
Ask HN: Would you use/participate in a translation site like this? - andrewljohnson
http://www.gaiagps.com/news/article/Crowd-Sourcing%20Translations
======
csytan
Hey andrew,

I've been working on launching a site like this for the last 5 months. Feel
free to check it out: <http://www.caterpi.com/>

Also some competitors in the same space: <http://onehourtranslation.com> and
<http://mygengo.com>

~~~
algorias
Cool site, dead simple. You might want to make the services page more
friendly, though. I know 3 languages, so you're expecting me to enter 6
combinations by hand, one by one? Why not just let me state which languages I
know, and generate all combinations? Then allow editing of rates for all of
them on one page.

~~~
csytan
Thanks for the feedback algorias. I'll definitely give it some thought.

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icey
Transifex is probably a competitor in this space
(<http://www.transifex.net/>).

One of the problems that I've had with lowest bidder translations is that the
cost of a poor translation can be quite high. Working on a large real estate
management application a few years ago, we hired a firm based on cost alone
for a bunch of translations; and they did some weird things like using the
word for "zipper" when we wanted "zip code". The translations were generally
correct, but little things like that really made us look pretty bad in the
eyes of our international customers.

So, my point is that I would go out and look for a company that had a good
translation track record before trusting the public face of my company to
someone on the basis of cost.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I'm hoping that some crowd-sourcing features will handle quality better. For
example:

1) Similar to 99Designs, etc, everyone could vote on quality, so that could
give you some confidence in the text.

2) Translator users could accumulate karma and reviews.

3) Translators' previous work would be public for inspection, and you could
see comments and votes on previous work.

4) The requester could seek higher quality by offering a higher price.

~~~
nzmsv
I think double-checking results would bring the most benefit, especially if
done by a native speaker of the target language. They don't have to understand
the source language, just point out that a sentence makes no sense or uses
awkward grammar.

~~~
patio11
_They don't have to understand the source language_

Find the mistake in the following sentence which cost my company $X (can't
tell you, but it is eyepopping):

"The subject registration screen should list the lecture subject name, drawn
from the database table for the lectures subject name."

~~~
andrewljohnson
I can find at least one grammar mistake.

There should be an apostrophe in lecture's.

Did that cost you money?

~~~
patio11
Your correction was precisely what cost $X.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Can you explain why this cost money without revealing too much?

~~~
patio11
There is a long standing tradition at a major customer of my company,
unrelated to this system, that any worker anywhere on the line can hit a Big
Red Button which will stop the line if they detect a quality issue. Hitting
the Big Red Button has immediate costs: it delays production ($$$), it incurs
overtime expenses to get the lost production back ($$$), it throws your supply
lines into chaos ($$), it causes you to miss targets with your customers and
pay out contractual damages ($$$$$$), etc, etc.

Hitting the Big Red Button on a software project is cheaper, but not free.
(For example, the Big Red Button plan for customer acceptance testing might
sound like "Nobody goes home if there is an unknown risk to delivery", and a
translation error anywhere means there is an unknown risk to delivery until
you have verified that whatever process introduced the error was not similarly
out of control elsewhere.)

------
friism
I actually submitted this exact idea to YC last year. Here are some
competitors: <http://translationcreation.com/> (site down at time of writing)
<http://www.proz.com/>

The YC-segment could probably be convinced to use something like this (I'd use
it if the editing/checking worked well). I know of several tech-startups that
use mturk in a way similar to what you describe.

A big hurdle for wider uptake would be confidentiality of texts to be
translated.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Care to share your application, or even just the relevant business-plan type
parts?

~~~
friism
done.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Thanks, this is a very interesting read. Also, I'm jealous of your adventures
to Mt. Everest, the Great Barrier Reef, and MIT :)

I made it up Kili once, but Everest is a different beast.

------
DenisM
I would use it to localize my iPhone apps. I currently use OneHourTranslation
and they are pricey at $0.07/word. Make it half that and I will switch.

Extra points:

    
    
      * have the translators know about iPhone and the app, 
        so that they have context
      * support for incremental translation (so that terms 
        stay consistent as you add features)
      * automatically validate .strings file format on submission.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I like the incremental translation idea. I worry about all my translations
breaking when we do a big update and change stuff.

If you could get set up with translators you liked, and the site facilitated
long term relationships, that would be really powerful. The site would need
some sort of specialized, versioned CMS.

~~~
daves9400
The site supports long term relation with specific translators I liked. You
simply ask them and they arrange it.

They dont do version control yet, that would be nice and as for price it is
the lowest price I found for professional translation. They charge the same
price for all languages and they dont charge extra for fast delivery.

Google is free but I would use it only for reading never for writing.

~~~
DenisM
Which site are you talking about?

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natch
When you talk about "competing sites" that seems a bit off, since your site
doesn't exist yet. It took me a while to figure this out.

One way to find rough use data would be to find the existing sites, then plug
them into <http://quantcast.com> and look at the traffic numbers.

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radu_floricica
It's just a feeling, so please take it with a grain of salt, but I think
people see mechanical turk a bit like a game on which they can win small
amounts of money. Turning it into work and making people translate for cash
(as opposed to entertainment) is likely to lead to higher rates.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I think your feeling is way off. The people I have dealt with on MTurk view it
as work, and to most of them, five American dollars is a great deal of money.

I have met people who call themselves freelance translators, and after they
finish my translation, they are eager for more at the same rate.

------
nano81
While not for iPhone Apps, Facebook's translations for Connect sites works
similarly:
[http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Internationali...](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Internationalization)

------
innovate
Very interesting. What were your challenges with respect to the machine
translations specifically? Also, can you post or share the MTurk ads you
use/d?

~~~
andrewljohnson
I originally just posted the text and asked for a translation. But, even
though I said "no machine translations" I still would get tons.

This ad has been the most effective for me:

Translate a bit of English text into another language.

Please email me at andrew@gaiagps.com to tell me what language you want to
translate to, and I will email you the text to translate. The potential
languages are Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, French,
Russian, Japanese, and Korean. No other languages are needed.

Do not use an automatic translator. I have checked all of them. You shouldn't
email me unless you are a native speaker. If you do not have Chinese relatives
or a degree in Chinese from a university, then you cannot do the Chinese
translation. The same goes for all the other languages.

I have gotten hundreds of responses, mostly from Indians who claim to do the
translation, but they use an online translator. If you are one of these, don't
bother - you are just wasting your time. If you are a special guy in India who
knows Russian or some other language, then send me a really convincing email,
or I'm just going to delete it with all the spam.

~~~
ithayer
Nice technique. Another idea might be to select some standard text (eg: some
news article) that you predetermine, and run it through several online
translators, and compare what you get back from the humans to those. You might
also include a 'turing test' sentence in there like: "obama talked to the
bushes about their time in office".

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jasonlbaptiste
yes we would use this. we used mturk for translations and had it setup for
multiple entries. This would help us significantly and we would pay. hth

~~~
ithayer
interesting! What type of data are you translating (iphone app text, webapp
text, etc)? Can you elaborate on your experience with mechanical turk? What
did you notice to be the major problems/inconveniences?

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bemmu
Yup, we were talking about localizing a bunch of strings for our app just
yesterday. Specifically need Malay, Spanish and French.

~~~
ithayer
Do you mind sharing what kind of app you're trying to localize (iphone, web,
etc)?

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Patonj
Another strong competitor - <http://www.tomedes.com>

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daves9400
whats the idea with getting into a segment that is crowded already? do you
have something better?

