Thread:Support/Removal of translator rights/reply (4)

I'd like to support the removal of rights of user Stanqo.

More than an year ago I also wrote on his talk page, explaining that his best support here would be refraining from further impulsive translations. I even attempted to help him understand some basic points in translating software system messages in personal communication, but... the problem is larger than it seems. It DOES require deeper knowledge of both languages, and software, and MediaWiki itself. It's not a matter of just giving a helping hand to a newbie.

Enthusiasm is far from enough here; the user has often grossly misunderstood the terminology (both in English and Bulgarian), has not cooperated and discussed in advance with other translators, and failed to follow the conventions for translation of system messages to Bulgarian. In the WMF websites he doesn't have any flags for advanced user groups, meaning that he can't see within the context many system messages, and understand their particular meaning. And far too often it DOES require you to have seen the message in the entirety of the surrounding context in order to judge how to translate it precisely.

Please, have in mind also that in Bulgarian we have genders not only in pronouns but also for all nouns, adjectives and verbs. This results in strict subordination between the different parts of speech, which is especially challenging when the system message contains only a bit of the sentence, and the rest is to be guessed or deduced. Very often user Stanqo has neglected that fact and the results were clear. (I am ready however to provide difflinks to vivid examples.) Moreover, in Bulgarian we don't have noun adjuncts, and quite often new words formation (IT terminology swarms with neologisms) in Bulgarian is a rather hard job for a non-specialist. In general, translation from the much more flexible English to the relatively more clumsy Bulgarian is not a job for everybody, I'm sorry to say.

I'd like to excuse that I take a stand on the case, having in mind that I have personally been rather inactive here in the last year. Recently I've been a much more active translator on Meta where there's an overwhelming need for translators, too.