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Google Translate is fantastic for information. It is terrible for leisure reading. The vast majority of HN readers are here recreationally. For someone to want
by Causality1 5y ago
Google Translate is fantastic for information. It is terrible for leisure reading. The vast majority of HN readers are here recreationally. For someone to want to read a Google translated page it has to both be important information but not so important there's a human-translated version of it. That doesn't leave a lot left.
- aaron695 5y ago> That doesn't leave a lot left. It is high value information when only a few have it (I disagree that the majority of important things get human translated) Using translate and dealing with people who's poor English is their second language is an important skill. If HN is just recreation, so much so hard articles are flagged so not to interfere with that. That's ok.
- Causality1 5y agoIf the information is that high value the submitter is free to translate it themselves. Readers don't have any more moral duty to machine translate and pick through a foreign language submission than they do to try and glean value from a submission written in terrible English by a teenybopper who doesn't use capitalization or punctuation and fills the page with emojis. There are plenty of articles full of meme-speak that are intensely fascinating but I know if I want to share them with HN I'd better find or produce a version they'll find readable.