[JRG]

Rain, on May 15 2004, 11:04 AM, said:

Just a quick question regarding languages: Its said that languages like Hebrew are read right to left. (Chinese used to be this one, but adapted to modern computers and books) So is Hebrew or Arabic and all else still this way? Will Fred have to do a right-to-left version of BBO?




Rain

Hebrew is still right-to-left.

[JRG]

csdenmark, on May 14 2004, 04:49 AM, said:

mrdct, on May 14 2004, 11:48 AM, said:

Having the vugraph schedule in EST & CET may be convenient for people who live in those timezones but is quite a hassle for people who live outside of those timezone and even more hassle for people in the southern hemisphere who have daylight savings at a different time of year.

Also, showing EST & CET together often causes date errors as for 25% of the time EST & CET are on different days.

An automatic means of the vugraph schedule being presented in the user's own timezone would be fantastic, but in the meantime GMT and GMT only would be much for convenient.

I only mentioned this as an example of the easyness to take advantage from standard tools free available to all on internet. What I mean here is fx. stating time as: Time is fixed on Wednesday, 26 May 2004 3:00:00 PM Paris time

Aut. translation John Goold will be able to put in for help files tomorrow and those important sites will be available in 10+ languages at once.

So simple is translation of BBO help sites:

Dutch language

German language

French language

Italian language

I'm not as fast as Claus! However, I am looking into his suggestion. It may be a while before you see anything (if at all), as I am leaving for Canada in a couple of days to attend our daughter's university graduation. [For two weeks to take advantage of the trip.]

Here are the reasons I want to take a bit of time over this (besides being a little slow on the uptake):

- When I tried a quick test of the Altavista tools, it failed (because I don't have my own web site and the tool attempts to retrieve the text by downloading the page having the translation icon on it).

- The test I tried online (i.e. not translating a BBO Help file) was abysmally slow. I need to determine if this is normal or was just an occasional thing. I don't think we can subject everyone to slow loading of the Help pages. Too many people would feel the Help is worthless if it took too long to display.

- The Altavista icon takes up a considerable amount of space on the displayed page - in one test (putting the code in the Table of Contents frame), it was superposed over the Bridge Base Ace of Spades. So I would have to find a way to prevent this translation mechanism from messing up the look of the Help pages. I have tried to minimize the amount of scrolling people have to do, and so far it looks like this would force more scrolling.

So, here's the bottom line.

The translators may do a poor job, but for some people I can see that a poor job may be better than none at all (I could understand the instructions I used to get with electronic gear, though I used to laugh myself sick at the English). This means it may be worthwhile to implement Claus's suggestion of using the Altavista translation facility.

If it is too slow to be worthwhile to anyone, there is no point.

If it is just a bit sluggish and I can implement it without totally destroying the Help format, I'll try and do so. This may mean asking Fred and Uday for more disk space (and possibly another link in the BBO client) so I can maintain two copies of the Help files (one with the Altavista link embedded).

Oh, one other thing: I dislike going into one web site and having it link to another (e.g. using BBO, bringing up the Help, then the Help linking to another site). This would happen automatically using the Altavista icon (when the page loads, a script that links to Altavista is activated, even if you don't click on the Altavista icon). Also, it would introduce what is effecdtively an advertisement for Altavista into the BBO Help. I need to get Fred and Uday's thoughts on this matter.

[uday]

We're hoping that our friendly bbo-humans will do a much better job of translating the many terse phrases that we use in BBO.

Typical examples:

Close news window
Resume
Authorize payment
Conditions of contest


I can definitely see some value in using a machine translator to *initialize* the "translations" before we ask the human to proofread.

And maybe there will be languages for which there will be no available humans. In this case, maybe a machine xlation will work.

We'll see. I'm nearly finished w/the website to allow xlation and while we're waiting for humans to show up maybe i'll initialize a couple of languages with google and see what it all looks like

[uday]

I can also see that a machine xlation of the help might - might - be better than no help . But as CSDenmark shows us, BBO need not take any action except supply a link.

[csdenmark]

Looks like we are now reaching the right arguments. Who do we want to help with translation? None of us posting here. We can handle english and most prefer to do it in that way. We are talking of those who cannot and probably never will be able to. Approx. 25% of the BBO members. Those people cannot read the help information, they cannot read the "Rules for these sites".

We are not talking about the choice perfect translation versus imperfect translation. We are talking about the ability to guess the rest of a meaning from a text you can understand the language of or to guess the meaning of a text from which you understand nothing of or only the modern english words nowadays adopted of all languages like computer terms.

Machine translations need to be worked over after translation. Regarding the kind of using we are talking of - such will not be possible. We therefore need instead to try to prepare texts for best possible translation avoiding known problems. Let me give an example.

"Well done partner" is machine translated completely silly as "Watercontainer good partner". The reason for that is the syntax and that the word "well" have 5 meanings in english. As the machine cannot decide the interpretation the word is interpretated as susbstantive and translated as a watercontainer". Changing the sentence to "Good done partner" - the text is prepared for translation and you will have the translation you assume.

[the hog]

Can any of translate English into Australian?

[csdenmark]

If you mail me in danish(swedish or norwegian will do too), no matter how poor. I will have your conclusions right. I will be able to read/guess your arguments right. I will be able to understand even your cultural biased arguments.


If you mail me in english I will have your conclusions right. I will be able to have most of your arguments right and cultural biased arguments I will be able to guess fairly well if I have some kind of knowledge of the topic.


If you mail me in russian I will understand nothing. I will try to machine translate into english. I think I will be able to guess your conclusions right. I doubt I will be able to guess your arguments right. Cultural biased arguments I will need to give up.


I you mail me in polish I will understand nothing. I will try to spot some keywords for machine translation into english. If I am lucky - I will be able to guess your conclusions. Nothing else.


If you mail me in turkish I will understand nothing. I will thank you in english for your kind interest.

[JRG]

The_Hog, on May 16 2004, 04:42 AM, said:

Can any of translate English into Australian?

ROFL.

There's too big a cultural difference. It's a daunting task!!!

[willow23]

I always keep asking what other possible changes can come about...and no sooner I ask . .I am smacked with another brilliant idea or improvement...I think that the translation project is insightful...one should not miss out on the best bridge site in the world to a language barrier...sounds like quite a bit of work...but who ever thought that we would get this far right~!......Home Run Guys ...Good Luck on the project...

[Abadaba]

I think it is just one more example of how much Fred, Uday and Sheri care about their worldwide audience. And one more example of why BBO is the greatest site there is for online bridge.

Now if they could only figure out a way for all my typing mistakes to be translated.

If you can read Abalese you are indeed a genius

[mishovnbg]

slothy, on May 15 2004, 02:59 PM, said:

mishovnbg, on May 15 2004, 02:32 AM, said:

Hi Slothy!
"Perhaps even Russian, but this may cause unnecessary probs with code-paging..."
You probably don't know that russian and by the way all slovenian use cyrillic alphabet which was invented and used first in bulgaria. So "unnecessary probs with code-paging" affect all bulgarians and they unlike most of other nations can't write in chat on his own language. Probably nobody asked Fred to correct this unsuitable for us chat environment, because normally bulgarians are friendly and patience, except for enemies... Do you know that about half milliard of people use cyrillic symbols?

In fact Mr Vnbg i did know that - You probably don't know that russian and by the way all slovenian use cyrillic alphabet which was invented and used first in bulgaria.- but saw no reason to include such an irrelevant fact to the spirit of the thread in my post . It is worth knowing and i am sure many people would be overwhelmingly interested in bulgaria's contribution to linguistics, and as a proud Bulgarian I am sure you were enthusiastic enuf to express that fact with little hesitation . Out of curiousity, were you asking whether i knew that bulgarian used Cyrillic alphabet or that it was invented in Bulgaria???

If people really want to know, I believe it was invented in the 9th century by a priest, called Cyril (hence Cyrillic), to translate religious manuscripts (the power of religion ) from Byzantium so they could be read by native Slav-speakers . (please correct me if i am wrong Mish). For the avid readers amongst us, especially the addictive smokers, hee hee, D. Dimov's book "Tabacco" (hard to get hold of translation now) is well worth reading and a book of poems called "Motor Songs" (forgot author sorry )...

NB. You may be wondering why i wrote the above. I bought a Bulgarian woman a coffee in a bistro once. Unfortunately she made a rather annoying noise when she drank it so that relationship didnt mature. However, she had the nicest pair of legs i have ever seen on a woman (or a man for that matter). Thus i wrote it out of nostalgia.

Mish, you may like to know that the character Uncle Bulgaria in the Wombles series (english TV series ) was so called coz he looks very much like you Although your bridge may be significantly better i am sure he can dig holes in the ground with his hands more expertly

What i probably didnt know, however, was your comment "normally bulgarians are friendly and patient". but i am VERY open-minded and patient too. hee hee

I am currently writing some web-based software to allow people to interact using Maltese script (Latin script with a few variant characters) and it is proving quite challenging, to me anyway. That is the only reason why i said about the difficulty with the code-paging...

Your Fellow Slavic Sympathiser, Alex .

PS Misho (and Rado jaja) , please appreciate my ambassadorial function of promoting the history and literature of Bulgaria

Hi all! You can skip this post, because of its education purpose about cyrillic landuage and code paging as well as about bulgarian history about making that anti code paging alphabet.
Hi slothy!
I am happy to thelp you as my future fellow-citizen to be proud of you new country achievements. Yes, Byzantium priests was send to Great Moravia (now Slovenia) by their request to make new alphabet and yes, christian religion was reason to do it. Priests (Cyril and Metodi) did their great job (855 year) and go to Rome to take permission from pope for its usage in slovenian churchs. They finish this job with success too. The name of their alpabet was "glagolica"(not cyrillica - different symbols) and was used in Great Moravia and some other slovenian countries.
Because of political changes followers/students of Cyril and Metodi was expeled from Great Moravia later and was accepted/enroled by great bulgarian tsar Boris. These students was Kliment, Sava, Naum, Angelarii and Gorazd(died soon). Boris asked theese students to make alphabet and this new alphabet was named "cyrillic" in memorial of their great teacher Cyril. The target of Boris was to make Bulgaria and bulgarians part of civilized christian world. Great job of evolution was continued by his son tsar Simeon, who make 2 big centers of cyrillic science and translation of religious manuscripts to cyrillic - hard and expensive work for many years. The only way new language like cyrillic to be successful is when rich large country, like Bulgaria theese times, works and spend resources to do that. Thas why bulgarians are proud to give to his slovenian brothers simple and beauty alphabet and language, where all sounds like wrote and no such thing like 50 different meaning of single word . Also is not chance many of great world opera songsters are bulgarians - our language is very suitable for singing too.
Hope to greet you soon slothy as my new proud fellow-citizen, our really beauty and clever bulgarian girls waiting for you, hehe

Your friend Misho

[csdenmark]

I have today helped a romanian with no english skills but able to communicate in french which language I dont understand. That person needed to be able to read and understand BBO-websites. Only way was to provide a link for machine translation of the sites into french. I have done so once before.

How do we communicate as we neither understand each others primary language nor each others secondary language? We use Messenger. A HTML-platform and as I am used to this tool I produce the translation in both directions. French -> english as well as english -> french. In this way we can communicate in a basic way.

It would certainly be very helpful if the BBO sites would be prepared for an enhanced quality of machine translation.

Recently I did the same via italian language.