Misplaced Pages

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(talk page watcher) Valereee, I don't see your translation; can you elaborate? I see you started the article Gabriele Bonci on English Misplaced Pages in January 2023 and in two days brought it to 12kb, and since then it has been expanded by others. On Italian Misplaced Pages, there is no article called it:Gabriele Bonci and four previous attempts to create it have been deleted by admins, most recently in October 2023. Nor is there a draft in progress (nothing at it:Bozza:Gabriele Bonci). I see no evidence of an in-progress translation into Italian, because there is nothing there when I look at the translation tool link you provided, just an invitation to *start* (inizia) a translation. But I don't know how the translation tool works; perhaps it saves previous translation work of yours in some space accessible only to you? If you know where your translation draft it, can you link it, and if you don't, can you raise your question at a Talk page for the translation tool? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:22, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Hey, Mathglot! I started a translation, but I wasn't allowed to publish it because I didn't modify any of the machine-translated text. So when you click through you don't get to a translation page? I think if you go there and click 'start', you'll see what I see?

I think the problem is that I don't speak any Italian, so I can't copyedit the Italian translation. I'm not allowed to machine translate 100%, which is good. I was hoping Jack would take the machine translation, edit, and publich. Valereee (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Valereee, I did click it before, and at that time I got prompted to start translating the page. But I don't get that now. I presume that you have just started a translation in the few minutes since my first message, is that right? Because now, I don't see the offer to start translating anymore; instead, I see a boxed message indicating that a translation is already in progress by User:Valereee, and that I should either coordinate with you, or start another, new translation of it after 24 hours. Mathglot (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2024 (UTC) But I think you should stop using machine translation. Mathglot (talk) 22:08, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Hm. I probably did click that button.

Oh, believe me, I am not interested in using machine translation! I've done a single one like this before -- I wrote an article that was appropriate for fr.wiki, did a machine transx, and invited a french speaker in to do the actual work. I started this here the same way -- a clearly Italian subject with no article on it.wiki. Do a machine translation to make it easy on an Italian speaker, and invite them in. I was hoping Jack would take the machine translation and create the it.wiki article. Valereee (talk) 22:13, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I would not do that, either, as it feels like potential entrapment to me, in the sense that the other editor might feel they are "just copy-editing" for smooth Italian and so on, but if they touch the article after you while it contains gross errors of fact that you were not able to verify because you can't read Italian and induce them to make minimal adjustments and then move it to main space, then they are partly or mostly responsible for it if they publish it. It's like a version of WP:PROXYING with a hurdle involved (language), rather than a block. In addition, if you don't speak Italian, then presumably you haven't tried to read the policies and guidelines of Italian Misplaced Pages (see column 7 at § Interlang policy shortcuts for links to some of the major ones) and so haven't paid any special attention if a literal translation would be compliant at it-wiki. It feels like you get to do the "crime" and they get to do the "time" (warnings on their Talk page for POV, unverifiable, laundered COI, whatever the case may be at it-wiki).

I also question the wisdom of requesting someone to translate/create an article that is a four-time loser at the destination Misplaced Pages; it will almost certainly get extra scrutiny. The way it ought to work, imho, if you need translation assistance, is for you to ask for it, get it back in your talk page or the Draft talk page or wherever, and then you publish it, and take full responsibility for errors, if any, as will go out under your username. At a very minimum, if you go ahead with the invitation method, especially if the editor involved is not a veteran, I would advise them about their share of responsibility for everything they choose to publish under their username. By the way, the Italian draft still does not exist, even after whatever it was you did with the tool, so if you started a translation, I have no idea where it is saved.

But I'm just one editor. This is a topic worthy of discussion, but it feels like we are hijacking Jack's Talk page for a topic that is mostly o/t here, and where other users interested in the topic will never see it. I propose we move the discussion somewhere where other interested editors will have a chance to respond. If you agree, feel free to move it, or I will unless you have an objection. Mathglot (talk) 22:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

(Forgot to ping Valereee.) Mathglot (talk) 23:25, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Um, ok. Valereee (talk) 01:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Valereee, on second thought, I wouldn't know what to entitle it, and I don't want to misrepresent your intentions by choosing the wrong title. Feel free to move and name it, or if you suggest a title, I am happy to do it. Mathglot (talk) 01:53, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Move and name what? Sorry, not following. Valereee (talk) 02:42, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot, I feel like there's something going on here that I'm ignorant of. Is there some ongoing discussion of something to do with translation? In particular I had no idea where "as it feels like potential entrapment to me" was coming from. Why in the world would anyone think a translation would be entraptment? And how would I even know an article that was live in enwiki was "a four-time loser at the destination Misplaced Pages; it will almost certainly get extra scrutiny."? I'm completely bemused, here.

I feel like you've come in here red hot and hostile. Can you maybe talk about why, maybe at your talk or mine, to get it off of Jack's? Ping me, wherever. Valereee (talk) 03:01, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Valereee There is no ongoing translation discussion that I am aware of, but this seems like the start of one, and raises some topics that are worth discussing. Perhaps I should have used a different word, but it just seems to me that it is not fair to ask someone else to take over a translation and then publish it under their name, especially if they are not too familiar yet with policies and guidelines, when they don't know if what is being handed to them is a violation of some policy or not. I have no objections on that ground if you publish it yourself on it-wiki, because then any issues with it are identified with your username, not someone else's.

Perhaps this analogy will help: let say I am approached to clean up an English translation of a Nepali-wiki article by some editor who machine-translated it from Nepali into English, but unbeknownst to me the original happened to be a copy violation from a Nepali book; but I cleaned it up and published it in good faith on en-wiki. I wouldn't be very happy about later getting a COPYVIO warning on my talk page threatening a block if I did it again, and I would feel as if I had been entrapped. (However, I would probably refuse such an offer in the first place, because I don't read Nepali, and wouldn't want to expose myself to the risk of publishing it under my name.) Does that help explain where I'm coming from?

I am not hostile to you, and I apologize if something I said made you feel that way. It is my opinion that there is a risk in accepting a request to publish something written by someone else, and I think the risk is heightened, if the origin of the writing was machine translation from a language the requester does not read. I think consideration should be given to extending the WP:PROXYING guideline to cover this situation and describe it as contrary to the guideline, just as proxying a blocked user currently is. As far as how one can know if an article has been deleted before, the same way I found out, by going to it-wiki and looking at the page history for the proposed article. I will look for a place to move this discussion to. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Valereee, after looking around a bit, I wasn't enthusiastic about the page that should've been the natural location (WT:Translation), and anyway I'm all talked out about it. I've collapsed this in order to at least keep the vertical space intercalation on Jack's page to a minimum, and have added a collapse title. Feel free to move this, retitle, uncollapse, as you see fit. Jack, this is your page, so feel free to archive this discussion, remove it, or leave it as is, as you please. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I would like to comment. First of all, I'm not good at using the machine translation tool (for the only page I've created, bacaro, I didn't use external tools), so I've posted part of the translation on Valereee's talk page (I wanted to do the work that Valereee had asked me to do); obviously I can be very useful with the translation, but, as I said, I'm not good at using the machine translation tool. JacktheBrown (talk) 12:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Notes

1. Valereee is a user who has helped me a lot and allowed me to improve a lot, and I would like to reciprocate at least a little.