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Current standards for MTL

First_Witch

First_Witch

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Opinions from Staff preffered. What are our current standards in regards to MTL and profiles? Is a series that is to 60-70% untranslated allowed to be on the wiki with MTL? What are the rules if we dont have translation helpers for that language?
 
No offence, but I want the opinion of people who actually get to decide this. Either its allowed with/or without caveats or its not, I aint here to argue that. I simply want a binding statement that allows or disallows it by staff, I want someone in charge to actually put their foot down.
 
First_Witch said:
I simply want a binding statement that allows or disallows it by staff, I want someone in charge to actually put their foot down.
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I'll be the first one interested in that too. I simply linked the other thread since there were two staff members who shared their opinion on it.

But frankly, with the topic coming up that frequently, it should definitely be a staff thread with a definite answer.
 
The official guidelines for this are the following:
Additionally, while official translations are preferred, fan translations that are of good and very reliable quality will also be accepted. For works that have not been officially translated, the use of original raw texts and associated translations is preferred, but it should be noted that for fully fan translated works like Visual Novels, Web Novels, etc., it may not be practical or feasible for participants to locate raw texts for the entire work and present them alongside the scan. In situations where the reliability of publicly available material is in question, the analysis of re-translations performed by members of the VSBW may be used as a means of evaluation.
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—Here

I believe this is the thread where it got decided for such.

So taking what the page says and applying it to this case: You will need to get the translations evaluated by the translation helpers anyways, rendering machine translation useless.

If we don't have proper people to verify translation, the verse will not be eligible to be added, unfortunately.

Edit: Or at the least, only the parts officially translated will be eligible.
 
I'm the one dude who doesn't work with MTL stuff, Lephyr.
 
I am the least qualified individual to weigh in on that.
 
Perhaps doing a staff thread is would be fair? Getting a dialogue with the most staff members will surely be beneficial and also put a final verdict on this case.
 
SweetDao said:
Perhaps doing a staff thread is would be fair? Getting a dialogue with the most staff members will surely be beneficial and also put a final verdict on this case.
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I consider it minor enough that it can be done in this thread (I mean, current guidelines are generalized enough that it covers the issue imo, just add a direct mention to MTL in there and GG), but if some of the other staff I tagged think it would be better as an entire thread to itself, that's fine too.
 
LephyrTheRevanchist said:
(I mean, current guidelines are generalized enough that it covers the issue imo, just add a direct mention to MTL in there and GG), but if some of the other staff I tagged think it would be better as an entire thread to itself, that's fine too.
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It's more so about the fact that some verse still uses MTL without human verification. If the current consensus is to not allow it, sure, but if it can be allowed, it's another topic entirely that should be discussed.
 
SweetDao said:
It's more so about the fact that some verse still uses MTL without human verification. If the current consensus is to not allow it, sure, but if it can be allowed, it's another topic entirely that should be discussed.
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As said, current guideline applies fine here. If it doesn't have an official translation, needs to be verified by our translation helpers. If it can't be verified, it's not allowed.
 
Additionally, while official translations are preferred, fan translations that are of good and very reliable quality will also be accepted. For works that have not been officially translated, the use of original raw texts and associated translations is preferred, but it should be noted that for fully fan translated works like Visual Novels, Web Novels, etc., it may not be practical or feasible for participants to locate raw texts for the entire work and present them alongside the scan. In situations where the reliability of publicly available material is in question, the analysis of re-translations performed by members of the VSBW may be used as a means of evaluation.

Machine translation is not an acceptable alternative, as it is prone to errors and mistranslation, and would have to be re-evaluated by members of VSBW anyway, rendering it redundant.
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Maybe something like this can be added to the rules?
 
Tbh, I think MTL can be used for translating very individual terms but definitely not sentences or passages as a whole, at all. Like, for example, if you want to get the English term for “宿命" which is "fate", then you can use MTL and you'll most likely accurately get the result. Though, if you attempt to translate an entire sentence or passage using MTL, take ”天命之界是个异次元抽象空间", a very simple sentence for example: it translates to "The world of destiny is an abstract space of different dimensions“ by MTL -- this translation is wrong; the actual translation should be "The Realm of Heaven's Mandate is a separate abstract n-dimensional space".

Edit: however, it shouldn't be used to translate terms that are verse-inclusive, since it obviously gives inaccurate results. Example: "阴域道士" is actually a verse-inclusive term that refers to someone part of a specific alliance, not an actual Daoist that originates from the underworld as if the MTL suggests.
 
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What about verses that have some chapters translated but the rest are MTL though? I've worked with verses that have a total of 92 chapters and 70 chapters are translated while the rest are MTL (but edited and fixed by ppl)
 
Bernkastelll said:
What about verses that have some chapters translated but the rest are MTL though? I've worked with verses that have a total of 92 chapters and 70 chapters are translated while the rest are MTL (but edited and fixed by ppl)
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The translated section is fine for use. Anything else would have to be translated by on-site helpers.
 
LephyrTheRevanchist said:
Yes. Even currently, any translation that's not official has to be verified. Nothing here is changing that, we are just making it clear that this also extends to MTL.
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I completly glossed this over because it was a question about MTL only, but even fan translations?

What are fan translated Manwha going to do? We dont have korean Translator helpers
 
First_Witch said:
I completly glossed this over because it was a question about MTL only, but even fan translations?

What are fan translated Manwha going to do? We dont have korean Translator helpers
Click to expand...
That part is covered also
Additionally, while official translations are preferred, fan translations that are of good and very reliable quality will also be accepted.
Click to expand...
As long as it can be verified that the translation is reliable, it should be fine

The key part is being able to be verifiable.
 
Alright, my question is sovled then. If anyone else wants to hijack this thread for translation related questions be my guest, but I got what I wanted.
 
Hmm. We probably should try to find skilled and reliable Korean translation helpers. That is true. Help in that regard would be appreciated. 🙏
 
Antvasima said:
Hmm. We probably should try to find skilled and reliable Korean translation helpers. That is true. Help in that regard would be appreciated. 🙏
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If this is really necessary and we don't have luck by any case, then I suppose I could try and slightly help out, but my knowledge on korean is like... very limited, even worse than my skills in Japanese honestly.
 
Well, we preferably need native or fluent speakers for the sake of reliability. 🙏
 
Planck's addition looks good to me.

I also don't trust "human-edited MTL", since it seems like that's often not done with much knowledge at all of the original language. Rather, it tends to just clean up names and verse-specific terminology, while missing glaring errors (sometimes even with things as basic as having consistent pronoun usage). Currently, MTL is not good enough for some light editing to fix its shortcomings.
 
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