
- pianoben 6y ago
  I don't doubt that the Github-based CMS will allow for community-provided translations. I _do_ doubt that we'll see anything like the current set of languages covered at anything like the current levels of breadth and quality. Like I said in another comment, approximately nobody translates technical documentation for fun.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    A surprising amount of mediawiki documentation is translated by volunteers (i cant speak to the quality as i dont speak nonenglish, realistically the english source material isnt that great) but volunteers do translate things
    - rhizome 6y ago
      Perhaps interestingly, I had a frustration in the other direction just last night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Soria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Soria https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincia_de_Soria https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincia_de_Soria Notice that the English page seems obviously translated by a non-native speaker, which has some implications not favorable to Mozilla's behavior here, specifically that ESL people will contribute documentation in English that native English-language speakers won't even provide for themselves.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        Wikipedia translations are a bit different because they are not meant to be 1:1. The translations in theory are entirely separate articles. I was thinking more like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download vs https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download/es https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download/es
- pavon 6y ago
  I think that storing the localized content in separate flat HTML files makes it very difficult to maintain translations, as the article points out. Ideally, you would have a master document in which some parts are shared across all translations (like the layout, the actual terms in the spec, browser compatibility information, etc), while other parts were localizable (like the field descriptions). Then when content was added/changed, it would be clear which parts of the translations needed updating, and you could either flag them as such for volunteers, or use machine translation as a stop-gap, or both. With the architecture they described, however, your options are either to make the translations completely independent or to make translations completely machine translated, neither of which is a good solution.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    It's quite telling already that they basically admit that mixing markup and content as tightly as that is problematic. I mean I don't think it's actually that big of a deal as long as they stick to basic HTML markup (paragraphs, bold/italics, etc), but you're already running into problems when you add links. Not having multi-language support as a first-class citizen is a step backwards IMO. Especially considering the world is still getting connected at an enormous rate.
    - afiori 6y ago
      Multi-language support has the inherent problem that is requires effort linearly in the number of languages. Wearing a hopeful hat this new architecture would only require an effort "linear" to the error rate of the machine translations. Personally I had some very good experiences with some translators, and it could work even better if Mozilla manages to tune and train them properly. (Like making so that manual fixes improve the algorithm)
0-O-0 6y ago
Did they actually fund localisations? I'm unfamiliar with their process, but this article game me an impression that it was completely community driven.
- pianoben 6y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Approximately nobody translates technical documentation for fun, much less at such a high level. The article is pretty clear that the number of languages supported is a business decision.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Wikimedia/Wikipedia show that people do translate for fun (I do it myself on the wiki software website), so I'm not sure how you have that blindspot. Your comment is the same as people who saw the launch of Wikipedia and wondered who could possibly write articles and find citations for fun. Hell, who would write hundreds of thousands of wiki articles about The Elder Scrolls universe for fun? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page
    - trynewideas 6y ago
      > Hell, who would write hundreds of thousands of wiki articles about The Elder Scrolls universe for fun? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page 70k articles, not hundreds of thousands,[1] and of those 70k fewer than 1/3 are translated to any other language. And speaking as someone who was a system and content admin for a MediaWiki-powered fiction wiki of about 15k articles... there are not many people relative to the amount of content who are actually interested in contributing anything, much less improving or maintaining what's already there. It's a very, very small core of contributors. Toward your example, the 161 "active" users[2] (meaning any number of edits in the last 30 days) as of today on English UESP combined for 5,974 edits in that span. Of those edits, 4,779 were from 13 users. 3,039 — more than half of the last month's activity — were from the top 5 users. On the non-English UESPs? No active users in Portuguese, one in Italian, none in Arabic.[3][4][5] From my experience at least, it's because it's work — fun work, at times, but still work. Translating MDN content is also work. Doing _any_ documentation of _anything_ is work. Hell, I burned out on fiction documentation work before I burned out on paid work. Some people do enjoy it! But voluntary documentation is still going to attract a small, specific core group of consistent contributors (if it attracts any at all). [1] https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:Statistics https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:Statistics [2] https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Special:ActiveUsers&offset=&limit=500 https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Special:ActiveUsers&of... [3] https://pt.uesp.net/wiki/Especial:Utilizadores_activos https://pt.uesp.net/wiki/Especial:Utilizadores_activos [4] https://it.uesp.net/wiki/Speciale:UtentiAttivi https://it.uesp.net/wiki/Speciale:UtentiAttivi [5] https://ar.uesp.net/wiki/%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5:%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%88%D9%86_%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B7%D9%88%D9%86 https://ar.uesp.net/wiki/%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5:%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%...
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
If the text is in github, you can download it, backup, make an iso and share on piratebay, it won't be lost.
- pianoben 6y ago
  The concern I'm trying to express is that the translations of this content will grow increasingly stale as the original articles are updated, and will be missing entirely for new articles. People who don't speak or read one of the top 12 languages will just be out of luck, unless some generous soul decides to do that substantial amount of work for free.
  - afiori 6y ago
    As far as I understand Mozilla's point is that this is already happening. I agree that stuff like the UI should still be localized manually.
emilecantin 6y ago
From TFA: > Note: In addition, the text of the UI components and header menu will be in English only, going forward. They will not be translated, at least not initially. But that's the easiest part! I understand the part about translations becoming stale, and how it's hard to manage, but honestly, translating a UI isn't that hard. I think a good recipe to get better translations is: - Don't treat it as an aftertought. Co-locate the en-US assets with the translated versions, that way your contributors actually see that there are other languages to support. Each page on the MDN website should be a folder containing a file for each language. - If a translation is out-of-date, link to these more recent languages, and offer an auto-translated version in the meantime. Importantly, let the user switch between the automatic translation and the manual one. Also, make it obvious how they can contribute.
firexcy 6y ago
Idk, but ESL speaker as I myself is, I don’t think localizations are that important for technical writings, where few grammar or rhetoric is concerned, and technical terms can simply be seen as “tokens” that can be represented in any language as long as you can identify their “shapes.” Therefore, if you are among the targeted reader group, that the documentation is not in your mother tongue is unlikely to discourage you from reading it. On the other hand, if you are not comfortable with reading technical descriptions generally, having a localized version will not help much either.

dmos62 6y ago

We shouldn't discount volunteer translations. Won't the new platform support that?

pianoben 6y ago
I don't doubt that the Github-based CMS will allow for community-provided translations. I _do_ doubt that we'll see anything like the current set of languages covered at anything like the current levels of breadth and quality. Like I said in another comment, approximately nobody translates technical documentation for fun.
- bawolff 6y ago
  A surprising amount of mediawiki documentation is translated by volunteers (i cant speak to the quality as i dont speak nonenglish, realistically the english source material isnt that great) but volunteers do translate things
  - rhizome 6y ago
    Perhaps interestingly, I had a frustration in the other direction just last night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Soria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Soria https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincia_de_Soria https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincia_de_Soria Notice that the English page seems obviously translated by a non-native speaker, which has some implications not favorable to Mozilla's behavior here, specifically that ESL people will contribute documentation in English that native English-language speakers won't even provide for themselves.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Wikipedia translations are a bit different because they are not meant to be 1:1. The translations in theory are entirely separate articles. I was thinking more like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download vs https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download/es https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download/es
pavon 6y ago
I think that storing the localized content in separate flat HTML files makes it very difficult to maintain translations, as the article points out. Ideally, you would have a master document in which some parts are shared across all translations (like the layout, the actual terms in the spec, browser compatibility information, etc), while other parts were localizable (like the field descriptions). Then when content was added/changed, it would be clear which parts of the translations needed updating, and you could either flag them as such for volunteers, or use machine translation as a stop-gap, or both. With the architecture they described, however, your options are either to make the translations completely independent or to make translations completely machine translated, neither of which is a good solution.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It's quite telling already that they basically admit that mixing markup and content as tightly as that is problematic. I mean I don't think it's actually that big of a deal as long as they stick to basic HTML markup (paragraphs, bold/italics, etc), but you're already running into problems when you add links. Not having multi-language support as a first-class citizen is a step backwards IMO. Especially considering the world is still getting connected at an enormous rate.
  - afiori 6y ago
    Multi-language support has the inherent problem that is requires effort linearly in the number of languages. Wearing a hopeful hat this new architecture would only require an effort "linear" to the error rate of the machine translations. Personally I had some very good experiences with some translators, and it could work even better if Mozilla manages to tune and train them properly. (Like making so that manual fixes improve the algorithm)

0-O-0 6y ago

Did they actually fund localisations? I'm unfamiliar with their process, but this article game me an impression that it was completely community driven.

pianoben 6y ago
Yes, absolutely. Approximately nobody translates technical documentation for fun, much less at such a high level. The article is pretty clear that the number of languages supported is a business decision.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Wikimedia/Wikipedia show that people do translate for fun (I do it myself on the wiki software website), so I'm not sure how you have that blindspot. Your comment is the same as people who saw the launch of Wikipedia and wondered who could possibly write articles and find citations for fun. Hell, who would write hundreds of thousands of wiki articles about The Elder Scrolls universe for fun? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page
  - trynewideas 6y ago
    > Hell, who would write hundreds of thousands of wiki articles about The Elder Scrolls universe for fun? https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page 70k articles, not hundreds of thousands,[1] and of those 70k fewer than 1/3 are translated to any other language. And speaking as someone who was a system and content admin for a MediaWiki-powered fiction wiki of about 15k articles... there are not many people relative to the amount of content who are actually interested in contributing anything, much less improving or maintaining what's already there. It's a very, very small core of contributors. Toward your example, the 161 "active" users[2] (meaning any number of edits in the last 30 days) as of today on English UESP combined for 5,974 edits in that span. Of those edits, 4,779 were from 13 users. 3,039 — more than half of the last month's activity — were from the top 5 users. On the non-English UESPs? No active users in Portuguese, one in Italian, none in Arabic.[3][4][5] From my experience at least, it's because it's work — fun work, at times, but still work. Translating MDN content is also work. Doing _any_ documentation of _anything_ is work. Hell, I burned out on fiction documentation work before I burned out on paid work. Some people do enjoy it! But voluntary documentation is still going to attract a small, specific core group of consistent contributors (if it attracts any at all). [1] https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:Statistics https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:Statistics [2] https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Special:ActiveUsers&offset=&limit=500 https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Special:ActiveUsers&of... [3] https://pt.uesp.net/wiki/Especial:Utilizadores_activos https://pt.uesp.net/wiki/Especial:Utilizadores_activos [4] https://it.uesp.net/wiki/Speciale:UtentiAttivi https://it.uesp.net/wiki/Speciale:UtentiAttivi [5] https://ar.uesp.net/wiki/%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5:%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%88%D9%86_%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B7%D9%88%D9%86 https://ar.uesp.net/wiki/%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5:%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%...

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

If the text is in github, you can download it, backup, make an iso and share on piratebay, it won't be lost.

pianoben 6y ago
The concern I'm trying to express is that the translations of this content will grow increasingly stale as the original articles are updated, and will be missing entirely for new articles. People who don't speak or read one of the top 12 languages will just be out of luck, unless some generous soul decides to do that substantial amount of work for free.
- afiori 6y ago
  As far as I understand Mozilla's point is that this is already happening. I agree that stuff like the UI should still be localized manually.

emilecantin 6y ago

From TFA: > Note: In addition, the text of the UI components and header menu will be in English only, going forward. They will not be translated, at least not initially. But that's the easiest part! I understand the part about translations becoming stale, and how it's hard to manage, but honestly, translating a UI isn't that hard. I think a good recipe to get better translations is: - Don't treat it as an aftertought. Co-locate the en-US assets with the translated versions, that way your contributors actually see that there are other languages to support. Each page on the MDN website should be a folder containing a file for each language. - If a translation is out-of-date, link to these more recent languages, and offer an auto-translated version in the meantime. Importantly, let the user switch between the automatic translation and the manual one. Also, make it obvious how they can contribute.

firexcy 6y ago

Idk, but ESL speaker as I myself is, I don’t think localizations are that important for technical writings, where few grammar or rhetoric is concerned, and technical terms can simply be seen as “tokens” that can be represented in any language as long as you can identify their “shapes.” Therefore, if you are among the targeted reader group, that the documentation is not in your mother tongue is unlikely to discourage you from reading it. On the other hand, if you are not comfortable with reading technical descriptions generally, having a localized version will not help much either.