Re: [atlarge-discuss] RE : [atlarge-discuss] Forum Usage at dot-org

[Stephen Waters <swaters@luy.info>]

On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 07:18, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 15 Jul 2003 at 22:07, Jeff Williams wrote:
> 
> >   Indeed it is true that php makes language translation more
> >   difficult,
> > but still doable.  If the ICANNATLARGE.ORG web site was
> > HTTP based translation is very simple as Jeff H., has indicated.
> 
> The above makes no sense whatsoever.  The use of PHP doesn't hinder 
> (or help) translation in any way.  It's merely a server-side language 
> that allows the creation of dynamic content, but the end result is to 
> generate HTML that is served by HTTP, like any other Web page, and 
> just as capable of being fed to an automated translator (e.g., 
> Babelfish: http://babel.altavista.com/ ).
> 
> Automated translators, however, are not very good in quality; human 
> languages are resistant to automation (because us humans aren't as 
> rigorously logical as computers, and thus our languages are subtly 
> ambiguous in many ways that computer languages aren't).  Thus, to 
> have a true multilingual site, it would be necessary to make human 
> translations of the content, which is completely independent of what 
> technical means (PHP, HTML, HTTP, etc.) are used ultimately to serve 
> the pages.

The simplest way to write a PHP application is with hard-coded English
text. That's probably what the poster had in mind. Obviously, that's the
Wrong[tm] thing to do in our case.

I propose a two-pronged approach:
   1) If humans are available for a language, they can volunteer to do
the manual translation
   2) Otherwise, use Babelfish with a huge disclaimer at the top,
referring them to the English version for clarification

-s



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