AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
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AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
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Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#2If nobody's reading them and nobody's writing them, then perhaps it doesn't matter. We could let Wikipedia-Greenlandic persist as its own evolved language that forks from the original.
> potentially pushing the most vulnerable languages on Earth toward the precipice as future generations begin to turn away from them.
OK? We have lots of dead languages. It's fine. People use whatever languages are appropriate to them and we don't need to maintain them forever.
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#3It's ironic that the "solution" to the problem is being driven by yet another person that isn't native to Greenland.
While they may be a Greenlandic teacher, it's almost assured that they are teaching western Greenlandic, which is similar to Canadian Inuktitut.
People in the East of Greenland speak a language that has similarities, but is different enough in vocabulary and sounds that it's often considered a separate language and not a dialect.
When people from East and West Greenland come together, they typically speak Danish because they can't understand each other in their own native language.
So we're talking about a country that has 55k people and a portion of them don't even speak the official language.. This guy would have no way of knowing whether something was written poorly by a computer or a poorly educated greenlandic native that maybe isn't so good with the official language.
Given that the majority of the country's citizens do not use the internet at all, it is not even clear what his solution is other than just deciding to be some sort of magic arbiter .. which is not realistic or sustainable.
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#4I'm surprised this story didn't mention the scandal with Scots Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
> an American teenager – who does not speak Scots, the language of Robert Burns – has been revealed as responsible for almost half of the entries on the Scots language version of Wikipedia
It wasn't malicious either, it was someone who started editing Wikipedia at 12 and naively failed to recognise the damage they were doing.
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#5I'm surprised this story didn't mention the scandal with Scots Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-... > an American teenager – who does not speak Scots, the language of Robert Burns – has been revealed as responsible for almost half of the entries on the Scots language version of Wikipedia It wasn't malicious either, it was someone who started editing Wikipedia at 12 and naively fa…
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Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#6> Wehr, who now teaches Greenlandic in Denmark, speculates that perhaps only one or two Greenlanders had ever contributed.
That's the core issue, it's not those who use AI translator or worst like Google translate. If there isn't any Greenlander to contribute to their Wikipedia, they don't deserve to have one and instead must rely on other languages.
The difference between an empty Wikipedia and one filled with translated articles that contains error isn't much. They should instead close that version of Wikipedia until there are enough volunteers.
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#7It's ironic that the "solution" to the problem is being driven by yet another person that isn't native to Greenland. While they may be a Greenlandic teacher, it's almost assured that they are teaching western Greenlandic, which is similar to Canadian Inuktitut. People in the East of Greenland speak a language that has similarities, but is different enough in vocabulary and sounds that it's often considered a separate…
> Given that the majority of the country's citizens do not use the internet at all
On what do you base this assertion? I was not able to find up-to-date statistics, but 72% of participants in this survey from 2013 had internet access at home, either via PC or via mobile devices, and another 11% had internet access elsewhere:
https://digitalimik.gl/-/media/datagl/old_filer/strategi_201...
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#8It's ironic that the "solution" to the problem is being driven by yet another person that isn't native to Greenland. While they may be a Greenlandic teacher, it's almost assured that they are teaching western Greenlandic, which is similar to Canadian Inuktitut. People in the East of Greenland speak a language that has similarities, but is different enough in vocabulary and sounds that it's often considered a separate…
I wish people on HN would stop acting like “magic arbiter” solutions are “not realistic”, when in reality it’s the only way things have every worked. Are federal judges “magic arbiters”? Yes. Do judges make bad calls? Yes. Do we not like when large numbers of judges who are unfriendly to our side get life appointments? Yes. Has anyone proposed an actual better way of solving these kinds of problems? No.
So to get back to the point: Yes the solution is to appoint someone a magic arbiter, and hope they don’t screw up. The fact that it’s a deeply imperfect way of solving problems doesn’t mean it’s not workable. It just means it will backfire at some point, and someone else will get appointed instead.
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#9I'm surprised this story didn't mention the scandal with Scots Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-... > an American teenager – who does not speak Scots, the language of Robert Burns – has been revealed as responsible for almost half of the entries on the Scots language version of Wikipedia It wasn't malicious either, it was someone who started editing Wikipedia at 12 and naively fa…
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Yes, half of my entire political ideology is based on posts written by 12 year olds on the Internet. The other half is based on posts written by dogs[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
Re: AI, Wikipedia, and uncorrected machine translations of vulnerable languages
#10If nobody's reading them and nobody's writing them, then perhaps it doesn't matter. We could let Wikipedia-Greenlandic persist as its own evolved language that forks from the original. > potentially pushing the most vulnerable languages on Earth toward the precipice as future generations begin to turn away from them. OK? We have lots of dead languages. It's fine. People use whatever languages are appropriate to them…
I see that this comment get downvoted but I think we can agree on the facts that languages, just like species, die while other flourish. And that's fine.
Survival of the fittest, right ? Not enough people speaking Greenlandic, too complicated even for it's own population who would rather speak danish ? The very reason I'm speaking English is because it was forced military during the 19th century by the UK and since the 20th by Hollywood.
Just like a virus, if a language doesn't spread, it die.