Comments on: Do we need to look for new software ?

By: Ashwin Baindur

Ashwin Baindur — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:51:48 +0000

Trust techies to try to bung IT at every issue 😉

Seriously though, something as precious as a TED Talk needs to be done by mind/hand/body rather than machine intelligence.

By: sankarshan

sankarshan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:21:11 +0000

In reply to Leonardo Fontenelle.

Precisely. Which means that one has to junk the TED provided interface, use a standard text editor to translate. This of course brings up a different question – how do I then shove the sentences in according to the English ones on the TED UI ? 🙂

By: sankarshan

sankarshan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:19:58 +0000

Exactly. I did not want to put out sentence segmentation and lack thereof as the problem. In effect, the TED folks require the subtitles to be translated. Which is different from pure application software or, website or even document translation.

I am a dilettante when it comes to translations and am game for acquiring new skills. I’d love to learn from those who translate sub-titles as to how it is done. Although, I am somewhat certain that the software backend being used by TED isn’t the most optimal piece.

By: sankarshan

sankarshan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:17:32 +0000

In reply to Kenneth Gonsalves.

I agree with you. It is impossible to just read parts of text and then translate. The idea of a piece of text is that the author is trying to project a central idea – constant and repeated reading of the text allows the idea to be formed in the mind of the translator. This is opposed to the translator interpreting the idea and trying to translate.

My concern is the way the TED folks are asking the translation to be done. For example, this is more of subtitle translation which, I think, is a new skill one would need to acquire. At least I’d need to.

By: sankarshan

sankarshan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:14:04 +0000

In reply to Kenneth Gonsalves. Thank you for spotting it. Spelling mistake on my part. Now corrected.

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Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:08:10 +0000

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By: Kenneth Gonsalves

Kenneth Gonsalves — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:09:36 +0000

what is akisment? is it some new version of akismet?

By: Kenneth Gonsalves

Kenneth Gonsalves — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:08:52 +0000

translation can not be done para-by-para also. You have to read the whole thing, get inside the mind of the author and progressively churn out a translation. This requires several passes through the *whole* document. That is the only way a consistent translation can be done.

By: Leonardo Fontenelle

Leonardo Fontenelle — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:57:17 +0000

There’s no way to perform a decent translation sentence-by-sentence on such text. We translate documentation paragraph-by-paragraph and I don’t see any reason to no do so with the transcripts.

By: Kevin Kofler

Kevin Kofler — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:38:08 +0000

The way TED is handling translations is obviously completely broken, I wonder if whoever came up with that system actually did any form of translation, ever. The best way to translate that kind of text is to fire up a text editor and progressively (in linear sequence) replace the original with the translated text. At least that’s how I (a complete amateur at translations, though I occasionally have to translate something between 2 of the 4 languages I speak) translate that kind of text. Tools are just making things harder for continuous texts, and chunking is artificial, pointless and counterproductive.