Danbooru

Faster translation ideas...please share your thoughts

Posted under General

Finally I'm home again after a rather long 3 week trip without *any* internet access. Quite refreshing indeed.
Anyway, I just wanted to check if the topic has somehow progessed (Unfortunately that's not quite the case :) ) .
Perhaps we should just keep collecting ideas and "hacks" for the next major version of danbooru and hope it will come soon. (As most ideas, like the latest pool, won't do much to tackle such a big problem at this time.) More sophisticated solutions are (in my opinion) bound to more or less major programing.
But anyway, good to be back and please keep on discussing!

legga said:
What makes old translation requests any more interesting than new ones?

I agree; rather than old requests, I think the more pressing need (for less jp-proficient translators) is to be able to mark out difficult-to-translate posts for attention. This would be particularly useful in cases where translation would be crucial for continuity and/or getting the joke, like untranslated bits in the middle of 4koma series or such (eg: post #369029 of Arata's Sanae 4koma series remained untranslated for quite a while although subsequent posts got translated).

to be able to mark out difficult-to-translate posts for attention

I'm not sure what you mean. Like a "help, this bit is tricky" tag?

While we're throwing ideas around:

Perhaps beginners would appreciate easy posts being left for them (experts add easy_translation and move on), and being able to tick a box saying "yes, please send me a message if can point out how you'd have done it better" - like having your work marked by a teacher who does so out of kindness rather than obligation.

This kind of behind-the-scenes learning community may seem dumb and unnecessary, but if more Japanese-learners are attracted to the site, then everybody wins.

Danbooru material stands out because it requires very little time investement - you can translate a post with a single line and feel satisfied, using just your web browser. There may be better ways of learning, but as fansubbers will attest, there's a certain appeal to having your work appreciated by others.

Just thinking aloud here.

Updated

legga said:
I'm not sure what you mean. Like a "help, this bit is tricky" tag?

Something like that, particularly if there's some gag or colloquial usage in there that you didn't understand, or a missing translation in a partially translated post or in the middle of a pool affects continuity. Not just for any "help, I can't translate this" situation.

Earlier discussion in this thread has already established that using such a tag would be open to abuse, though.

While we're throwing ideas around:

Perhaps beginners would appreciate easy posts being left for them (experts add easy_translation and move on), and being able to tick a box saying "yes, please send me a message if can point out how you'd have done it better" - like having your work marked by a teacher who does so out of kindness rather than obligation.

Interesting ideas that would be possible especially with a separate userlevel for translators. Would be even more difficult to implement than the separate userlevel, though -- and that idea didn't garner enough support, either.

legga said:
if more students of Japanese are attracted to the site, then everybody wins.

Valid argument, but OTOH, not sure if this might lead to more blind-translations (such as 攻め/受け -> attack/defense, which I have seen), or whether it would be widespread enough to be an issue.

r0d3n7z said:
Interesting ideas that would be possible especially with a separate userlevel for translators.

I don't think it'd need a separate userlevel. Just an unobtrusive "Send translation feedback" link to /dmail/compose?to=blah (with the notes dumped there for quoting). Replaced by the text "Translation feeback not requested" if they didn't check the little box.

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