Removal of translator rights
Can you link to messages sent to him? I remember when I started I made horrible mistakes too. Nowdays I consider my work to be of very high quality, which only possible because I got lot of experience and training. If the user acts in a good faith, it is better to try to train him (for example doing pair work) and have more translators in the long run.
I hope you are filling the holes in our qqq-documentation when you explore things. Thanks!
On the users' talk page is a thread about that, where the 3 most active translators are pointing the mistakes, but without any change. We know this user from bg.wikipedia, where his edits are the same - but there is a big community and the bad edits are easily corrected or removed. We're assuming the good faith is Wikipedia, but here is a bit different, because the translations are spread not only in Wikipedia, but on all wikis.
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.
Your description of errors compare pretty well to the mistakes I see in new Finnish translation here. So far I've managed to review all new changes and correct them into good enough level for my taste. It has also made me to request documentation for many messages. We are also tying to reduce the barrier to make translations here by providing good and exhaustive message documentation.
But you are correct big enthusiasm is not enough, the translator must also be willing to learn. Also, if he has reverted translations back to his versions without discussing, that's very bad.
It's different - you know where to look it the code to find the message and to see it in context. We're doing it the hard way - with test local wikis, experimenting and trying to find the best possible translation that fits in the guidelines. Most of the users' contributions are not reviewed/edited (yet), I've followed them just to make sure they sound okay, but without comparing them with the original message. I just found several big differences from the source messages and will take care they appear correct asap, without being a raw machine translation or bad translation. In that case, instead of doing new translations, I have to review and compare old ones, have to imagine where they appear and which extension to load. As the most active Bulgarian contributor around, I still believe that it's better to have no translation, instead of bad one.
I only know MediaWiki and perhaps FreeCol. Most projects are unknown to me as well.
Nike, I perfectly well understand your strive to good faith. But... it's. not. a. matter. of. good. faith. here. This user, this very user, is a notorious example why the translator rights have to be given __in return__ of provided references for linguistic competence and experience with the IT/software terminology and MediaWiki. Otherwise, the lateral damage on the product itself, on its Wikimedian and external users, as well as the rest contributors who are forced to do double work, are greater. I can't explain it in a clearer way.