Should Edited MTL Be Allowed?

[Agnaa]

For a fair few years now, we've not allowed the inclusion of material from sources which lacks an English translation. Even if a user can provide a reliable translation for segments of it that are relevant to indexing, that still leaves concerns; what if the user's leaving out information that contradicts their preferred view? We want there to be a translation of the original work, so people can double-check that everything makes sense in context.

Naturally, we extend this idea to machine translations. Since currently, especially for a book-long context, they can heavily misinterpret things, and hallucinate major changes to the text.

But that leaves the question; should we also extend this to things which are described by the group releasing them as "edited machine translations"?

Our Editing Rules currently say the following:

Additionally, while official translations are preferred, fan translations that are of good and very reliable quality will also be accepted.

But I think some clarity would be helpful.

I'm personally of the view that edited machine translations shouldn't be considered "of good and very reliable quality". Fan translators I know don't use them as a starting point, since with their knowledge it's faster to just translate it themselves than it is to go picking through and checking for errors. Plus, I've seen some which, despite human oversight, end up with some pretty egregious errors, such as blatantly incorrect use of pronouns, which don't inspire much confidence. It seems like this sort of a thing is typically a shortcut if the person releasing it doesn't have a great grasp on one of the languages involved, which is not what we'd want for a reliable translation.

Of course, fully human translations can be quite bad; the Reincarnated Into a Vending Machine Web Novel's translation (at least for the first few dozen chapters) is done by a human who made some bizarre choices, like deciding to cut out paragraphs because they found it boring. Still, while these sorts of cases should be clearly covered by "of good and very reliable quality", I think we could be more clear about cases of edited machine translations.

Also, to be clear, if a series partially has solid human translations, and partially has edited machine translations, this restriction being added would result in the profiles still being around, but having their source material limited to those with human translations.

Important Edit​

Turns out our rules aren't actually clear on excluding untranslated verses, and a lot of people don't want that to be done. Discussion on that matter starts here, and my suggestions on how the rules should be changed are here.

 

[DontTalkDT]

I would not want to ban them, unless actual trouble regarding stuff starts popping up. Like, if your fiction debates weird metaphysical stuff where exact wording is majorly important it makes sense to say that doesn't work. For a simple verse where it never becomes a problem, I think it's fine. Should be replaced, of course, if it ever gets a better translation. But if it's all we ever get in the west and it's somewhat workable, then it may as well be the 'official' version for us. It's what people will talk about.

But I'm especially not in favor of the partial translation thing. If you have a novel where the first 300 chapters are machine translated and the last 1000 are human translated (yes, cases like that exist) it would be majorly weird to have to cut out information from those first 300 chapters. It would simply result in a profile that doesn't accurately reflect the character, completely shooting us in the leg in terms of the goals we want to achieve.
If a reasonably paced effort is ongoing that to replaced MTL with human translation one could say to wait until that catches up, but otherwise not considering the whole thing is not favourable for us.

 

[Agnaa]

I would not want to ban them, unless actual trouble regarding stuff starts popping up. Like, if your fiction debates weird metaphysical stuff where exact wording is majorly important it makes sense to say that doesn't work. For a simple verse where it never becomes a problem, I think it's fine. Should be replaced, of course, if it ever gets a better translation. But if it's all we ever get in the west and it's somewhat workable, then it may as well be the 'official' version for us. It's what people will talk about.

But I'm especially not in favor of the partial translation thing. If you have a novel where the first 300 chapters are machine translated and the last 1000 are human translated (yes, cases like that exist) it would be majorly weird to have to cut out information from those first 300 chapters. It would simply result in a profile that doesn't accurately reflect the character, completely shooting us in the leg in terms of the goals we want to achieve.
If a reasonably paced effort is ongoing that to replaced MTL with human translation one could say to wait until that catches up, but otherwise not considering the whole thing is not favourable for us.

Yeah, the cases where the MTL is frontloaded are weird.

For those, I'd lean towards to only using the human translated chapters regardless. If that renders profiles impossible, as the story is linear and the first 300 chapters are necessary, then don't allow profiles. But I do know that there are cases where it's more like there's "arcs", which don't need to be read in order, where we could purely base profiles off of the later translated chapters.

And I do agree that, in many cases, simply waiting would be a good option as we transition into these rules.

EDIT: And, I do appreciate the middleground you provided, of only disallowing edited MTL when the series invokes a lot of metaphysical stuff that's prone to mistranslation.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Yeah, the cases where the MTL is frontloaded are weird.

For those, I'd lean towards to only using the human translated chapters regardless. If that renders profiles impossible, as the story is linear and the first 300 chapters are necessary, then don't allow profiles. But I do know that there are cases where it's more like there's "arcs", which don't need to be read in order, where we could purely base profiles off of the later translated chapters.

And I do agree that, in many cases, simply waiting would be a good option as we transition into these rules.

If you don't use the MTL at all, then you can't even know whether the chapters you skipped would have been relevant. Like, again, it's just making the profiles worse by ignoring available information.

I would hold it to the same standards as bad human translations. Ban it once issues show up and not before.

 

[Agnaa]

If you don't use the MTL at all, then you can't even know whether the chapters you skipped would have been relevant.

Eh, usually there's some people in the fandom who've read parts even if they haven't been translated. And I do think it is fair to be like "From the MTL we're pretty sure these chapters introduce the power system and show them ascending through the first 4 layers of the hierarchy, the greater story makes no sense without these", even if we ultimately don't allow that MTL to be used on profiles.

Like, again, it's just making the profiles worse by ignoring available information.

There's a tradeoff to be made; it's unreliable information vs ignoring that information. For me, I see the current state of edited MTL as too much of a risk to be worth that tradeoff.

I would hold it to the same standards as bad human translations. Ban it once issues show up and not before.

Hmm, I was more on-board with your earlier suggestion of "disallow edited MTL when the series invokes a lot of intricate metaphysical stuff where the exact wording is important".

How much of an "issue" would you want demonstrated before we disallow a translation group's edited MTL release from being used?

 

[Antvasima]

For the record, I agree with Agnaa here.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I think human translators should be a first priority as are our translation helpers team. Especially if high tiered cosmology or metafictional stuff are being proposed. MTL's could be used for translating simple words, but they should note if they are using it and not pretending to know Japanese, Chinese, ect. Other important highlights are the Japanese word "Hoshi" does get translated to "Star" by most MTLs, but Hoshi when looking up in a Japanese dictionary is a general term for planets, moons, stars, meteorites, ect and not exclusively actual stars such as our Yellow Sun.

 

[Agnaa]

Actually, looking at our rules on this again, it seems like it doesn't explicitly say "If it lacks a translation it can't be used", we've just implicitly operated that way for many large-scale deletions in the past. So we may need some clarity in that regard.

I've also been told from some people off-site that certain verses such as Turma da Mônica, Sergio Bonelli Editore, and Piposh are almost entirely lacking in English translations. Meaning that if we applied this standard to them, they'd be deleted.

Pinging some people who are familiar with those verses @Crazylatin77 @SamanPatou @Armorchompy @Beeb_alt

I've also been told that Megami Tensei, Dragon Ball, Digimon, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure use information on profiles which only comes from untranslated guidebooks. Meaning that if we applied this standard to them, they'd need revisions.

Pinging some people who are familiar with those verses @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @AKM sama @Theglassman12 @Executor_N0 @Chariot190

It seems like either way this resolves, a lot of work would need to be done. Since some large verses such as Cryptozoi and Shinza Banshou could come back if material being untranslated isn't considered an issue.

(All non-staff who were pinged, consider this permission for two posts in this thread)

 

[Chariot190]

I'm already dealing with the JoJo shit, should be looking at that CRT within a month for the Part 1/3 cast? Not really because of this in particular, but was part of the whole "get it all done so they'd never need to be touched again" thought process.
It's just finishing up fate-related slop as that's relevant to a few dudes atm and zelda, mostly zelda actually, been working on that shit for well over a year, it's kind of annoying actually, it took almost a month to get the Shogakugan OOT guide translated for the most part as one example, but using recently adapted eng guides (JoJo 6251 recently got a eng translation for example, that's mostly fine bar a few weird lines), or having people speak the language well enough to translate shit (Red, Shiro, a few others, though they're mostly ****** off from wiki, DM's a thing, etc).

Though in JoJo's case, 95% of the guide stuff used is strictly stuff corroborated by the manga or just extra elaboration anyway, outside of GER anyway. Personally not a fan adding shit that isn't backed by the source.

So like, idk, don't delete the verse? Not that'd be possible at this point a good chunk of profiles kinda ass tho, maybe delete those till we redo them, like Angelo is particularly awful and not in a outdated way, but like a "that never happened wtf" type of way but if there's a specific thing that needs to be done like right this second tell me and I'll go get it handled.

Only major profile atm I think that uses guide stuff is Gio, but we already had CRT's where a few dudes checked over the text pretty damn sure you were there too.
Jotaro actually has Shiro's translations for the main stuff.

 

[Armorchompy]

Actually, looking at our rules on this again, it seems like it doesn't explicitly say "If it lacks a translation it can't be used", we've just implicitly operated that way for many large-scale deletions in the past. So we may need some clarity in that regard.

I've also been told from some people off-site that certain verses such as Turma da Mônica, Sergio Bonelli Editore, and Piposh are almost entirely lacking in English translations. Meaning that if we applied this standard to them, they'd be deleted.

I've personally translated all of the Bonelli stuff I've worked on, in the respective Imgur galleries. I've also had Italian users (mainly Saman) corroborate them- I've never applied a CRT for the verse without having the approval of at least one or two. I like to think I've been "good and very reliable" in doing so. Would rather appreciate if they were not deleted, thank you very much.

 

[Agnaa]

I'm already dealing with the JoJo shit, should be looking at that CRT within a month for the Part 1/3 cast? Not really because of this in particular, but was part of the whole "get it all done so they'd never need to be touched again" thought process.
It's just finishing up fate-related slop as that's relevant to a few dudes atm and zelda, mostly zelda actually, been working on that shit for well over a year, it's kind of annoying actually, it took almost a month to get the Shogakugan OOT guide translated for the most part as one example, but using recently adapted eng guides (JoJo 6251 recently got a eng translation for example, that's mostly fine bar a few weird lines), or having people speak the language well enough to translate shit (Red, Shiro, a few others, though they're mostly ****** off from wiki, DM's a thing, etc).

Though in JoJo's case, 95% of the guide stuff used is strictly stuff corroborated by the manga or just extra elaboration anyway, outside of GER anyway. Personally not a fan adding shit that isn't backed by the source.

So like, idk, don't delete the verse? Not that'd be possible at this point a good chunk of profiles kinda ass tho, maybe delete those till we redo them, like Angelo is particularly awful and not in a outdated way, but like a "that never happened wtf" type of way but if there's a specific thing that needs to be done like right this second tell me and I'll go get it handled.

This wouldn't result in verses like that getting deleted. It'd just be, like, a directive that sources which aren't fully translated (book/chapter/episode/game length, whatever makes sense for the media at hand) in a reliable way shouldn't be used.

Only major profile atm I think that uses guide stuff is Gio, but we already had CRT's where a few dudes checked over the text pretty damn sure you were there too.
Jotaro actually has Shiro's translations for the main stuff.

I've personally translated all of the Bonelli stuff I've worked on, in the respective Imgur galleries. I've also had Italian users (mainly Saman) corroborate them by approving the CRTs in question.

Would rather appreciate if they were not deleted, thank you very much.

We don't seemingly consider "It's fine if you just translate every scan that's being used for profiles" to be sufficient, given how we deleted Cryptozoi despite it following that, as there were concerns about evidence being taken out of context.

If someone wanted to, they could only include scans where a powerful ability is presented, but not the parts where it's mentioned to have a certain limit, and we would be unable to know because the source text isn't translated, only a few profile-relevant passages from it are.

We could change that rule (although I'd rather not), but it would need to be a change, as it would allow certain verses to come back to the site.

 

[Armorchompy]

We don't seemingly consider "It's fine if you just translate every scan that's being used for profiles" to be sufficient, given how we deleted Cryptozoi despite it following that, as there were concerns about evidence being taken out of context.

You have me at a bit of a disadvantage, given you didn't post a link to wherever this happened and I have never heard of it. The only thing I can find are seven years old (!!) posts discussing its deletion having already happened, and one decision happening in such a different era of the wiki is very much not a "rule".

If someone wanted to, they could only include scans where a powerful ability is presented, but not the parts where it's mentioned to have a certain limit, and we would be unable to know because the source text isn't translated, only a few profile-relevant passages from it are.

Or we could not wipe months of work based solely on unfounded paranoia. EDIT: This isn't much different from "an obscure untranslated guidebook debunks this" and nobody would ever delete a verse based on that. Besides, check the "Tex Willer" profile, are you going to tell me the "powerful abilities" of a guy having thirty scans of shooting pretty good and knocking out people could feasibly be disproved by context?

 

[Theglassman12]

I don't remotely dabble with any of those 4 franchises with untranslated guidebooks so idk why you're tagging me on that. I will say that this feels stupid to use as a safety mechanism.

We don't seemingly consider "It's fine if you just translate every scan that's being used for profiles" to be sufficient, given how we deleted Cryptozoi despite it following that, as there were concerns about evidence being taken out of context.

What part of this makes every single franchise that uses untranslated guidebooks as invalidated? If it's not using machine translation and actual translators can verify that it's indeed what the text is being said and it's not being twisted then why shouldn't we use the translation given to us?

 

[Agnaa]

What part of this makes every single franchise that uses untranslated guidebooks as invalidated? If it's not using machine translation and actual translators can verify that it's indeed what the text is being said and it's not being twisted then why shouldn't we use the translation given to us?

It's not the franchises as a whole, just the things sourced solely from that.

And that post did elaborate on the "out of context" concern; if you don't think that's sufficient reasoning, then I'd consider that a fair vote against it, I'm not aware of any further reasons to disallow untranslated stuff.

 

[Chariot190]

We don't seemingly consider "It's fine if you just translate every scan that's being used for profiles" to be sufficient, given how we deleted Cryptozoi despite it following that, as there were concerns about evidence being taken out of context.

Also been trying to take that into account, posting whole sections, and highlighting the relevant parts while having the before and after included so people can even know wtf is actually going on, but again, can't speak for others. That was just something I noticed when looking over some text based verses, where there'd be one line that's posted in imgur, that's supposed to be an ability but what's actually written isn't evident or there's blatantly missing context one wouldn't know because they don't know the verse at hand.
Citations do be helpful though in that case.

Idk wtf a Cryptozoi is tho so I can't comment on that.

If someone wanted to, they could only include scans where a powerful ability is presented, but not the parts where it's mentioned to have a certain limit, and we would be unable to know because the source text isn't translated, only a few profile-relevant passages from it are.

I've been actively adding raw transcripts+raw scans to every scan for stuff I've been working on precisely so people who wanna be anal can check themselves given there was past complains about that by Efi I think it was?

Though I can't speak for others on what they're doing, personally I'd prefer if we made raw transcripts of the original text something that had to be added tho at least (The raw scan too if the thing in question is a MTL scan). That seems like it'd be obvious, just common decency.

Think deleting stuff is a bit jumping the gun tho. No need to go nuclear for what is usually an easy fix unless it's totally ****** like a whole LN that's MTL or something.

 

[Agnaa]

So, on how the Editing Rules should be changed, the relevant text is this:

Officially published works that have reached a high level of notability will be considered for inclusion within the VS Battles Wiki. The use of Wattpad and similar fan work sources is prohibited. However, self-published works will also be considered as long as they meet the aforementioned criteria of notability. 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. However, it should be noted that these translations may not necessarily be considered superior to official translations and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. 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.

The first three sentences should just be chucked into their own bullet point, so rewording the rest.

Text removed from the original is in red, text added to the original is in green.

If we allow untranslated works, as long as they have reliable translations of parts used for profiles, portion conditional on edited MTL being accepted is in bold.

While official translations are preferred, fan translations (including edited machine 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 alongside fan 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, or where it lacks a publicly available translation into English, the analysis of re-translations performed by members of VSBW may be used as a means of evaluation. However, it should be noted that these translations may not necessarily be considered superior to official translations and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Unedited 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.

If we disallow untranslated works, portion conditional on edited MTL being accepted is in bold.

While official translations are preferred, fan translations (including edited machine 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 alongside fan 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 VSBW may be used as a means of evaluation. However, it should be noted that these translations may not necessarily be considered superior to official translations and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. And these limited translations should not be taken to permit the inclusion of material from sources which are largely untranslated. Unedited 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.

I preserved some parts which seemed a bit awkward/unnecessary to me, to not tear down Chesterton's Fence.

I think that should cover all four possible outcomes of this thread. But I do think my proposed wording is a bit weak, I'd kinda like to emphasize the consequences more but I'm not sure how.

 

[Executor_N0]

I'm personally of the view that edited machine translations shouldn't be considered "of good and very reliable quality". Fan translators I know don't use them as a starting point, since with their knowledge it's faster to just translate it themselves than it is to go picking through and checking for errors. Plus, I've seen some which, despite human oversight, end up with some pretty egregious errors, such as blatantly incorrect use of pronouns, which don't inspire much confidence. It seems like this sort of a thing is typically a shortcut if the person releasing it doesn't have a great grasp on one of the languages involved, which is not what we'd want for a reliable translation.

Of course, fully human translations can be quite bad; the Reincarnated Into a Vending Machine Web Novel's translation (at least for the first few dozen chapters) is done by a human who made some bizarre choices, like deciding to cut out paragraphs because they found it boring. Still, while these sorts of cases should be clearly covered by "of good and very reliable quality", I think we could be more clear about cases of edited machine translations.

Also, to be clear, if a series partially has solid human translations, and partially has edited machine translations, this restriction being added would result in the profiles still being around, but having their source material limited to those with human translations.

First, give my opinion. Any tool when used needs to be understood in what it can do, the degree of what can be trusted about it, and what is likely to happen when it doesn't work as intended. For example, languages like Japanese can easily write whole sentences describing a character or action without giving away gender, so any person, even a native Japanese speaker, would need context to know who the subject is, and if it can't be found anyway, they would just guess what the gender would be, or try to write the text in a gender-neutral way, which sometimes won't work depending on the language (For example, try to translate in Portuguese in a Gender-neutral way and you'll find out it just doesn't work under the common norm).

I wouldn't blame that on "MTL being bad" if it's a problem that a person could do as well, it's a quirk of the language (For example, if it's given context for a character being of X gender, I think it's likely for MTL to address with that correctly gender, the same would be the case for a native speaker) and the way a machine works, if they need to output something with a range of options, they'll give away something from that range even if the most optimal answer being "I need more context" (But this is also a problem of requests, I can't even count the number of times that people try to get an "unbiased Japanese translation by a native speaker" by removing context, that isn't how Japanese, or any language that I know, works).

Like, the inability of MTL being able to guess the correct gender for a text without a clear gender wouldn't "translate" into the inability to correctly address the meaning of any other given word that doesn't depend as much on context as that. But in that case, I guess that a dictionary or a translator that gives away the meaning of particles alongside words should be the most optimal to "guess" about the meaning of a text.

That is, to use a tool "correctly" you need to know how to use it and the cases it works the best, what I see often is people not knowing the quirks of the language or the tool being used (For example, programs like DeepL often "eat" large amounts of text if translated all at once, so translating line per line works better with them and helps with not losing content).

Ultimately, disagreements with translations can happen even among professional translators, be it because they disagree with the interpretation of the work (After all, translation needs a degree of interpretation) or because one just happens to have a detail that helps to guess a more correct person or topic being addressed. So what I think would help is people also stopping to think of one single translation, person, or tool in the case of MTL as "always being right" or "if they disagree with it, it's wrong/right", mistakes can happen, disagreements can happen, nothing should be taken as absolute truth on all levels, and that includes translation.

I do prefer a more open approach to translation, especially when here people discuss minute details about what is being addressed and the way it's being addressed, so MTL will often not take those details into account (And no, putting Chat GPT to translate by saying "break it down" isn't a way to solve that on all cases). But I also think there are some cases in which MTL can excel in giving what is basically needed, so I would say that the more complex a sentence seems, the less likely MTL is to give a good answer (But even then, very small lines can often be filled with various slangs or context-dependent terms that MTL would also not be able to guess what they are supposed to mean).

So, I don't think absolutely forbidding them is an absolutely good idea, but I also don't think they should be used as the single basis for an entire franchise for example.

The same goes for actual human translators. You can have someone who is perfectly fine with translating texts with more "standard language", but that falls apart depending on the dialect or slang. I wouldn't trust them with a dialect or slang they don't know, but if it's about something they excel at, I wouldn't have a problem with their translation. Context is always important, so always see things with an open perspective.

I've also been told that Megami Tensei, Dragon Ball, Digimon, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure use information on profiles which only comes from untranslated guidebooks. Meaning that if we applied this standard to them, they'd need revisions.

Secondly, about Digimon, most of the used text from profiles had been translated by fans back in the day, be it from Fan Wikis like Wikimon or individual translators (Some of them went on to work officially in the franchise, like subbing the current official release of Remastered Blu-rays by Diskotek Media).

But the stuff from most physical guidebooks or some interviews was my work back in the day, which shows a lot of problems in some parts (I don't think there's anything about the actual content for the profiles affected by it, but I can be wrong). I did improve over time and with acquired context, I can address stuff much more clearly now (Sometimes with added context not even the usual translators have), so I'm actually working on retranslating all the material that was used back in the day with the available raws (Shared by friends) and the extracted text when needed. Nothing is on the wiki yet as it's still a Work-In-Progress, but you can check an example of the current translations on my personal blog, this is the complete translation of most Digimon Chronicle material released around 2002~2004 across multiple media.

In case of any material being used in the profiles, I would be happy to provide a breakdown if needed to clarify terms and overall context as well. I don't think it would affect anything used as of now, Digimon profiles are mostly outdated due to material not applied yet, and those should already have improved translations by the time they are applied (I just need to wait for friends to share the scans for more material, like some French friends from a Digiduo just got a bunch of booklets and pamphlets that are working on to share, they are great great).

 

[Theglassman12]

It's not the franchises as a whole, just the things sourced solely from that.

Yeah which becomes a case by case basis if the translations in question are good as confirmed by our translators or anyone else knowledgeable on the language or if they’re confirmed to be machine translated. If someone did translations for the entire verse and practically everything that’s relevant to the verse has been verified to be correct, I don’t see the issue. If they’re tampering with the translation or using some blatantly wrong info then we call them out.

 

[Agnaa]

While disallowing translation sources once we've found relevant parts to be unreliable feels like a solid step, it runs into the issue with official translations occasionally having small slip-ups that are battleboarding relevant, particularly for long series.

And the parallel of that, where if we set a higher bar, then MTL could slide by, even after a few errors have been identified.

 

[Theglassman12]

If official translations have slip ups then we just show what the correct translation is and we get it verified by people who know the native language, what's the issue here because it's such an easy problem to address?

 

[Agnaa]

So we only worry about slip-ups for fan translations and machine translations?

 

[Theglassman12]

Literally what part of that remotely lines up with my statement? If there’s any slip ups in general, anyone that’s knowledgeable on the subject matter can point it out. You’re generalizing this to be an issue for franchises that have untranslated guidebooks when having official untranslated guidebooks isn’t the issue, it’s just whoever does the translation in general that gets the meaning wrong that’s the issue, which again becomes a case by case basis on who’s being honest or disingenuous.

 

[Agnaa]

Literally what part of that remotely lines up with my statement? If there’s any slip ups in general, anyone that’s knowledgeable on the subject matter can point it out. You’re generalizing this to be an issue for franchises that have untranslated guidebooks when having official untranslated guidebooks isn’t the issue, it’s just whoever does the translation in general that gets the meaning wrong that’s the issue, which again becomes a case by case basis on who’s being honest or disingenuous.

• We should avoid EMTL due to risk of unreliability.
• We can evaluate reliability on a case-by-case basis, by noticing when they have flaws.
• It seems hard to write standards for this; official could get hit more easily by having more material, while unofficial could slide by despite issues even though it has less material.
• We can still use the official translation in general, even if it has some issues.
• So we should only worry about those slip-ups for fan and machine translations?
• What part of my post implies that? If there's any slip-ups, point them out.

I hope that shows where that interpretation came from; I was talking about when translations should be disallowed, you brought up noticing flaws as a way of doing that, and then said that we could continue using official translations despite those.

I thought that implied only having those slip-ups be disqualifiers for fan and machine translations.

But if you're not saying that, the only other reading I can get is that we could generally use translations no matter how shit they are, and just hope to catch any errors by getting translation helpers to check.

I think that's not a good idea, since sufficiently bad translations just stop being a good basis, and end up providing a ludicrous amount of work on our limited collection of translation helpers.

 

[Theglassman12]

If the fan translation is far worse than the official then no shit we'd just use the official, like seriously do I need to spell everything out here because this is not hard to explain. If someone tries to give their translation on the work and there's some errors we just send those to any translators we know. You're making it out like this is the equivalent of forcing our translation helpers to do every single scan ever on every small detail when at no point is that my argument.

 

[Agnaa]

If the fan translation is far worse than the official then no shit we'd just use the official, like seriously do I need to spell everything out here because this is not hard to explain. If someone tries to give their translation on the work and there's some errors we just send those to any translators we know. You're making it out like this is the equivalent of forcing our translation helpers to do every single scan ever on every small detail when at no point is that my argument.

I'm not talking about cases where there's both the official and a bad fan translation.

I'm talking about when a part of the series only has a bad fan translation.

If we catch multiple errors in a fan translation, which is the only source for a part of the series, what should we do? I think our options are pretty limited, like:

• Don't allow anything from that source to be used for indexing.
• Allow things from that source to be used for indexing, but require every scan to be checked by a translation helper.
• Allow things from that source to be used for indexing, but require suspicious scans to be checked by a translation helper.

Are probably the most reasonable ones.

 

[Theglassman12]

Hold on didn’t you just say that overloading our translation helpers with work wouldn’t be a good idea? But you’re now saying that making every scan be checked by a translation helpers is one of the more reasonable options we have? I’m not following what your line of logic is here.

 

[Agnaa]

Hold on didn’t you just say that overloading our translation helpers with work wouldn’t be a good idea? But you’re now saying that making every scan be checked by a translation helpers is one of the more reasonable options we have? I’m not following what your line of logic is here.

I can simultaneously think something's not a good idea, and think it's one of the top three options we have. As I said, our options are pretty limited.

 

[Theglassman12]

You still said it's a reasonable option which makes no sense. Literally what's wrong with just focusing on the most important aspects of the scans, AKA the things that give the high end ratings or high end abilities? Anything miscellaneous wouldn't be on our top priority if we're dealing with a verse that's notorious for bad fan translations. Plus again, my gripes with this entire thing is that apparently entire translated verses can be disregarded just because one guy worked on it, which is stupid if the person in question just did a good job with the translation and everyone else familiar with the language can verify it being correct.

 

[Agnaa]

After a bit of talking in DMs, Glass and I agree that if there's a bad fan translation and an official translation, we'll simply use the official translation. And if the series only has bad translations, then it could be nuked from the wiki.

But I think that leaves doubt about some other situations. Mainly:

• Cases where there aren't full translations of any part of the series, but individual relevant scans have had reliable translations provided by users (i.e. Armorchompy's verses mentioned above).
• As a subset of the former, cases where a member seems to be providing reliable translations, but no other users are able to properly verify that (i.e. the situation we had with Cryptozoi).
• Cases where the series partially has good translations, and partially has bad translations. For the most extreme example, take the sorts of cases DontTalk gestured towards, where the start of a series has bad translations, but latter parts have good translations.

Or dividing it up another way.

There's three relevant levels of translation-goodness; translations with no issues, translations with issues but where people on-site can provide translations without issues, and translations with issues and no backup.

And there's a few main levels of prevalence bad/absent translations can have; composing only later works/spinoffs/additional material that can be ignored, composing earlier parts which are hard/impossible to ignore, composing the entirety of the work.

 

[Theglassman12]

Can you provide any examples of these specific instances occurring? Because this feels like massive overthinking on scenarios that likely hasn’t and likely won’t happen when the 3 general options (official translation vs fan translation, some bad fan translation and others good, and all bad fan translation with no good alternative) are generally what we deal with on the site.

 

[Armorchompy]

Cases where there aren't full translations of any part of the series, but individual relevant scans have had reliable translations provided by users (i.e. Armorchompy's verses mentioned above).

I would make a quick correction that Dylan Dog and other Bonelli comics have some official translations, though a lot not available on the web. There's also some fan translations, though once again not many. I've prioritized using either whenever possible (Except for the Batman crossover, since those came out after my work on the profiles, but if it's necessary I can go and swap them).

Either way I don't see an issue with this, cherry-picking something that only a certain few users would be familiar with can be done with a lot more than the language barrier, obviously we should have standards but at the same time when it comes to very obscure verses you've just gotta trust whoever's making the profiles at some point. Say there's a game with no comprehensive Youtube let's play, and someone makes a profile with screenshots they took on their own, there's an actual monetary barrier to verifying the scans on the profile. I'd consider that a bigger hurdle than language, you can just try to MTL and get the gist with something like Dylan Dog.

 

[Agnaa]

Can you provide any examples of these specific instances occurring? Because this feels like massive overthinking on scenarios that likely hasn’t and likely won’t happen when the 3 general options (official translation vs fan translation, some bad fan translation and others good, and all bad fan translation with no good alternative) are generally what we deal with on the site.

I'm not fully sure what cases you're asking for examples of, so I'll provide all that I can, unless I've provided them in this post.

Medaka Box has the manga, anime, three novels, and a few comic strips from the guidebooks translated. Outside of that, someone posted a bad MTL of one of the guidebooks, saying that a character "is the type of character who stands above the creators", which was attempted to be used for a Low 1-A upgrade.

I personally can't give examples for the stuff DontTalk mentioned. As I mentioned above, Reincarnated as a Vending Machine's Web Novel has a bad translation that cuts out text the translator finds uninteresting, among other frequent less-obvious grammar and translation issues. I know that a different translation group worked on later chapters of that, but I'm not sure whether or not they're better. So this might be an example of that, or might not be.

 

[Antvasima]

I personally think that Agnaa seems to make good sense here.

 

[Re5yh]

But there is no rule of copying and pasting from other wikis.

 

[Chariot190]

But there is no rule of copying and pasting from other wikis.

There actually is. You're not allowed to plagiarize other wikis in the slightest.

 

[Agnaa]

But there is no rule of copying and pasting from other wikis.

There actually is. You're not allowed to plagiarize other wikis in the slightest.

Content on wikis is typically released under a CC-BY-SA license.

Other people are allowed to copy them, wholecloth (CC), as long as they give credit to the original source (BY), and as long as their work derived from that is allowed to be copied under a similar license (SA).

We allow copying from other wikis onto ours (for situations such as summaries) as long as credit is given to the original source; you can see this on certain verse pages.

EDIT: Although, as DDM says, we still prefer people reword such things. Copying is considered a bit of a last resort.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

It's preferably to paraphrase rather than copy/paste. In fact, Fandom is quite strict about copy pasting without giving credit. Though we are allowed to copy what were direct quotations from original works and what not.

 

[Armorchompy]

May I ask that we could try to reach a consensus, at least regarding the situation that I was concerned with? I hope this doesn't come off as too selfish but I was planning on revising the Dylan Dog pages, so I'd like to know that they won't be deleted before I work on that.

 

[Theglassman12]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if the user hasn’t done any MTLs and it’s genuinely good and approved despite the circumstances of the series not having an official localization, it should be fine to use. Any MTLs that plague the majority of the scans a series has with no official localization to go back to should be removed imo.

 

[Antvasima]

What do we currently need to do here, and what is the staff consensus so far?