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The Stack Exchange Translation Project
Should we reconsider the language support of stackoverflow?

Instead of offering Stack Overflow in various languages, I suggest to use or make something like Google Translate to translate pages in different languages. This can also be applied to other Stack Exchange sites.

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marked as duplicate by Mysticial, random Dec 13 '12 at 6:23


You do realize that Google translate fails miserably in a lot of cases - especially with technical terminology. It's easy for it to go wrong, and the last thing you want is an answer to become incorrect because of a bad translation. –  Mysticial Dec 13 '12 at 6:21
In A.D. 2101 War was beginning Captain: What happen? Operator: Somebody set up us the bomb. Operator: We get signal. Captain: What! Operator: Main screen turn on. Captain: It's You!! Cats: How are you gentlemen!! Cats: All your base are belong to us. Cats: You are on the way to destruction. Captain: What you say!! Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time. Cats: Ha Ha Ha Ha …. Captain: Take off every "zig." Captain: You know what you doing. Captain: Move "zig". Captain: For great justice. –  Victor Dec 13 '12 at 6:41
Instead of trying to build what doesn't work today, it's better to wait for giants like Google to offer one, standard, in their browsers or OS. And if you really want to and think it can help you, you can simply use today's Chrome autotranslate. –  dystroy Dec 13 '12 at 7:20

1 Answer 1

Have you ever actually used Google Translate on real text? It's not that bad of a tool, but it has a long, long way to go. I'm going to translate this answer into Portuguese, 'cause that's what I last had up, then I'm gonna translate what it generated back into English. I believe this will provide an excellent demonstration of why automatic translation of user content is going to be utterly worthless.

Alguma vez você já realmente usado o Google Translate em texto real? Não é tão ruim assim de uma ferramenta, mas tem um longo caminho a percorrer. Vou traduzir essa resposta em Português, porque é isso que eu tinha passado para cima, então eu vou traduzir o que gerou volta para o Inglês. Eu acredito que esta será uma excelente demonstração do porquê de tradução automática de conteúdo do usuário vai ser completamente inútil.

Have you ever actually used Google translate into actual text? Not that bad of a tool, but has a long way to go. I'll translate that answer in Portuguese, because that's what I had passed up, so I'll translate that led back to English. I believe this is an excellent demonstration of why automatic translation of user content will be completely useless.

Color me pleasantly surprised, that wasn't a bad reverse translation at all. I'm not sure what would happen if I threw in more entertaining phrases, local idioms, and worst of all, untranslatable technical terms.

It's ultimately a bad idea. If your English skill isn't great, you might find one of the Area51 proposals to be interesting. Head on over there and enter "stack overflow in" into the search box. With the quotes.

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When I worked in the translation industry, we had large posters made up of just this kind of thing. Like Mystical says, funny stuff. Western<->Western, less so, but Western<->Asian, even human translation started to go south, for whatever reason. –  Michael Petrotta Dec 13 '12 at 6:27
Then there's the occasional Chinese translation of "dry" / "dried" into an f-bomb, thanks to translation software that wasn't good at picking out the best word for the given context. Computers aren't good at human languages. Frequently, humans aren't that great at computer languages either. Thus, SO. –  Charles Dec 13 '12 at 6:28

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