Unwanted Translations?

I just starting using this great image site, and noticed the ability to add translations. Because I speak Japanese I've added a few, doing searches for "translation_requested" tags, but also adding translations to those without those tags.

Which brings me to my question. Is it safe to assume that any image with Japanese would benefit from a translation note, or should I only do those tagged with "translation_requested"? Would anyone be upset by translating images that weren't requested to be?

I think it doesn't hurt if you want to translate even those that don't have the translation_request tag. Just make sure that you tag them as translated when you're done.

Quess is right, if you see Japanese text and want to translate it, do so. No request tag is necessary.

The beauty of notes is that they can be toggled on and off with a mere click, so nobody is ever going to complain that you translated something.

I dont see why people would complain about more translations than not.

Chances are they just havent been tagged with "translation request" yet, :P

translation_request is just a marker that someone would like to have the pic translated (and a guideline for bored translators in search of a job), obviously it's okay to translate pics without it. Anyone can add the tag, so it has no binding power whatsoever.

iwakun said:
Because I speak Japanese I've added a few, doing searches for "translation_requested" tags, but also adding translations to those without those tags.

However, in order for your contributions to be useful and not harmful, you have to observe some common sense rules, as well as learn to use the system effectively:

- Be careful how you translate and make very sure you actualy have a grasp of the thing and aren't just making random stuff up. We all have our blunders and *facepalm* moments (ask LaC about mine :), but post #296 is pretty bad. セイバー != サイバー, especially when it's a pic of F/SN tagged with "saber". Similarly, コレクト = collect.

- When adding notes, make sure they are as small as possible, and obscure the least portion of the pic. Cf. post #72. You should split that in two separate notes, closely fitting the text.

- Also re: post #72, do *not* do things such as "lit. foo bar" or "foo is a Japanese word for bar". You're translating here, and that translation is not. It's only okay to add notes such as that to clarify things that are very hard/impossible to translate into English directly. So you should only leave the "natural" part, which btw should be adjusted a bit, notice how she's blushing and is clearly embarassed? Idiomatic English for such a situation would be "I'm only doing it for you" or similar.

- Re: translation notes, such as in post #2846, you can use Note: foo bar markup, which will automatically dim and downsize the text. Also regarding that post, a little bit of logic and ingenuity would have told you those kanji are the first two characters in "Noriko".

Bottom line: translations are good and your contributions are appreciated, but make sure you're doing a proper job, otherwise it's worse than not having them. Post a comment when you translate things so that others can cross-check it.

葉月 said:

Bottom line: translations are good and your contributions are appreciated, but make sure you're doing a proper job, otherwise it's worse than not having them. Post a comment when you translate things so that others can cross-check it.

Thanks for the advice. I went back and made the appropriate changes and I'll stick with translating stuff that I know something about.

Seeing as I can't read a word of Japanese (or any other Asian language for that matter), having them translated is great for me. It always makes me appreciate the picture all the more.

Sorry for this off-topic response, but I wanted to say that notes haven't been working for me for a while when checking this site with MSIE. I can't control what software I use at work, which is currently IE 6. Just wanted to see if anyone else forced to use IE is having issues.

Gunso said:
Sorry for this off-topic response, but I wanted to say that notes haven't been working for me for a while when checking this site with MSIE. I can't control what software I use at work, which is currently IE 6. Just wanted to see if anyone else forced to use IE is having issues.

See forum #3444

Quess said:
See forum #3444

Thanks!

Also, how do folks feel about providing transliterations as, perhaps, comments instead of notes. It would be helpful to those wanting to improve their own reading skill. For example, instead of just a note over "おはよう" with "Good morning" but also have "Ohayou" romanized somewhere.

Gunso said:
Also, how do folks feel about providing transliterations as, perhaps, comments instead of notes.

Personally, I would like to see romanized sentences and words as notes. It can be pretty helpful sometimes.

But I can not see it like a fair job. Not only because people in this site how can speak/read japanese will have double work; it also can be a problem with images using both kanji and kana.

Ithymia said: it also can be a problem with images using both kanji and kana.

Romanization is romanization, whether we're talking kanji or kana isn't important.

That said, this came up before in another thread and the consensus was that it's not useful to enough people to be worth extra clutter in the notes.