David Dallet’s weblog

I read problogger through my feed reader for some time and I’ve just read a post called “How to Blog for a Global Audience” and written by a guest blogger.

Here is why I won’t follow the advice of putting “a translation tool (…) in a prominent place”.

(Automated) translation tools don’t always provide high-quality translations

They may even provide translations that may suggest the contrary of what you’re saying.

I’m not saying that such tools are not “high-tech” or that they have been written in a few hours. Indeed, I’d rather say that people writing this kind of software are often working hard to provide the best.

But let’s face the reality : computers are stupid. They don’t think. They don’t understand anything. (Although they can simulate a learning process). And translating a text does require some intelligence.

So there is always some risks that an automated translation may contain big mistakes changing the meaning of the text.

Such tools are still very useful, as long as you never trust them

If you don’t trust these kind of tools, it does not mean that they are useless.

You shouldn’t think than the translated text has the same meaning that what the author write. But reading a translated text with even 20% of phrases containing big mistakes may still have a purpose : it may give you ideas. It may help you to think about points that would have been ignored otherwise.

In fact the problem is similar to reading a text from someone you don’t trust (for example, if you don’t know anything about the author) : if the text contains good argumentation (i.e. if all facts are linked to reliable sources and the text follows strictly the rules of logical reasoning), you will have valid reasons to agree with it.

So if you’re lucky with a translation tool, and if the output still contains high quality argumentation, it may help you. (Although it will be hard to attribute the idea to the original author…)

If what you read gives you an interesting idea, it’s also useful.

But you shouldn’t suggest your readers that you endorse the results of translation tools

If someone enters the URL of your post into a translation tool and then trust a text containing big mistakes, it is his/her problem. The visitor has made the mistake, not you.

If you are saying something that suggests something like “hey visitor, a good translation is available, you have just to click this link”, i’d say that you have a part of the responsibility if the visitor trust a text containing mistakes.

So my advice is that you should either avoid to “put a translation tool in a prominent place” or at least put a very clear disclaimer (and you have to be sure that your visitors will read and understand it).

Do I really read problogger?

Yeah, you may notice that would still have a lot of things to do to improve my blog…

And the fact is that I won’t do my best to transform my web log into a very popular one. This is just the blog of its author, not an attempt to become a reference concerning (insert the topic of your choice here).

This does not mean I will never try to write a very popular blog a day, but if this needs to happen, I’ll just clearly define its topic and then start a new blog (using another domain name, by the way). Now, I have just no idea about whether I’ll try it or not.

Concerning my “strategy” about the language used in my blog posts, it depends of who I target. If I want to answer something said in English, I’d rather use English. If I want to write about something specific to France (like “HADOPI”, another bad law project of the French government), I’ll rather write in French. If my post is targeted to my regular readers, I’m likely to write in French too (at least now, this may change in the future). If I want to write a post targeting a global audience, it will be in English (or both). It really depends…

Disclaimer : Yes, I’ve probably made a lot of mistakes!