Open Grid
The time has come to stop blogging in your native language
Lea Verou pointed out that writing in a native language (other than English) is a sign of laziness and limits the potential audience.
It's hard to disagree with this statement. Looking at my own behavior, specifically how I search for information on the Web, I find I usually use English phrases because I assume that more people have written on the topic in English, leading to more relevant search results. It is hard to find better answers to technical problems on sites other than Stack Overflow where everyone uses one universal language: English.
In this context, I was writing a blog in Polish. I asked myself how I could expect that people like me will find answers on my blog if it is written in a language other than that of the search terms.
Translation Toolkit
It is not a new idea that we should write in one universal language for the Web. However, we can kill two birds with one stone to help make better automated translations. This is not about publishing in other languages. Instead, we should encourage people to use the new tool for translators provided by Google - translate.google.com/toolkit.
Why should we use this tool? Well, you know Google offers us translations of any text. So, you can guess that using this tool will show both language versions of the text to the Google engine. The same tool also allows you to build your own translation memory CAT-like solutions and the subsequent, more adequate machine translation results.
This entry was created precisely in this way. Initially, it was written in Polish. Then, after an initial adjustment, it was moved to GTT. If I assume that the text was translated properly into the Polish language by a translator, which uses a reader, Google will be able to present the text in a way that largely resembles the original text.
Update
I received a lot of negative feedback about my experiment. I concluded that I should never correct automated translations and that it is better to write it from scratch. I think this is sad. However, I think it will get better if people will begin to adopt the translation toolkit in their work. This will eventually provide statistically better translations.
Comments to "The time has come to stop blogging in your native language":
2 | zx
The thing is, when you use English you become one of many. When creating good content in Polish, there is better chance that you will be noticed.
3 | xenu
Nie jesteś prawdziwym polakiem patriotą! Pewnie głosujesz na (tfu!) PO albo nie daj boże Palikota!
4 | klausa
Well, I guess that completely depends what do you want achieve with your blogging.
If you're using it as a place where you dump your thoughts - then I think it's hard to convince yourself to blog in $nativetongue - save for when you do it on purpose, to work on your language skills. And let's face it - nobody really cares about events in Poland and reading news about what happens around here seems a little bit... uncanny.
On the other hand, when you blog about more technical stuff, and you're not just copy-pasting or merely paraphrasing other, well known blogs - then it's entirely different story. But as zx pointed out - it's definitely easier to be noticed in our local blogosphere.
I also found it hard to find enough motivation to write long entries in english, since their creation takes considerably longer than their polish counterparts - but Twitter seems like perfect place to practice one's language skills, and I would definitely recommend that if you decide that blogging in english isn't exactly working out for you.
5 | pim
The problem with writing in English is that it’s whole lot harder to get noticed. Polish audience is smaller, but there are also fewer authors than in English.
Using Google Translator to translate entries from Polish? I hope you are not serious.
Also, I’m not sure if Jogger is a good place to publish posts in this language. Just look at some comments above…
6 | Winhelp
pim: Czemu niby? Platforma jak każda inna, nadaje się do pisania choćby i po białorusku :P
Nie, nie chce mi się tłumaczyć tego na angielski.
7 | d4rky
Until the last paragraph I was thinking like "this dude has a lot to learn if he wants to write in english". Then I read about how you used translator and laughed hard.
You are not making it easier for people to read your blogpost by auto-translating it. See for example a test page with different translation engines or try translating the same sentence from one language to another, then to another, once again to another and then to the original one. You will wind up with a funny but almost unrelated to the original text.
My point is, translation engines are good, but as a help in understanding the text for the reader. They are far from being good enough to be used for generic text translation and by using them as such, you are only making yourself even less understandable than by writing in native language. Especially when it comes to harder (in terms of syntax) languages like Polish.
8 | OpenGrid
@d4arky ouch!
I wonder if you at least checked out translation toolkit? This text without my correction in this tool would look drastically worse - it's not 100% "machine translation". That said your comment really hurts because I don't find my English skills as low as you portray. If you can point out what "should I learn", it would be appreciated so you wouldn't look like a regular troll who's unable to give constructive criticism.
9 | OpenGrid
@pim ironically this post have relatively a lot of comments and as I see most of them are from polish native speakers :) so it's not about the language but simple emotions :)
11 | klausa
@OpenGrid:
I think I know what @d4rky meant - I also found your post a little bit weird, but I couldn't actually put my finger about what seemed strange - maybe I found it a little not non-idiomatic english, but it definitely seemed like something that wasn't originally conceived in english.
12 | OpenGrid
@klausa I think I know what you mean. I should have written it in English from scratch instead correcting machine translation. Good point.
13 | D4rky
@OpenGrid: Sorry, I didn't intend to be rude. All I'm sayng is there were some weird constructions that sounded non-english at least. After I read there were parts "fixed" using translator, they kind of made sense then (they sounded "machine")
14 | Remigiusz 'lRem' Modrzejewski
Come on, you can't point a single thing that's wrong?
In this context, therefore astonishes me that so far I was writing a Blog in the native language.
Just look at it... There are lots of misused phrases all around the text. It may be better than your random Engrish native speaker, but still it hurts the eyes to read.
15 | Hoppke
"writing in your native language is a sign of laziness"
So what about non-English content on Wikipedia? Created by a bunch of lazies, right?
16 | OpenGrid
@Hoppke good point, it makes it easier to all students to use ctrl+c ctrl+v when writing their home work ;)
But seriously if you look at localized versions of Wikipedia entries they often lack a lot of data comparing to the English version so in fact in most cases I switch to the language version that offers more data. So maybe authors should focus on expanding English version? I'm not sure.
Anyway Wikipedia is a source of knowledge that should be accessible to every human being. The difference is that Wikipedia offers multiple languages and in most cases universal language of the web. Native version of any entry is like a the icing on the cake so nobody can be left behind. I see a clear difference.
In any other case when you write about scientific / technical matters it is crucial to use universal language. For example there is a lot of great scientific work written in German but in reality nobody will ever quote it or even read.
As you might have noticed no one here had a problem understanding and writing in English. Yet I'm still thinking how to resolve this problem and offer an easy way to serve content in both languages with the same effort and I think Google Translation Toolkit is another step in this direction.
17 | mmazur
Jak już zostało wspomniane, twój angielski nie jest wystarczający, by pisać łatwo czytalne rzeczy. To samo z siebie jest wystarczającym powodem, żeby nie publikować po angielsku.
Praktycznie każde zdanie (poza tymi najkrótszymi) ma błędy językowe, albo jest niezrozumiałe, więc nie będę wypisywał wszystkiego. Żeby wpis czytało się płynnie, czyli żeby nie była odczuwalna niegramotność językowa, trzeba by go przepisywać całymi akapitami, tzn. przeczytać akapit, zrozumieć o co w nim chodzi, po czym napisać go od nowa. Poniżej skupię się bardziej na błędach językowych, bo te łatwiej pokazać, niż błędy stylistyczne (np. cozdaniowe zmiany narracyjne; w jednym zdaniu jest „us”, w następnym „you”), zwłaszcza w języku obcym.
– Pierwsze zdanie – „limiting yourself the potential audience” jest całkowicie źle. Plus nie do końca mi się podoba „rightly” w tym zdaniu.
– Drugie zdanie drugiego akapitu to jest ogólnie potworek językowy, który może wygenerować albo automat, albo osoba nie potrafiąca pisać zdań złożonych. Z prostych błędów językowych – „information”, a nie „the information”.
– „In this context, therefore astonishes” – to już było wspominane.
– „This is due perhaps out of habit” – albo „due to” albo „out of”. Obu na raz stosować nie możesz.
– „fact that I write quite rare” – chodziło o przymiotnik, czyli „rarely”, acz całe wyrażenie jest niegramotne.
– „after an initial adjustment moved to GTT” – znaczy najpierw napisałeś po polsku, potem poprawiłeś to co napisałeś („initial adjustment”), po czym wrzuciłeś do googla? Nie rozumiem po co był krok drugi, myślałem, że raczej poprawiałeś to co wyszło z GTT, a nie to co do niego weszło. Plus dwa razy „initial” w jednym zdaniu.
– ostatniego zdania nie rozumiem w ogóle. Chociaż nie, jeśli chodzi nie o „assumed properly”, tylko o „proper translation”, to zdanie po polsku by brzmiało jakoś tak: „jeśli założyłem poprawne tłumaczenie na polski przez tłumacza, który używa czytacza (czytelnika? :), Google będzie w stanie sprezentować tekst w znacznej mierze przypominający tekst oryginalny.” Masło maślane.
18 | OpenGrid
@mmazur In other words my experiment failed :) It's a bitter pill to swallow but thx anyway for your help.
19 | OpenGrid
Well, I decided to continue my experiment :) and I used proofreading services at scribendi.com. This included modifications to word choice, punctuation, and article usage.
1 | pecet
27 october 2011, 13:11:02
cool story bro