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by bagasme 1003 days ago
Another case that scratches my itch was when I take a look on Spanish Linux-themed sites with Indonesian translation (as appeared on first page of Google search results). The translated text looks like stiff, gibberish/incomprehensible, and too formal. It reminds me of statistical machine translation (SMT) output, or is the text really MT-generated?

Examples: [1], [2], and [3].

On the side note, all these sites have a similar design and layout, which makes me wonder if these come from the same organization/group or not. And even these sites' title is also translated, which further raise the alarm.

End result? Here be dragons: visit these sites with a grain of salt.

[1]: https://blog.desdelinux.net/id/gentoo-sources-arm-kernel-tan... [2]: https://ubunlog.com/id/linux-6-6-rc1-sekarang-tersedia-denga... [3]: https://www.linuxadictos.com/id/setelah-memasang-fedora-26.h...
1 comments
qingcharles 1003 days ago
The design smells of blog spam, AI generated. I can't read the text so I can't tell from there.
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bagasme 1003 days ago
That's what I think. I guess that contributors on these sites just pull in raw MT-generated translations and post them as is, or do these sites really have human Spanish/Indonesian translators that do actual proofreading? I bet they have none.

Take an example of desdelinux case. The original article (in Spanish) reads:

``` Bueno, como es de esperarse en Gentoo, existen muchas opciones de kernel, les dejo aquí una pequeña lista para que vean mejor a lo que me refiero:

    gentoo-sources: Kernel 4.12 con parches especiales para Gentoo Linux.
    git-sources: Kernel directamente descargado desde el repositorio Git de Linus.
    vanilla-sources: Kernel completo sin ningún tipo de parche.
```

which is translated on the site as:

``` Seperti yang diharapkan di Gentoo, ada banyak opsi kernel, saya tinggalkan daftar kecil di sini agar Anda dapat memahami dengan lebih baik apa yang saya maksud:

    sumber gentoo: Kernel 4.12 dengan patch khusus untuk Gentoo Linux.
    git-sumber: Kernel langsung diunduh dari gudang Linus Git.
    vanilla-sumbersource: Kernel penuh tanpa patch apapun.
```

Notice that linux sources package names (gentoo-sources, git-sources, and vanilla-sources) are translated despite being proper names, which should not be in this case.

Whereas Google Translate renders the translated passage as:

``` Seperti yang diharapkan di Gentoo, ada banyak opsi kernel, berikut adalah daftar kecilnya sehingga Anda dapat lebih memahami maksud saya:

     gentoo-sources: Kernel 4.12 dengan patch khusus untuk Gentoo Linux.
     git-sources: Kernel diunduh langsung dari repositori Git Linus.
     vanilla-sources: Kernel lengkap tanpa patch apa pun.
```

For more natural and flowing translation, I'd like to write it instead as:

``` Seperti yang diharapkan, ada banyak pilihan kode sumber kernel di Gentoo. Beberapa diantaranya:

     gentoo-sources: Kernel versi 4.12 dengan tambalan spesifik untuk Gentoo.
     git-sources: Kernel dengan potret langsung dari repositori Linus.
     vanilla-sources: Rilis kernel asli tanpa tambalan apapun.
```

These intricacies above reminds me of biblical translation context. Translation can be done in either formal equivalence (word-by-word like NASB and ESV) or dynamic equivalence (thought-by-thought as in NIV and NLT). The former seeks to stay close to original language's wording, but may produce stiff target language text. The latter tries to convey meaning of original language in more readable target language text by making use of context interpretation, which if it is done poorly, can divert actual meaning from the original.

Thanks for the reply.

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