Time to start thinking about quality, and not quantity

[HockeyCeres]

I've started translating BGA games recently and have been quite active in the last couple of months.
Unfortunately, the quality is embarrassing about 80% of the time.
Translations are often overly literal, and everything feels rushed, just to earn points
I think it's time to reconsider this system. Each language should have 2-3 'managers' responsible for ensuring the quality of final texts. This would help prevent the kind of abominations we currently encounter. I'm specifically addressing the issues in the Italian language, but I believe other languages face similar problems since the translation system is consistent across all countries.
I've spent a significant amount of time fixing old translations (that is, unpaid) that were so awkward to read they hurt my eyes. Frankly, I find it distasteful to correct other people's translations and essentially 'steal' their points. While I do communicate with others when I come across poor translations or minor mistakes, there are two challenges: 1) I can't do it every time, and 2) it's a lot of extra work.
Any opinion?

[rexroom]

Any help is appreciated, but so far there's not much community effort. I doubt some of the translators on this site are even aware of the forums, let alone the language specific subsections.

Quality wise the best option would be for a moderation system, but that requires time and effort, and generally the common route in online translations is to let every edit pass and tweak afterwards. Quality comes with expertise that you buy with money.

Thus it would be in the publishers interest in hiring quality translators, since one thing some people might bounce off of a game is its poor translation. Will it be likely? Who knows, different regions have various degrees of understanding English. I know BGA kind of relies on the whole "fix it yourself" mentality, but that can only take so far. Tragedy of the commons is a thing, and it could apply here too.

[Blacktango]

Suggestion: get more contributors for the language you are talking about.
Advertise to the players you play with. Teach them how to contribute.
Since there are many French users on BGA, we also have many translators (benevolent, as for all languages).

Like you said, you don't always have the time, and this is a very hard/long work. That's why choosing some managers would be very difficult, imo.
If not enough people want to get involved just as translator, it would be even harder to find those managers.

[HockeyCeres]

Suggestion: get more contributors for the language you are talking about.

There are too many of them, and most of them just write down things half randomly to rush their points.

Like you said, you don't always have the time, and this is a very hard/long work. That's why choosing some managers would be very difficult, imo.
If not enough people want to get involved just as translator, it would be even harder to find those managers.

Again, I don't agree. It should be a rewarded job (points are fine), but the focus should be on doing a good job, not rush things

[Nessi]

The problem of good quality translations is not new. And as long as there are gift points for it, there will also be people who smear translations for it, without consideration of quality. If you abolish the gift points, no good translator will bother anymore - so we are in a difficult dilemma.
To hire professional translators for all languages, the cost-benefit ratio is too low, no publisher will do that. In addition, we then have the problem that the people may be good translators, but they don't know the games and a lot of things are therefore not translated correctly.

A suggestion would be that the system records how many translations of a translator (in percentage terms) are corrected: above a certain value, the translator receives a warning that his translations are not good. If the value rises higher, he is blocked (temporarily at first?) for a while.

[TPedrosa]

I think this is a problem in all the languages, and yes the job its awful and the BGA interface don't help. And I think not all the users should have rights to do the translations, and yes probably should exist a body to moderate this things for each language, at least to set some guide lines about it.

[cigma]

Translations are often overly literal, and everything feels rushed, just to earn points

There is a thread especially about scavengers: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32999

I think one factor about this problem is that the number of games on BGA increases so fast (which is generally appreciated) that we don't have enough translators of high quality to translate or correct everything.

A suggestion would be that the system records how many translations of a translator (in percentage terms) are corrected: above a certain value, the translator receives a warning that his translations are not good. If the value rises higher, he is blocked (temporarily at first?) for a while.

I think this is a very good suggestion, because it helps to have a high quality in translations, but doesn't need a moderator (who would have to be an expert in that language). Indeed, I opened a suggestion report on this: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=102233 Please vote for it!

[Hagardunor]

Suggestion: get more contributors for the language you are talking about.

There are too many of them, and most of them just write down things half randomly to rush their points.

Totally agree !

[razorphantom110]

My god, finally someone says it. I wish I could report players who translate so poorly.
My favorite game, Agricola is completely UNPLAYABLE in my language (Italian). Slowly I am editing them, without taking points since they are "validated". What a shame, what a miserable system.

[Blacktango]

My god, finally someone says it. I wish I could report players who translate so poorly.
My favorite game, Agricola is completely UNPLAYABLE in my language (Italian). Slowly I am editing them, without taking points since they are "validated". What a shame, what a miserable system.

There is no real "validation". Validated just means that no one has changed the translation for 30 days.

I wouldn't say it's a miserable system, because I’m glad to be able to improve translations myself.