Machine translation does not try to translate meaning, it translates commonly seen groupings of words in documents that have been human translated. The end result is translation between languages can work quite well but it very quickly breaks down when translating across multiple languages. Just as it does with human translators in fact. Translation is an art not a science . In all honesty I'm not sure that this trick would work reliably in any meaningful way - Sebb's example below would seem to confirm this suspicion.
I suggest that people wanting to improve their use of language to make it more inclusive should use tools like the grammar checker in MS Office suite (which has an optional inclusive language check) or Grammarly for those not using MS tools . Reminder Apache Committers can get free licenses for all MS products (both client and cloud) if used to better their engagement with open source - https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/donated-licenses/msdn.txt Ross ________________________________ From: sebb <seb...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, June 3, 2019 9:15 AM To: board-c...@apache.org Cc: diversity@apache.org Subject: Re: Feedback from Sarah Kiniry about the Google Translate Trick was Fwd: Discussion of written English style Sample sequence: The cat sat on the mat Spanish Telegu Amharic Arabic English => The cat is saved online On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 14:38, Kevin A. McGrail <kmcgr...@apache.org> wrote: > > All, Sarah got back to me about some further refinement of her translate > trick. See below -KAM > > > > I brought up your wonderful Google Translate tip (below) and there was > > a question on "what is a good sequence of languages for this test?" > > Any comments on how you decide that? I seem to remember you saying > > something about it at the conferences eons ago :-) > > > Hi Kevin, > > It's great that this is helping more people. I don't really have a set > order, but I do try to hop around between languages that wouldn't share > much in common. So, a romance language like Spanish or French, then hop > around the globe to something very unrelated, like Tagalog, then around > again to somewhere that doesn't have much shared linguistic history. I > believe I've said "one from every continent" in talks before, which > might be what you remember? > > Hope that helps, and thanks for spreading the word about this method! > > Sarah Kiniry > > On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 2:27 PM Kevin A. McGrail <kmcgr...@apache.org > <mailto:kmcgr...@apache.org>> wrote: > > Sarah, > > I brought up your wonderful Google Translate tip (below) and there > was a question on "what is a good sequence of languages for this > test?" Any comments on how you decide that? I seem to remember you > saying something about it at the conferences eons ago :-) > > Regards, > KAM > > > Another tool I recommend is using a Google Translate trick to see if > your writing is accessible to others in a different language. The > original trick was courtesy of Sarah Kiniry of cPanel but it is > effectively this: > > Use a tool like Google Translate > > Translate it into one language and then translate that into the next > language > > Progress through 4-5 languages. > > Don’t translate back to your original language between other languages > > Translate back to the original language. > > If some of the text doesn’t make sense, it might cause confusion in some > languages. > > > I spoke about this at the Chicago Roadshow and happy to share my slides > if others want but it is a great trick. > > > Regards, > > KAM > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org
