Home > Forum > TermWiki > Why do some collegues simply don't care about what they are writing?

Thank you Teditor, that would certainly improve the accuracy of the texts, BUT still there won't be any difference between those who spend hours translating all the words in the DEFINITIONS (certainly thousands of words!!) and those who simply rush in as many terms as they can, which is REALLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY UNFAIR! Why doesn't the system count the REAL NUMBER of WORDS a contributor writes, either as terms (headword) or the real number of words contained in the definition one has translated? Only that calculation would make sense and be fair to all contributors and would encourage them to translate LONGER DEFINITIONS as well, as I've already repeated several times. Thank you. Kind regards, MisterBeppe

Hi MisterBeppe, There will be a feature coming soon that allows other users to report errors on existing content. Those errors will be factored in when calculating a contributor's overall standing. Thank you again for your hard work!

Thanks a lot Teditor, what you've written certainly gives me some kind of encouragement to continue. Actually I haven't seen any kind of "punishment" for those who write any sort of careless information, without checking the source, without paying attention to details, and so on. They are still there with all their mistakes and, to add insult to injury, in some cases they certainly are much further up in the list of contributors than others! So far I've certainly written more words (I've mostly translated the definitions in full, and it takes a lot of time, you know that very well!!) than many other colleagues who keep translating the single term alone (often wrongly, because they simply want to enter the translation of as many words as possible without any care for the context of the term or its correct spelling; e.g. there are terms entered as an adjective when actually they are verbs in the source, as verbs when actually they are nouns in the source, all sort of thing, often resulting in a ridiculous translatin). That's why I wrote the previous posts and why I'm very disappointed with the whole system which keeps ignoring the great effort made by those who write thousands of words in the translation of the definitions, or spend time correcting mistakes made by other contributors. This policy, if it's not changed soon, is rather annoying, totally unfair and will certainly not encourage people to translate long definitions at all! Why should I spend my time translating a definition which is fifty lines long? Please keep that in mind, nobody will ever do that, if the system is not changed soon, and that's what I had already pointed out a few weeks ago! Thank you for reading my long post. Kind regards, MisterBeppe

Hi MisterBeppe, TermWiki will become successful precisely because of conscientious and hard working contributors like yourself! I also spend a lot of time correcting many entries whenever I have time. BTW, the people who add careless information should worry that soon their ranking will be affected which is something nobody wants.

Thank you Robert. As you may have well understood, my concern was about accuracy both of the source texts and their translation as well, some of which (I'm sorry to repeat) have not been as accurate as one would expect (at least so far). As I said before, the fact is easily seen from time to time when scrolling source and target texts, anyone can notice that! A mistake may occur and that's perfectly understandable but carelessness and mere rush to reach the top of the list more quickly is something totally different. I do hope, though, that the hard work done by many conscientious colleagues, and myself, is not done in vain and some good results will come out in the end. I'll continue to contribute as much as I can and put all possible effort into my translations. Kind regards, MisterBeppe

Dear MisterBeppe, Thank you for your comments. If some translators are copying straight from source (probably using the Google translate button) then this will certainly harm the quality of translations in TermWiki. However, it will also remove any chance that they will be able to market themselves via TermWiki. Poorly translated terms and translations have a limited shelf life: sooner or later they will be voted down, overwritten, or just deleted. Therefore, although it may seem that some users are "getting away" with not putting enough effort into translations, this is not the case. Through your hard work, MisterBeppe, you are making sure that your terms will be viewed and used for many years to come.

And last but not least: some contributors clearly copy the English definition without caring to delete the extra words that do not make sense at all when written in another context. Let me give you an example: when the English definition contains the words "as above", "as in this article", "in this context", etc. etc, this clearly means that the definition was taken from an article or from the Web or whatever page and should be adjusted to make it a real sensible definition for TermWiki, and obviously the extra words which don't make sense at all should be eliminated. And even worse, as a consequence, some sentences of the definition CAN'T be translated if one does not want to write a ridiculous translation as well! The "as above", "as in this article" and similar clauses were sensible in the original context BUT absolutely not here, where we need also accurate definitions and not only accurate translations. Some other contributors write the definition as connected to a noun when actually the term is an adjective, or when it's a verb they talk about a noun in the definition and vice versa! Thus making it impossible to write a sensible translation of the definition. In order to create a consistent sentence the translator should invent a completely different translation which does not mirror the source definition at all! I have often left out some definitions untranslated on purpose, simply because the source text was so strange that it would only generate a bad translation, hence I completely refused to write it to avoid being considered a bad translator. Sorry for pointing this out as well! MisterBeppe

Sorry, my typo in the question. The system doesn't allow any correction after clicking. I meant to write "colleagues", obviously.