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> If I read an English news site that has a translated French version, it doesn't matter if I'm most proficient in French, I'll want the English version. The s

> If I read an English news site that has a translated French version, it doesn't matter if I'm most proficient in French, I'll want the English version. The solution there is not to abandon the very useful Accept-Language header, but to never offer half-baked translations. Is your website multilingual? Fine, but only offer fully translated and verified translation sets. It's OK to have your UI and your own content translated in a few languages — for a company that may make sense depending on their target clientele — but you'll have to maintain all of these and keep them in sync. However, user content is off-limits. No automatic translations unless you only offer those under a button to be helpful (like 'Spanish detected, click to show an automatic translation into English'), but really, leave that to the user's browser. Use Accept-Language to pick a language, and then offer me a way to switch in addition to that. That's all there is to it. > Wikipedia does it decently well for instance. Wikipedia doesn't do that. Each language is its own instance, where content may be ported to by translating it (or parts of it), but outside of the Mediawiki UI texts, it is not a translation of the same content. The Dutch version of the lemma 'Language' is a different article in a different language with some overlap. There is no claim made that it is the same article in Dutch. It is hosted on a different sub-domain and path on purpose.

makeitdouble 1y ago
> never offer half-baked translations Sadly that ship has sailed. We can look at the reaction from smaller youtubers as auto-dub rolled out. Most are sympathetic to the quality issues but are seeing it as either a "good enough" or at least a "better than nothing" feature that helps them expand their audience with no visible cost on their side. Or official government sites that have explicitely disclosed AI translations and didn't bother passing it through a regular translator. This situation just won't get better. Except perhaps the day AI is actually intelligent and we have human being level translators running on cloud servers. > Wikipedia Yes, those are not translations, but in that specific case they also don't need to: the quality of the article will vary depending on the editor, but there's no "original" article, so nothing to translate from IMHO.
watwut 1y ago
> Fine, but only offer fully translated and verified translation sets No, I do not want the translation at all, unless I say so. Really. Even if it is the best translation in the world. I want and need to choose the language I will read or watching something in.

makeitdouble 1y ago

> never offer half-baked translations Sadly that ship has sailed. We can look at the reaction from smaller youtubers as auto-dub rolled out. Most are sympathetic to the quality issues but are seeing it as either a "good enough" or at least a "better than nothing" feature that helps them expand their audience with no visible cost on their side. Or official government sites that have explicitely disclosed AI translations and didn't bother passing it through a regular translator. This situation just won't get better. Except perhaps the day AI is actually intelligent and we have human being level translators running on cloud servers. > Wikipedia Yes, those are not translations, but in that specific case they also don't need to: the quality of the article will vary depending on the editor, but there's no "original" article, so nothing to translate from IMHO.

watwut 1y ago

> Fine, but only offer fully translated and verified translation sets No, I do not want the translation at all, unless I say so. Really. Even if it is the best translation in the world. I want and need to choose the language I will read or watching something in.