Wiktionary talk:Translation requests

Contributors

Do we have enough people who are able to translate sentences here for this page to work? Perhaps we can make a list of people who are able to translate sentences and limit requests to those languages. We can remove people from the list after 1 week if they 1. have no contributions or 2. are not translating requests.

Example list:

English to Chinese

• Person A en-2 zh-N
• Person B en-N zh-1
• Person C en-4 zh-1

English to Irish

• Person A en-N ga-N
• Person B en-N ga-1
• Person C en-N ga-0 (can ask teacher)

Gerard Foley 23:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that this is a solution to a non-existent problem! --Wonderfool 02:24, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

(three years later) essentially there are a lot outstanding and a lot that are 'hacks', but it's better than nothing, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Unsigned

FYI, I've created an {{unsigned}} template (based on w:Template:Unsigned) that y'all can use on this and similar pages. - dcljr 16:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hadn't bothered checking to see who added this very useful little thing. --Connel MacKenzie 06:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

archiving completed requests

This page is (wow!) getting long. I think we need a Wiktionary:Translation requests/Archive soon. --Connel MacKenzie 06:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

If no one objects, I'll start WerdnaBot on this this next week. --Connel MacKenzie 02:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Translation requests/archive. Rod (A. Smith) 03:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup

Is it our policy not to clean up pages like these with bad spelling, caps, typos like heip for help. There seems to be a conflict between wanting the page as easy to read as possible, and respecting people by not altering their comments. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

For example Dansih to English, if I corrected this to Danish and used <span id="Dansih to English"> how would people feel? In the main space, it would be essential to correct this. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

For these flash-in-the-pan anons who make obvious but serious spelling or typing errors, fixing their comments is certainly no more touchy than deleting them, which we often do when they are incomprehensible nonsense. I am sure that they would be tickled to have necessary repairs made to their comments. —Stephen 19:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to do the minimum. Bad spelling, caps, pointless spaces, I think all that inhibits understanding quite a lot. I can read good German a lot better than I can read text message English. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:26, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I've left most things in that don't make it a lot harder to understand. I think English is difficult enough for anyone (including me) if you have 10 spelling mistakes in 10 words, it makes it a LOT harder. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The page isn't *that* long right now, but what's our archiving policy? Do we archive stuff even if it doesn't have a reply? Maybe something like Wiktionary:Translation requests/pending would be okay, we have the same thing in French for 'propose a word' and 'questions on words'. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Renaming

Can we rename this page "Tattoos and platitudes"? Equinox ◑ 01:59, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

And homework assignments. —Angr 05:06, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

why the big traffic?

How come this page is so frequently edited? I'm guessing there's some high-profile inlinks, or we have awesome google power or something. By the way, I saw a page once having the most-edited pages on Wiktionary. Where is that page?--Rockpilot 21:35, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, RP. We still don't know. --Genecioso (talk) 22:03, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I wonder if it's advertised externally. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense why we get so many translation requests. It's not exactly a translation service website. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Gaelic? Which Gaelic?

I've seen a few requests that used the word "Gaelic" but not with either the word "Irish", "Manx", or "Scottish". Does something like that annoy anyone? As a policy, should we ever leave a public note to visitors that they must not only state the specific language if it's a Celtic one, but also of words such as Austrian or Asturian? (Whether it's either an opinion or proposal, you can opine.) --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 10:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

It doesn’t annoy me. If someone asks for Gaelic and the first person who tackles it does Scottish Gaelic, that’s what he gets. If I do it, it will be Irish Gaelic. If it is important that it be Irish or Scottish or whatever, they have to specify beforehand. I think most of the people who would respond to a public note about being more specific would be specific without being prodded. Most people who are not specific would ignore such a note. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:44, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I wonder how many people who ask for "Gaelic" without further specification are even looking for a Goidelic language. I used to be on a Celtic languages e-mail list, and someone there once complained how many e-mails the list got from people asking such questions as "How do you say Zbigniew Brzezinski in Breton Gaelic?" and how one isn't sure how to even begin telling the asker what's wrong with the question. —Angr 19:31, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow... - -sche (discuss) 20:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

archives

Hi there

I've been bold and trimmed out the page a bit; it didn't look like you guys still needed translation requests from June still kicking around. I'm not on Wiktionary very much, but I help out with archiving at the Wikipedia Reference Desk when the automated bot goes down so I... usually know what I'm doing. There's more to be done, but I figured I'd pause to make sure my actions are in line with general consensus. Please let me know if I've goofed and feel free to revert my edits if I have. :) Matt Deres (talk) 14:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

You did nothing wrong. This page is extremely disorganized anyway (I don't even know why we have it), but it definitely was getting a bit too large. --WikiTiki89 16:03, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

here are some points which can improve this project

I had gone through this page and i liked it very much. But if we make some changes it will look great. When we add translation then we should give a number to it every time. Which will make it to look great and also it will be more easy to understand.

For example. It is a present translation in this page

== Hindi translation ==

I think I would have given enough time it's time to gv something else

मुझे लगता है कि मैं पर्याप्त समय दिया है चाहिए। यह कुछ अलग की पेशकश करने के लिए समय है। —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:56, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

मुझे लगता है की मुझे और समय मिलाना चाहिये। यह कुछ अलग देने का समय है।- Akक्षय (talk) 02:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

If we add no. to it then

== Hindi translation ==

I think I would have given enough time it's time to gv something else

1. मुझे लगता है कि मैं पर्याप्त समय दिया है चाहिए। यह कुछ अलग की पेशकश करने के लिए समय है। —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:56, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
2. मुझे लगता है की मुझे और समय मिलाना चाहिये। यह कुछ अलग देने का समय है।- Akक्षय (talk) 02:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Please tell can it be possible. Akक्षय (talk) 16:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it’s possible. Whenever you add a second translation, just change the initial ":" of the first translation to "#", and then also put # in front of the second translation. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

format oddity

I'm curious about the frequency of requests that look like this:

[insert text here]

--~~~~

History is made at night. Character is who you are in the dark.

Is there an input form (distinct from what you get by clicking the "new section" button) with prompts that somehow produce this? —Tamfang (talk) 19:47, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

It is created by people unfamiliar with wikitax appending the phrase they wish translated to a template-started page, e.g.

[insert text here]

--~~~~

The text being requested to be translated.

Not much to be done about it, imo. - Amgine/ ^t·e 21:39, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

They must be slightly less unfamiliar with wikitax than I am. —Tamfang (talk) 05:54, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Transliteration of some translations

Hi Stephen, are you able to add transliterations to your short translations into Arabic (and possibly other languages where automated translit doesn't work or require significant efforts- Persian, Hebrew), please? Mostly interested in Arabic, since I'm learning it/brushing it up (supposedly, LOL). It would be too much too ask for longer translations but shorter wouldn't be too hard, would it? You can use whatever method is easier for you, chat, our standard, with or without the iʿrāb. Adding diacritics would also work for automated Arabic transliterations but it's not always easy to type. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:10, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I'll try to transliterate short translations when I have time. I usually don't bother, because I don't think it's useful to the requester in most cases, it takes more time, and most people who aren't linguists need a simpler transliteration. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:21, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Stephen: Thanks, Stephen. I would appreciate this. The requesters may benefit from this, if they know, even roughly how to say this. I, on my part, will make use of the translations, to add missing translations, words or usage example of my choice. For the Wiktionary community it would also be beneficial, since some people may be more familiar with spoken languages, than written. In any case, it's more educational, if we provide some transliterations.

E.g. in Wiktionary:Translation_requests#arabic (6 September), my suggested format, using chat Arabic, which is easy to type, if it's OK: يوم واحد، وحظر إمبراطور صيد الدراج... ― yawm waaHid, wa-HaZar imbaraaTuur Sayd ad-durraj ... ― one day the emperor banned francolin hunting...

I only transliterated the part I could follow with little effort but I'll leave it up to you. Thanks again. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

"Sayd ad-durraj", pheasant hunting. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:49, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Stephen: thanks, fixed. I was thinking about تَدْرُج (tadruj, “pheasant”), the word I had to look up, although your example uses دُرَّاج (durrāj, “francolin”) (it's the sense according to H. Wehr). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 12:35, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Discouraging rubbish requests

Some of the requests seem to be more-or-less junk in the original language, possibly the result of a machine translation from something else. I think the best thing would be to decline these requests rather than wasting time on them, and tell people to post the original instead. Qualified Quantum Mechanic (talk) 05:56, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

There is no way to know that. Someone probably did do a machine translation, but not necessarily the person posting the request. The requester may have seen the text on his talk page, on youtube, Facebook, or some such place and could make no sense of it. Some of the requests may be bogus, some may be valid, and there is no way to know which is which. The rubbish translations take less time to translate than the complaints from a few others who neither do the translations nor have interest in them take to answer. It seems to me that anyone who does not wish to translate a request might simply ignore it, and those who are happy to translate it can do so. It's a tempest in a teapot. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:28, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Someone might have an interest but not immediately realize that what they are looking at is rubbish, and then get somewhat miffed that they wasted their time. Qualified Quantum Mechanic (talk) 09:16, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Add link to DeepL in header

It only supports 9 languages but I've found its translations to be better than Google Translate sometimes. https://www.deepl.com/en/translator Akeosnhaoe (talk) 07:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Beer Parlour conversation

• For an explanation of why this page was closed, see Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/January § Close WT:TRREQ?. PUC – 20:50, 2 February 2021 (UTC)