4 ms·

Does Zidisha view having the broken (obviously because its not their first language and this is not a criticism of the borrowers) English in the descriptions as

Does Zidisha view having the broken (obviously because its not their first language and this is not a criticism of the borrowers) English in the descriptions as a benefit over descriptions that have been edited to be more readable? I could see arguments for both sides and wonder if they have experimented with giving a proofreader to every potential borrower, if only to improve readability. I'd imagine they haven't done it because it removes some of the human connections, but I'd be interested in A/B testing of it.

jkurnia 12y ago
A good argument can be made either way, but I doubt we'd ever use a proofreader as so much of our identity is in keeping the lender-borrower communication direct and authentic. That said, we do allow our users to post translations of non-English content, while leaving the untranslated versions accessible - you may view an example here: https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/loan/SALIMATA2/9512.html https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/loan/SALIMATA2/9512.htm.... We also sometimes edit the titles of loan projects for clarity.
- nowarninglabel 12y ago
  Heh, looks like the same wording and effect I wrote on Kiva lender pages (e.g., http://www.kiva.org/lend/756762 http://www.kiva.org/lend/756762) to show the original language version :) It'd be good to connect with you sometime on sharing knowledge on the tools used for allowing for user-based translations. I'm not sure if you saw the tools we use at Kiva, but I imagine there's some overlap where we could probably work together to create a more generic tool focused on translating loan descriptions that would work for both of us and other micro-finance organizations out there. There's some decent open-source stuff out there but nothing that's worked for us without heavy customization.

4 ms·

Does Zidisha view having the broken (obviously because its not their first language and this is not a criticism of the borrowers) English in the descriptions as

by crazypyro 12y ago

jkurnia 12y ago
A good argument can be made either way, but I doubt we'd ever use a proofreader as so much of our identity is in keeping the lender-borrower communication direct and authentic. That said, we do allow our users to post translations of non-English content, while leaving the untranslated versions accessible - you may view an example here: https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/loan/SALIMATA2/9512.html https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/loan/SALIMATA2/9512.htm.... We also sometimes edit the titles of loan projects for clarity.
- nowarninglabel 12y ago
  Heh, looks like the same wording and effect I wrote on Kiva lender pages (e.g., http://www.kiva.org/lend/756762 http://www.kiva.org/lend/756762) to show the original language version :) It'd be good to connect with you sometime on sharing knowledge on the tools used for allowing for user-based translations. I'm not sure if you saw the tools we use at Kiva, but I imagine there's some overlap where we could probably work together to create a more generic tool focused on translating loan descriptions that would work for both of us and other micro-finance organizations out there. There's some decent open-source stuff out there but nothing that's worked for us without heavy customization.