Topic on Talk:Content translation

Hi Runa, Bengali communty use this tools , but most of the people frustrated, we know that this now beta version, here some issues describe in my Bengali wikipedia talk page,

আপনার সুচিন্তিত মতামতের জন্য আপনাকে ধন্যবাদ। তবে এই প্রসঙ্গে আমার কিছু বক্তব্য আছে। উইকিপিডিয়ার বিষয়বস্তু অনুবাদ টুলটি বর্তমানে সফ্টওয়ার উন্নয়নের বিটা দশায় রয়েছে। তাই প্রসঙ্গতই এতে বেশকিছু ত্রুটি রয়েছে। এখানে ত্রুটিগুলোর মধ্যে কয়েকটি উল্লেখ করছি।

• টুলটি জাভাস্ক্রিপ্ট ব্যবহার করে লিখিত। ইংরেজিতে লিখিত en:Criticism of religion নিবন্ধের আকার খুব বেশি বড় হওয়ার কারণে অনুবাদরত অবস্থায় একাধিকবার স্ক্রিপ্ট ক্র্যাস করেছে। আমি ফায়ারফক্স, ওপেরা, ক্রমিসহ একাধিক ওয়েব ব্রাউজার ব্যবহার করে দেখেছি। সবগুলোতেই সংরক্ষিত অনুবাদ লোড হওয়ার সময় ব্রাউজার ক্র্যাস করছে। অনেকসময় আবার বাংলা অনুবাদ সংরক্ষিত হচ্ছে না। সবমিলিয়ে অনুবাদের গতি মন্থর হচ্ছে।
• মূল নিবন্ধের {{cite}},{{relist}} সহ বিভিন্ন টেমপ্লেট বাংলায় অনুবাদের পর অপরিবর্তি থাকছে না। HTML এ রূপান্তরিত হচ্ছে। এর ফলে মূল নিবন্ধের তথ্যসূত্র ও অন্যান্য টেমপ্লেট আকারে থাকা উপাত্ত বিকৃত হয়ে যাচ্ছে।
• টুলটি ঠিকমতো কাজ না করায়, এবং পূর্বে অনুবাদকৃত কিছু বাংলা লেখা সংরক্ষিত না হওয়ায় এবং অনেকটা বিড়ম্বনার কারণেই আমি অনুবাদ টুলটি ব্যবহার করা বাদ দিয়ে আংশিক অনুবাদ প্রকাশ করতে বাধ্য হই এবং পুরাতন পদ্ধতিতে নিবন্ধের উৎস সম্পাদনার মাধ্যমে অনুবাদ করার সিদ্ধান্ত নেই।
• অনুবাদ টুলের বিভিন্ন সমস্যা সমাধান এবং টুলটি সঠিকভাবে ব্যবহারের নির্দেশনা পাওয়ার জন্য বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ায় ঠিক কার/কাদের সাথে যোগাযোগ করবো সে বিষয়ে কোন সুনির্দিষ্ট নির্দেশনা থাকলে তা জানানোর জন্য আপনাকে অনুরোধ করছি।
• আংশিক/অসম্পূর্ণ বাংলা অনুবাদ যে প্রকাশ করতে হয়না সে সম্পর্কে আমি ভালোভাবেই অবগত আছি। তবে উইকিপিডিয়ার নিজস্ব টেকনিক্যাল সমস্যার দরূণ আমি আংশিক অনুবাদ প্রকাশের সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছি অথবা বাধ্য হয়েছি। আপাতত অনুবাদ টুলটি স্টেবল না হওয়া পর্যন্ত আমি আর এটি ব্যবহার করছি না। তবে ধর্মের সমালোচনা নিবন্ধের অনুবাদ না হওয়া ইংরেজি ভাষার বিষয়বস্তুটুকু আমি শিঘ্রই অপসারণ করে দিচ্ছি।

প্রসঙ্গত উল্লেখ্য যে, বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ায় প্রশাসনিক পাতাগুলোর একটি বিরাট অংশ ইংরেজি ভাষা থেকে অসম্পূর্ণভাবে অনুবাদকৃত অবস্থাতেই প্রকাশ করা হয়েছে। যদিও এই পাতাগুলো বাংলায় অনুবাদ করা প্রশাসকদের দায়িত্বের মধ্যেই পরে। উদাহরণস্বরূপ, উইকিপিডিয়া:বৃত্তান্ত পাতাটি দ্রষ্টব্য। প্রশাসকদের এধরনের আচরণ সাধারণ সম্পাদক ও ব্যবহারকারীদের সুষ্ঠুভাবে উইকিপিডিয়ার নীতিমালা অনুসরণে নিরুৎসাহিত করে। আর আপনার মন্তব্যটি আমার ব্যক্তিগত আলাপ পাতার সাথে সাথে উক্ত নিবন্ধের আলাপ পাতায় করলেও অধিক সমীচিন হতো বলে আমি মনে করি। এতে করে অনেকেই বিষয়টি সম্পর্কে অবহত হওয়ার সুযোগ পেতো।

@Jayantanth অনেক ধন্যবাদ বিশদভাবে এটা লেখার জন্য। যেহেতু আমাদের টিমের সবাই মিলে এই পাতাটি আমরা দেখি তাই আমি ওদের সুবিধার্থে আপনার কমেন্টগুলি ইংরেজিতে প্রথমে অনুবাদ করছি।

@Jayantanth has mentioned quite a few problems that he has been facing while translating articles from English to Bangla. I am translating them here and then responding in-line, as some are known issues or has a clear course of investigation:

(all text in Italics are translations)

• The English Wikipedia article Criticism of Religion is pretty large and while translating it CX has been crashing multiple times. He has been seeing this same problem on multiple browsers - Firefox, Chrome and Opera. He also mentions that there have been instances of saving failures and restoration failures of in-progress translations.
  • For this particular article we can check our error logs to see what could have been the problem. (cc-ing @Amire80 and @KartikMistry). You mention that there have been more articles on which you faced the problem. Can you please let us know which other articles where those?
• The cite , reflist etc. templates are not adapted after an article is translated into Bangla
  • Templates are not immediately supported but we are working on them these days. We expect to have some basic support for templates in another month or so. You can follow the progress via this ticket on phabricator.
• Due to errors faced while using Content Translation, saving-restoration failures of in-progress translations, he has had to publish partially translated articles and then edit it using wikitext.
  • I would like to repeat the same request as in point #1 - can you please let us know which are the articles on which you faced similar saving-restoration problems so that we can check the error logs to investigate further?
• It would be helpful if there was some documentation about Content Translation issues often encountered on Bangla Wikipedia and whom to contact for more information.
  • We do not have any specific lists per wiki. For Bangla Wikipedia, @NahidSultan had written a fairly detailed document which was also shared via the bnwikipedia twitter account. As Nahid is also a very active user of Content Translation, he may have some ideas on how to handle this better for the Bangla Wikipedia users.
• He mentions that he would not like to publish partially translated articles but due to the errors faced by him, he had to do so and until he finds Content Translation more stable he would not like to use the tool any further. He would also like to remove the partially translated Bengali Wikipedia article on the same topic mentioned earlier.
  • As the Content Translation development team, we respect the views of the translator and have designed the tool to provide flexibility in how the user would like to translate the article. In some wikis we have seen users adopting only some portion of the original article in the translated version. This may be due to the fact that the user thinks that this subset of information is adequate as a start for the article in their language, or they may have not found the remaining interesting enough. There are no hard rules that Content Translation imposes to override the target wiki's policies. In some cases, we also invoke additional restrictions to comply with the policies of the wiki. For example, Abusefilter rules are strictly followed (some may be about the article content) as well as restrictions on publishing an article by blocked users. Hence, at what point you would consider the article to be ready for publishing is completely in your hands. The unfortunate errors that you are facing should ideally not be the determining factor and we would very much like to check what is causing the problems.

In context he comments that some articles about Wikipedia policies have been translated from English Wikipedia into Bengali Wikipedia and there are instances of partial translations there as well which are generally curated by the Admins.

@Jayantanth আপনার সমস্যাগুলির সমাধান করার জন্য আমাদের কিছু তথ্যের প্রয়োজন যা আমি উপরে আপনার প্রত্যেকটি ব্যক্তব্যের তলায় লিখেছি। অনুগ্রহ করে এই তথ্যগুলি আমাদের দিলে খুব সুবিধা হবে। এ ছাড়া উইকির পৃষ্ঠা লেখা সম্বন্ধে যে ভাবনা আমরা এই টুলটি তৈরি করার সময় প্রয়োগ করি তাও লিখেছি। এই বিষয়ে অথবা অন্য কোনো সমস্যা সম্বন্ধে আরও প্রশ্ন থাকলে নিশ্চিন্তে জানাবেন। ধন্যবাদ।

@Jayantanth আমরা এটার এরার লগ পরীক্ষা করেছি। সব কটা ত্রুটিই জুলাই মাসে হয়েছে। আগস্টে আমরা কিছু পরিবর্তন করেছি যাতে এই ধরনের সমস্যাগুলো সহজে ধরা পড়ে। আপনি কি এর মধ্যে এই আর্টিকেলটি অনুবাদ করার চেষ্টা করেছেন? যদি না করে থাকেন তাহলে আরেকবার চেষ্টা করে দেখতে পারেন। যদি তার পরেও সমস্যা হয় তাহলে আমাদের জানালে আমরা আবার পরীক্ষা করে দেখতে পারবো। ধন্যবাদ।

Hi, Everyone
Greetings from Bengali Wikipedia.
I have been contributing to Bengali Wikipedia for more than two years. I mostly translate articles from English Wikipedia to Bengali. But I have recently been using the beta version of the recently 'popular' Content translation Tool (CTT). I already knew it was a bit buggy, but I thought, why not just give it a try? Maybe, see how it works. So I began to translate a few articles from English to Bengali. First I translated and successfully published an article from English (en:Vitamin C) to Bengali (bn:ভিটামিন সি). Then I went on to translate a few more articles and that's when [:en:Criticism of religion] caught my eyes. There was no article with that title on Bengali Wikipedia. So I decided to translate it. And that's when I encountered all the aforementioned 'Errors' or 'Bugs'. These problems greatly hindered my translation progress. I was disappointed as well. I could not delete or move or publish the partially translated article that was saved in the Content Translation Tool menu. I had no other option but to publish the incomplete version of that translated article. Besides, I didn't have any clue whom to ask for help. That's when Jayantanth added a 'complaint' to my user talk page telling me why I should not have published an incompletely translated article and why it is against the rules to do so. This only added more to my disappointment. In fact, I was working for more than 15 days on that particular topic. And when browsers began to crash and edits were not being saved, for a moment I thought, that I might have done something wrong. I checked and double checked my edits. There was, nothing that I could've possibly done on my end that could produce these problems. So, it should now be clear that it was me, not Jayantanth, who faced and described these 'bugs'. He got a reply from you guys and replied to me on September 6.
That is when, in response to Jayantanth's 'complaints', I decided to and described the aforementioned problems that I faced with CTT, on Jayantanth's talk page. Although, I agree that Jayantanth was in no way, responsible for the problems that I faced, Perhaps, he should have been more helpful. Its not decent to 'blame' a fellow Wikipedian for making unintended 'mistakes'. But in this case, the mistake surely was't mine. However, I am grateful to Mr. Jayantanth for bringing these problems to Wikipedia's attention.
Now these are the improvements that I have noticed in CTT:

• I am no longer seeing the same problems as before. My browser isn't freezing or crashing while using CTT. It loads faster too.
• So far en:Criticism of religion is the only article that has caused any problem.
• Images load faster and do not distort the window while loading.

And these are the drawbacks and requests:

• Template adaptation is still poor. Sometimes it doesn't even work.
• Adding links to other articles are still problematic.
• I don't see any 'Preview' button on CTT window.
• There is no option to edit source simultaneously while still using CTT.
• It is still not possible to revert to previous edits (if some texts are mistakenly deleted) and also not possible to see my edit history. The real-time saving mechanism is interesting though. Or maybe it could just be the root of all problems. The last time I saw, my browser window was freezing and crashing while CTT was automatically trying to save everything I typed so far.
• Sometimes, people who are used to HTML and wiki-text (like me), might want to take advantage of source editing options. Should consider integrating that too.
• It is not possible to translate articles cooperatively, unlike in wiki-text editor, where many people can work on the same article together. This feature might help users to work with friends on the same topic.
• It is not possible to compare my version of translation with that of an article that has already been published from within CTT. Provided, my version of translation is better. If it is, then, there is no way to propose a better translation. There should a proposal or reviewing system for submitting better versions of translation. This will also encourage users to 'compete' for better contribution.
• It is not possible to know who else is translating the same article. What if we both submit at the same time?, although this is very unlikely. But it would be interesting to know.
• Overall, CTT should be a tool that both new and experienced editors can use without breaking a sweat.

I may not use this tool until it is stable. I am requesting you guys to fix this tool ASAP or maybe create a stable version. Until then many more users/editors are going to get disappointed. That's surely not good for the community.
However, I will continue editing in the same 'old fashioned way', using wiki-text of course. I hope, that wouldn't be a problem. Not like CTT, at least.

Thank you all for your support. Hoping to get a reply soon.

Hi @Roshu Bangal, Thanks for providing the additional context. As I had already mentioned in my earlier comment to @Jayantanth, template adaptation is ongoing work and we should be able to see some progress in there in the next 1 month period.

Content Translation primarily is targetted at creating a high quality, content rich first version of a new article and not intended for complicated editing. Hence, source wikitext edit is not part of the feature set of this tool. The expectation is for users to create the first version using Content Translation and then move to Wikitext editor or Visual Editor for further embellishing the articles with the advanced options. Similarly, collaborative editing is expected to continue in the more conventional editing tools. You mention about multiple people committing the same translation. Within Content Translation that is not possible at all. When a user selects an article to translate, no other user can translate it unless the first user deletes the ongoing translation from their dashboard. This prevents duplication of efforts . In case the second editor selects the same article (from the suggestions list or by searching for the article) they are displayed a warning about an ongoing translation of the article and which user has started doing so. They can then coordinate with the user if they want to. I am also pinging @Pginer-WMF our Senior UX Designer, on this thread in case he has any additional comments.

Link adaption improvements are constantly happening and it would be good to know what are the problems you are currently facing so that we can check back on them.

Thanks for your comments and do please let us know more about what you think could be improved for Content Translation.

Thanks for the feedback, @Roshu Bangal

Runa summarised the purpose of the tool really well. This is not intended to be a general-purpose editing tool, but to facilitate the initial steps of a translation where users used to spend time on repetitive activities such as checking manually the corresponding link target for each link in the source article. There are many things yet to improve in this context, but the tool has already helped saving time to many users that were both translating manually or with specialized tools.

Regarding the support for wikitext, it won't be trivial since the content is annotated for the translation process (e.g., to know which paragraph in the translation corresponds to in the original text). That makes it hard to include that metadata in wikitext without crowding the content, and keeping it in place after content is added or removed. If you want to get a wikitext version of your translation before it is possible to modify the translation title to point it to your user namespace and publish it there. This ticket captures the idea of making those options easier to access so that the transition between Content Translation and the more powerful general editing tools is more fluent.

Regarding users inability to translate articles that another user started, we have captured some ideas to provide more flexibility and avoid blockers.

As I mentioned above, it is totally fine if you use other editing tools for content editing. However, it would be very useful for us to know what makes those more convenient for the very first steps of the translation in your case.