Board Game Arena

Hello,
I'm Lebanese, so I'm a native speaker.
My friend and I wanted to help translate the website and some of the games into Arabic and we noticed that many Arabic translations which were previously translated by a certain account are GRIEVOUSLY INCORRECT. The fact that they're also validated made me want to post on the forum.
So, my questions are the following:
1) Are translators awarded 1 gift point for validated translations regardless of whether they're correct or not?
2) Doesn't it seem unfair that people are getting awarded for incorrect translations?
3) How are strings validated? Who or what validates them?

Validation is automatic, if no one suggests another translation within 30 days.

The first translation is quite hard, because you have to work directly with the English version.
The second translator can use the first translation one as a solid base, and try to improve it by making a complementary proposal.
In general, when multiple translators come one after another, their translations are improved and improved again, until no one has anything to add.

This is why unknown games and less spoken languages (on BGA I mean) do not have the best translations: it requires volunteers who speak that language to help with that specific game. The more volunteers you have, and often, the better the translation result.

It is very very hard, I think, to get a good translation on the first try. So as a translator, you have to read yourself several times (preferably directly in the game), or even better: have other translators help you.

You are able to correct validated translations. If you found that the same person is doing the wrong translations, within a game, you can filter for "translated by".

I don't speak Arabic, but I have heard there can be big dialect variations, have you considered if they are translating to a different dialect?

Also, one thing to keep in mind that when translating, mistakes can happen when the translator misunderstood the context of the original game. For example "fire" could mean either flames or shooting a gun. Small details like that may explain some errors.

All in all, enjoy getting the arabic translations going and improving them!

I can and will help correct the wrong translations, it's pretty easy for me as a bilingual and native speaker of both Arabic and English to translate. But the thing is, there's a certain account who has 15K+ validated translations (Arabic translations included) that could easily come off as Google Translate translations.
I better get to work, hahahaha.

dumbslayer wrote: ↑07 August 2023, 23:16 I can and will help correct the wrong translations, it's pretty easy for me as a bilingual and native speaker of both Arabic and English to translate. But the thing is, there's a certain account who has 15K+ validated translations (Arabic translations included) that could easily come off as Google Translate translations.
I better get to work, hahahaha.

If you can prove that player using Google translate for everything without proofreading (and ruining the translation by doing so), you can report the player from their player page.

What is true is that translators can be fishing for rewards, and thus are more incentivized into participating quantitatively and imposing their version than into participating qualitatively and accepting it if another player made a better version.