Enable [[Project:Terminology gadget|Terminology gadget]] by default?

Its quit good for me and looks to me a component of the Translate extension.

Cigaryno (talk)16:32, 23 September 2022

Yes as long as it can be disabled (as least as long as we don't refresh the page, or in preferences for experienced translators that don't need it all the time but can feed the terminology separetely using another window or tab).

  • It may cause input troubles in some cases, or could provide unrelated hints when there are lexical ambiguities, without the possibility to make an appropriate choice with the suggestion(s) given, or the termiloogy data itself may be defective, needing additions or fixes.
  • The terminology (even if it is correct) may also contain extra terms to contextually remove (to avoid repetitions in the translated text).
  • In some cases, a repeated term may also be contextually replaced by a locally-unambiguous pronoun, or rewritten in another form (active vs. passive, noun vs. verb or participle) that is easier to read, making also long sentences easier to understand while preserving the intended meaning.
  • Finally the terminology list will always be defective for grammatical derivation of terms (plural/gender/case forms, conjugated verbs), and required contextual transforms (such as mutations/agglutination/elisions, as well as capitalisation): it should just offer hints, not requirements.

Also it does not seem that the data provided in the terminology lists is used to feed the normal search engine: I've never seen search results returning terms from these lists, only those from normal wiki pages and translation units. As well the terminology gadget still does not propose results from the local search engine (when showing hints, or when adding terms to terminology lists).

The terminology gadget also does not allow separating the proposed terms with some free text disambiguating its context of use: it tries term-for-term lexical correspondances, not lemma-for-lemma.

It may also start looking up for lexical entries or for labels of elements from Wikidata (possibly correlating them with sitelinks in Wiktionnary or Wikipedia for relevant languages). But this could also be integrated in the local search engine if the gadget can properly use the local search engine already configured to make these extra searches.

So finally, the gadget would remain quite simplist. More efforts should be made in the search engine, showing more contextual hints on the right pane, below the message doc. This right pane is also the place where, later, Abstract Wikipedia (also working with Wikifunctions and Wikidata, and possibly other open data sources) could also provide their own hints (in addition to existing translation tools).

In fact I did not find that gadget very useful and productive for now, I have however massively used the local search engine (to perform checks of coherence when there were multiple choices, or to find possible related discussions), and search engines of Wikimedia wikis and of development project sites (outside MediaWiki itself).

It should also be noted that projects not directly related to MediaWiki use their own terminologies with distinctive terms. The gadget currently does makes any difference, depending on the project we are translating for within the Translate UI. Once again this is the problem that it shows no context to allow proper choices: translating something without taking into account the context of use is full of traps! That's why the right pane, showing the doc for each translation unit and other relevant infos, is still the best place).

So for me this gadget is just a transition tool just here to fill a gap for "fast startup": for languages that are already very advanced, it is already not needed at all. And in my opinion it is more a pollution than a real help when working on translation reviews. It may just help early translators, but not reviewers (we need more reviewers, but to capture them we need more efficient search tools to help them: so please continue working on the right pane of the translate UI, which will not just help Translatewiki.net itself, but also all other translation tools for wikis in Wikimedia or elsewhere, using the Translate UI or extensions based on it!).

Verdy p (talk)17:29, 23 September 2022