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Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

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Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#21

Post by madcaptenor »

bglazer wrote: post #3

Apparently, the article for David Woodard, an American composer and conductor has been translated into 333 languages, including Seediq, a language spoken in Northern Taiwan by about 20 thousand people. I am absolutely baffled as to why this is the case. I have to imagine some kind of "astroturfed" effort by Woodard or a fan to spread his name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Woodard

The really amazing thing is that there are more articles about this guy than about Wikipedia. You'd think the first thing the editors of any Wikipedia would do is make an article about Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#22

Post by Centigonal »

soupfordummies wrote: post #5
ffsoftboiled wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy does an excellent breakdown. But the TLDW: possibly a Saudi superfan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ob0f1kCtOM

"Arthur Miller interview on "The Death of a Salesman" (1999)" This what you meant to post?

perhaps they meant to post this video (which is excellent): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ_pEP3fRvM

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#23

Post by canistel »

bglazer wrote: post #3

Apparently, the article for David Woodard, an American composer and conductor has been translated into 333 languages, including Seediq, a language spoken in Northern Taiwan by about 20 thousand people. I am absolutely baffled as to why this is the case. I have to imagine some kind of "astroturfed" effort by Woodard or a fan to spread his name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Woodard

I checked the Malayalam page for David Woodard as I have native proficiency and also when it comes to translation to Malayalam, even the finer engines are patchy at best. Firstly, there is an alert at the top which says that the article seems to be translated automatically and needs improvement, and frankly, this is quite self evident too. Which makes me wonder, whether someone tried to script/automate the translation (of this article) to a large number of languages?

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#24

Post by IIAOPSW »

morley wrote: post #18
rafram wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of them seem to be stubs with only one line of content. Not very hard to translate "David James Woodard (born April 6, 1964) is an American conductor and writer" passably into 300-some languages.

But the point still stands: if it's so straightforward, why give this person this treatment, instead of millions of other people?

For the sake of null hypothesis, how far and wide has the second most translated article reached? Is it also an (apparently) random stub?

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#25

Post by Ylpertnodi »

nritchie wrote: post #20

This begs the question: How many languages can be accessed via AI translators?

I had Cgpt translate into a very local actual dialect (as opposed to the official language of the country I'm in). According to the locals, they couldn't believe how accurate it is.

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#26

Post by rafram »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #24
morley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point still stands: if it's so straightforward, why give this person this treatment, instead of millions of other people?

For the sake of null hypothesis, how far and wide has the second most translated article reached? Is it also an (apparently) random stub?

That's what the OP link is about. Woodard is #2, below Turkey and above Japan.

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#28

Post by IIAOPSW »

madcaptenor wrote: post #16

Here is an interesting list of the most famous humans, where fame is measured by how many languages they have a Wikipedia article in. 333: David Woodard 275: Michael Jackson 274: Jesus 252: Donald Trump, who is very happy he's ahead of... 251: Barack Obama 250: Ronald Reagan 242: Adolf Hitler 239: Leonardo da Vinci 234: Isaac Newton 233: Confucius 230: William Shakespeare 229: Albert Einstein, Vladimir Putin, Nelson…

There seems to be a recency bias, as the odds of our present day politicians all being as historically important as the rest of the list is unlikely. Makes sense that things of recent media attention are higher priority for translation, irrespective of how "important" they are in the grand scheme of history.

Re: Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles

#29

Post by raybb »

rafram wrote: post #12
bglazer wrote: post #3

Apparently, the article for David Woodard, an American composer and conductor has been translated into 333 languages, including Seediq, a language spoken in Northern Taiwan by about 20 thousand people. I am absolutely baffled as to why this is the case. I have to imagine some kind of "astroturfed" effort by Woodard or a fan to spread his name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Woodard

A lot of them seem to be stubs with only one line of content. Not very hard to translate "David James Woodard (born April 6, 1964) is an American conductor and writer" passably into 300-some languages.

It would be interesting to see which the most translations that qualify as a Good Article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_criteri...

Though, I'm not sure if the Good Article assessment is used in many languages. Maybe someone could slap some LLM on it to do a quick assessment of which are likely to be GA.

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