Translating Discourse

A modest question. Since Discourse is more clever than GG …

Would it be possible to include a button somewhere that would pass a Discourse post to a translation service like Google Translate or DeepL?

Best wishes
Josiah

@boris thanks for promoting this to its own thread.

Since many users here are not 100% fluent in English I think it is worth raising the issue.
On-line translation quality now is often very good for many languages.

Could we help non-native English speakers by providing a method to auto (i.e. provide a button to push) translate individual posts?

Just a query
TT

Sure, anyone can do research on Discourse and suggest changes.

I browsed the themes directory https://meta.discourse.org/c/theme/61/none but didn’t see anything obvious.

If someone can research how embedded translate buttons work we can consider adding it to the theme.

I do think it could help having ability to click a translate. I am no programmer but can see that it might help.

@boris Translator plugin.

No button - another functionality. As far as I understand it there are some side effects also.

I do know though that translation into my language, danish mostly ends up in gobbledegook

Interesting, thanks for looking into it!

Yeah this is calling against (paid?) cloud translation APIs and actually storing the translated version in the forum database.

I think this is too heavyweight from what I can tell. And we’d have to pick which languages to support ahead of time, looks like?

As can be showed with my little CSS hack of wiki formatting, researching how to add a button to a translation service for any website would be the way to go.

For sure, not denying that it would be helpful. Just like all of TW, everyone is a volunteer here.

This is mostly in the realm of front end design CSS / JS / HTML, and looking up the documentation of translate buttons from different services.

It’s just work that someone has to do, like the many other great contributions that people make of TW code snippets.

Hope that’s helpful in explaining what needs to be done to anyone looking at this thread.

Ciao @Birthe :slight_smile:

It doesn’t look too awful in Denmark! :slight_smile:

TT

1 Like

Right. And you are right in the sense that people like me look like we are moaning yet do little to practically help. But that is mostly because we don’t have the needed competences.

I am very aware that on Discourse there is a serious overhead that now enfolds several administrators. It is I think likely good, long-term, for getting TW better known. Thanks you guys!

Regarding the OP. I did do some crude tests to see if you could, via a browser plugin or via Bookmarklets, auto-translate.

The issue is that I can’t see a 100% reliable way that will work on all platforms via bookmarklets or browser plugins.

So some kind of integration of a Translation Mechanism into the Discourse interface does seem the optimal cross-platform solution to assist non-native English writers.

Just a comment
TT

I know, that it works for simpler sentences. But believe me - you never know. Sometimes only parts are translated. Auto translation on homepages are more often than not awful - really not understandable. In your example - it is totally understandable - but gobbledegook - would in Danish be kaudervælsk.

Try to translate a knitting pattern or even worse something remotely technological.

I have heard that paid translation works well.

I do not think there are many Danish tiddlywiki users either, I only know of a few.
I have less problems reading English than i have writing or speaking.

@Birthe do you know Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling? :slight_smile:

Ah, Google translate thinks “kaudervælsk” is German.

As an acolyte of April MacKenzie I enjoy crochet and understand that translations of her superb patterns into Oxford English are prone to errors.

TT

It is: “Kauderwelsch” in German.

1 Like

Small footnote about translation. Over on the Twitter for #TiddlyWiki we often see stuff like this …

I DO think TW is International and we need to better support international users.

Just saying
TT

I don’t think you are moaning.

Some of the competences are just doing Google searches — as the plugin that @Birthe found.

Sharing which plugins or bookmarklets you used is super helpful! I would encourage you to edit the OP with that information. “I used Google and Microsoft, but found X challenging”.

Should we further edit the FAQ / add a section on “using Talk TW as a non English speaker”? Can you write a first draft of what you think it should say?

@TiddlyTweeter.
I think a button to translate would be “nice to have”. I still think, that the most important thing is, that both in GG and now in Talk we have had no incidence with “language policing”. Only friendly trying to understand and trying to help out making everything clear for most users possible. That is very important especially for new users, not to be afraid to ask the first question and so on.
Also I think that some English is necessary to start and use Tiddlywiki and keep going.
Often I think one person find Tiddlywiki and start using it. Start creating a language plugin for translation. Later perhaps an Edition.
I guess…but it is only a guess, that all tiddlywiki lovers try to share their joy of tiddlywiki with each and everyone they meet (might be just a little exaggerated).
I think there is also groups in other languages, but I have not seen them or have any links. Let us ask here if anyone has links for one or more of those groups. That would be a nice thing to have.

Right. There likely are and worth noting.

Likely right cara. I just slightly of opinion we may be slightly off-putting by being a bit too English. ??