Translation of thread title

[PHerison]

What and who is affected by this issue/request?

Everybody

Where on the platform does it happen?

Every thread

How do we replicate the issue?

Use translate-icon on first/initial posting of a thread.

Expected behavior (i.e. solution)

It would be nice if the title / subject of the thread would be also translated when translating the first post. Currently only the text is translated.

Other Comments

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

Improvements to Discourse Translator plugin can be created here for their authors to consider:

Discourse Meta

[PHerison]

Feature Request: Topic Title Translation - #11 by angus - feature - Discourse Meta
→ Topic title translations by angusmcleod · Pull Request #79 · discourse/discourse-translator · GitHub

I don’t know if this means that the feature is available or not. Can someone please clarify?

[Matija_Nalis]

It would be very useful, quite often the topics are very dependent on te subject (title) of the thread, e.g. last example Kennt jemand die Nummer von diesem Schild?

I tried asking in that closed github PR, but got no reply, so I’d guess it was not implement afterall (as that PR was closed, not merged)

[adreamy (깨몽/dreamy)]

It would be useful to have the ability to create posts in multiple languages to lower the barrier between languages within OSM.
For example, if someone writes a post in a particular language, someone who speaks another language will be able to translate and paste the post, and someone who reads the post will be able to see the post in their language of choice.
This would allow a single piece of content to be shared more widely and easily with users of each language.

Do you think this is possible in ‘Discourse’?

reference link : Regarding regional categories hindering unified communication…(지역 카테고리가 통합된 소통을 방해하는 문제에 대하여…)

혹시 'Discourse’에 다국어 게시물 작성 기능은 없습니까?

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

I’m guessing that the answer is “no”, but I haven’t checked all the documentation myself.

[Nadjita]

Original (German):

Mal ein Schuss ins Blaue: Englisch ist die Sprache, die die meisten hier sprechen und auch die Sprache, die von Übersetzungsprogrammen am besten unterstützt wird. Würde es nicht reichen, eine Option zu haben, einen Beitrag automatisch ins Englische übersetzen zu lassen? Ich nutze dafür vor allem ChatGPT, weil es gerade bei OpenStreetMap nicht alles übersetzt. DeepL hingegen übersetzt immer wieder mal auch Taggings wie amenity=bench, was ich als störend empfinde. Wenn ich wirklich keine Ahnung habe, hat es noch immer gut funktioniert. So wie dieser Text hier - hoffentlich.

English translation:

Just a shot in the dark: English is the language that most people here speak and also the language that is best supported by translation programs. Wouldn’t it be enough to have an option to automatically translate a post into English? I mainly use ChatGPT for this, especially because it doesn’t translate everything in context, particularly when it comes to OpenStreetMap. However, DeepL sometimes translates taggings like amenity=bench, which I find annoying. If I really have no idea, it has still worked well. Like this text here - hopefully.

Korean translation:

어둠 속에서 한 발짝 더 나아가 보자면: 이 곳에서 대부분의 사람들이 사용하는 언어는 영어이며, 번역 프로그램에서 가장 잘 지원되는 언어입니다. 자동으로 게시물을 영어로 번역하는 옵션이 있으면 충분하지 않을까요? 제가 주로 사용하는 것은 ChatGPT인데, 특히 OpenStreetMap에서 모든 것을 번역하지는 않기 때문입니다. 그러나 DeepL은 때로는 'amenity=bench’와 같은 태그도 번역하기 때문에 짜증스러울 때가 있습니다. 정말 모르는 경우에는 여전히 잘 작동했습니다. 이 텍스트처럼 - 아마도.

Mind you, I have no clue about Korean, so I hope I didn’t insult your family or threaten anyone

[InsertUser]

If you’re logged in there’s already a translate () button. Is that not enough?

[adreamy (깨몽/dreamy)]

만약 ‘오픈스트리트맵’ 커뮤니티에 여러 언어로 게시물을 작성할 수 있는 기능이 있다면, 번역보다는 좀더 뜻에 집중한 의역도 할 수 있을 것이고, 언어권을 넘어서서 서로 공유가 되어야 하는 주제에 대해서는 번역보다는 좀더 의미를 전달하기 쉬워서 언어권을 넘어서서 정보가 공유되기가 쉬울 것입니다.
이런 기능이 어떤 경우에 쓰일 수 있는지는 아래 '참고 링크’를 봐 주시기 바랍니다.

• 참고 링크 : Regarding regional categories hindering unified communication…(지역 카테고리가 통합된 소통을 방해하는 문제에 대하여…)

Osm 커뮤니티의 모든 카테고리에 쓰는 것이 아니라 특정 카테고리를 만들고 그 카테고리에는 언어권을 넘어서 공유되어야 할 내용을 요약, 정리해서 게시를 하면 다른 언어권의 기여자가 번역을 해서 서로 공유를 할 수 있을 것입니다.
이것은 영어권 기여자들이 영어로 논의하고 합의한 내용 뿐만 아니라 비영어권 기여자들이 그 언어로 논의하고 합의한 내용을 영어권과 그 밖의 언어권 기여자들과 공유하는 데에 유용할 것입니다.

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

@InsertUser

there’s already a translate () button. Is that not enough

There are three main problems with that:

1. Only supports certain languages
2. Does not translate titles
3. Can’t translate a page at a time.

Note that because of the fundamental design of discourse, the normal standard web translators just do not work. It’s a fundamentally anti-web, anti-internet and anti-collaborative design - there is no such thing as a static page and you can’t interact with it using normal web tools.

[Fizzie-DWG (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

I would love to be able to read the “home page” / list of new topics in English, as they can currently only be seen in the language that they were written in, but they could be relating to something that I’m deeply interested in?

e.g. from this morning: " Umfrage: Neuer Name für den OSM-Samstag?" or “지역 사랑방의 벽을 넘을 수 있는 방안에 대하여 - 범지역적인 논의를 위하여”

Sure, there’s subtags included to (partially) describe what the thread is about, but " 한국/조선 (Korea)

비영어권 영어권 지역커뮤니티 지역사랑방" doesn’t help an awful lot!

[adreamy (깨몽/dreamy)]

Translators can’t keep up with human translation skills, at least not yet.(Of course, it depends on the level of human translation skills…)
Human translations can also include paraphrasing and additional explanations.(After relying primarily on the translator’s translation)
This can be very helpful in explaining different cultures and understanding the mindset of different cultures.
And most importantly, it would give a lot of people who would otherwise give up on accessing discussions in different languages a chance to access discussions in different languages.
At the very least, if someone can at least understand the title, it’s easier for them to decide if the post is something they’re interested in.
Keep in mind that many people in non-English speaking countries don’t understand English well enough to use a translator.
I think what we desperately need right now is an effort to understand different cultures.

Multilingual Plugin

적어도 아직까지는 번역기의 번역 실력이 사람의 번역 실력을 따라오지 못합니다.(물론 사람의 번역실력의 수준에 따로 좀 다르겠지만…)
(번역기의 번역에 1차 의존을 하고)그리고 사람의 번역에는 의역이나 추가 설명을 할 수도 있습니다.
이것은 서로 다른 문화를 설명하고 서로 다른 문화의 사고방식을 이해하는 데에 큰 도움이 될 것입니다.
그리고 무엇보다도 중요한 것은, 서로 다른 언어권의 논의에 접근하는 것을 아예 포기하게 되는 많은 사람들에게 서로 다른 언어권의 논의에 접근할 수 있는 기회를 줄 것입니다.
하다 못해, 적어도 제목 만이라도 이해할 수 있다면 그 글이 자신이 관심을 가질 만한 글인지 판단하기 쉬울 것입니다.
비영어권에 사는 많은 사람들은 번역기의 도움을 받고서도 영어를 제대로 이해할 수 있는 사람이 많지 않다는 것을 헤아려 주십시오.
지금 우리에게 절실한 것은 바로 서로 다른 문화권을 이해하려는 노력이 아닐까 생각합니다.

[Msiipola]

Sometimes messages are posted with message titles in a language I don’t understand. For example some German threads in the Help and support category.

Is possible to switch on a language translate function, so the titles can be translated to the selected GUI-language?

[PHerison]

Translation of thread title

It would be very useful, quite often the topics are very dependent on te subject (title) of the thread, e.g. last example Kennt jemand die Nummer von diesem Schild? I tried asking in that closed github PR, but got no reply, so I’d guess it was not implement afterall (as that PR was closed, not merged)

[Fizzie-DWG (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

Asked the same question last week: By any chance, does 'Discourse' not have the ability to create multilingual posts?(여러 언어 게시물 작성 기능) - #3, but no response there.

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

Discourse pages now seem compatible with Google Translate, so for example https://translate.google.ca/?sl=en&tl=de&text=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.openstreetmap.org%2Ft%2Ftagging-help-for-osmose-error-untagged-named-object%2F99233%2F11&op=translate now works as is. Obviously that’s just an anonymous view of the page, so you can’t reply from there, but it’s much less clumsy to use than Discourse’s built in one-post-at-a-time-but-not-the-thread titles translation.

I’ve no idea whether this was a change at Discourse or at Google, or when (it might have been working for ages and I haven’t tried it).

[adreamy (깨몽/dreamy)]

I don’t think I wrote anything here, but I don’t know why it’s stuck here.
Anyway, I will give an analogy to say that I want the title to be translated or manually paraphrased.

Assuming that there are many English rooms, and a person who speaks good English can see through the walls of those rooms, but a non-English speaker doesn’t have the ability to see through the walls, then the non-English speaker would have to open the doors of all those rooms to see the condition of all those rooms.
Wishing that only the title could be translated is like wishing that there was at least a signboard indicating the condition of the room in front of the room.

(I’m not sure my machine translation conveys the meaning exactly).
P.s. And the Bing translation sucks. At least when it comes to Korean translations…

[stevea]

I’m a double-major in Computer Science and Applied Linguistics from the University of California.

Very simply (I want to keep it simple), “all-languages-to-all-languages” or what might be known as “perfect universal translation” remains a dream into the future. However, I’ve personally seen (over the last four decades of this evolving, working at Apple and Adobe…) that “this gets better.” There is an amazing complexity of in-browser translations available, language translation as server-side “buttons” (as we have our “globe icon” here) and so much more (DeepL, Google Translate, more…). “Making things correct in all languages for everyone” is something that is a long-term goal, and while we are on our way, there is far to go.

I’ve noted some goofy translations here, machine natural language translation is not perfect science.

Nobody should feel their specific question (about a particular instance of translation or multilingual text support…) is getting ignored, as many questions are good and deserve answers. Everybody should be aware of the “long chain” of what it takes to get you to read or see “something” (in a given context, maybe with a certain browser, manifested by a particular operating system, using a peculiarly-specific graphics/GPU environment, with the fonts which are loaded, with language preferences at many levels set in certain ways…) and so on and so forth, in a particular language. We humans speaking our languages and our advancing (tech, web, comm…) technology are indeed making progress. But we remain some distance from everything working everywhere for everyone, reliably.

Please, ask specific questions and quench your thirst to see things as you wish to see them. Yet, also know it is work for everybody to do so — a “tall reach,” yes, so we are working on it, and making progress. I’m encouraged by growth I’ve seen of OSM’s multilingual support, and while it remains with its difficulties that we humans are so multilingual, it does get incrementally better around here.

@adreamy, I know exactly what you mean!

[Matija_Nalis]

There seems to be some basic topic translation (only title of translated article, not whole translated forum list) accepted upstream: Feature Request: Topic Title Translation - #13 by kris.kotlarek - feature - Discourse Meta so hopefully when released could be used on OSM Discourse too!

[PHerison]

THANKYOU!