About BBO trnslation project

[slothy]

Before that Ben perhaps you would be kind enough to translate what Dawn says into English????

 

;) ;) :P

 

Dawn's Ex-friend, alex

[fred]

My sense is that we have 10s of 1000s of members who would

like to see a version of BBO in their native languages, but I could

easily be wrong about this.

 

Even if there are very few BBO members who care about a

non-English client, there are sound business reasons for us to

take this initiative:

 

We would like to eventually establish business relationships

with various National Bridge Federations and it is important to

the people who run such federations that our software be

available in their native languages. We also want to sell content

to people who speak various languages and I believe that we

will be more successful at this if both the content and the interface

are available in various non-English languages.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Maaa]

LOLLL Alex ;)

 

 

Ta ramka tu tamta ramka tam.

 

Enough vowels ? And..YES, this sentance has a serious meaning. lol

[csdenmark]

I certainly agree Fred. This was exactly what my comments regarding implementation of filters was about. The glorious perspectives for multi national and multi lingual are not to come.

 

Anyhow I am sad as I love the international get together here. I very much hope that some of the perspectives for national federations will be an option for members also to participate in the multinational activities - not only passive as Vugraph.

 

On the other hand when I occasionally looks into the danish section of Swan Bridge it looks like it is no runner for Danmarks Bridge Forbund. I dont know but I assume they are a bit disappointed as they in Denmark regarded national online bridge as the future. I know they have worked trying to establish something on scandinavian basis which intensions seems to have failed.

 

I still think it will be worth trying to ease the language problems in the multinational area.

[DrTodd13]

I think Fred's idea is worthwhile doing. It can only make BBO more convenient to those form other countries. I'd like to see it go a step farther and start to translate things like acronyms. Here's a scenario, I'm playing against a Polish pair and I'd like to know what their carding is. I click a new button on the screen "ask opps about carding." A dialog box opens up on my opps' screens that says "Declarer would like to know your carding" except that this would be translated into Polish. Then they are presented with something that looks like the lower left-hand portion of the ACBL convention card, again except that the terminology and acronyms are in Polish. Let's say they click on the "o/o" checkbox. When their answers come back to my screen I can see what they entered except that o/o has been translated into my vernacular, namely UDCA.

I hope this evolves into the bidding area as well where bids can be described symbolically rather than textually. This would eliminate much language confusion and allow for easy automatic translation.

 

Todd

[keylime]

I'll be happy to help out with the Korean translations :D

[mr1303]

It should be said that Maaa is quoting Jeremy Clarkson. I too have his book :D

[xx1943]

I agree 100% with erkson and misho. To play online bridge u must know a minimum of English to talk with pd and opps, to understand announcements by TD,

answer reasonable after alerting ...............

 

:D :D :lol: :o :( :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: By the way I want to express my enthusiasm about BBO. I got to know BBO in December 2003 and spent a lot of happy hours here.

Many thanks to Fred, UDay .......... and all others, who gave this exciting gift to all bridgeplayers all over the world.

Many many thanks. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

 

 

;) Hi Claus

 

I tried to translate this paragraph from your poll from English to German in Altavista:

 

My vote will be to change in a way that the commercial translation tools on WEB will be good regarding BBO information too. This means move general info from the client into WEB-sites. This also means in those sites write bridge as 'bridge' to avoid translation of the word as it will be wrong translated etc. In no way you will ever be able to handle the 52 different indian languages.

 

RESULT:

 

Meine Stimme ist, in einer Weise zu ändern, daß die kommerziellen Übersetzungshilfsmittel auf NETZ gut sind, BBO Informationen auch betrachtend. Dies heißt Bewegung allgemeines Info vom Klienten in Web site. Dieses auch Mittel in jenen Aufstellungsorten schreiben Brücke als 'bridge' Übersetzung des Wortes vermeiden, da es falsch übersetztes usw. ist. KeineswegsSIND Sie überhaupt in der Lage, die 52 unterschiedlichen indischen Sprachen anzufassen.

 

BACK from German to English

 

My vote wants tons of CHANGES in A way that the commercial translation tools on WEB wants good regarding BBO information too. This means move general info. from the client into Web sites. This thus means into those sites write bridge as 'bridge' ton avoid translation OF the word as it wants wrong translated etc.. In NO way you wants more ever able ton act the 52 different indian LANGUAGES

 

 

Everyone can make his opinion about the value of this translation himself. :o

 

I personally prefer reading in original English despite my bad knowledge of this language.

[mishovnbg]

Hi Slothy!

"Perhaps even Russian, but this may cause unnecessary probs with code-paging..."

You probably don't know that russian and by the way all slovenian use cyrillic alphabet which was invented and used first in bulgaria. So "unnecessary probs with code-paging" affect all bulgarians and they unlike most of other nations can't write in chat on his own language. Probably nobody asked Fred to correct this unsuitable for us chat environment, because normally bulgarians are friendly and patience, except for enemies... Do you know that about half milliard of people use cyrillic symbols?

 

Hi Marta!

"As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty´s Government conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan what will be known as Euroenglish ( Euro for short)."

 

:D But this is only possible future imho! Despite bulgarian language is more than thousand years old and I like it very much... Simplification is unavoidable - the time rule us, we can't rule the time! And our time is time of "take and run" :D and globalization do we like it or not...

 

 

Misho, fan of books, slow and thinking bridge and similar s** :lol:

[csdenmark]

I dont think so Misho. At least BBO supports chinese signs/letters. Those I have enabled on my PC and they are displayed on BBO too. There have been Vugraph sessions in chinese language. I think you will be right assuming the BBO client supports all the languages you have installed.

[mishovnbg]

I dont think so Misho. At least BBO supports chinese signs/letters. Those I have enabled on my PC and they are displayed on BBO too. There have been Vugraph sessions in chinese language. I think you will be right assuming the BBO client supports all the languages you have installed.

I can be wrong of course, Claus...

 

Fred and Uday, sorry about bother you, are cyrillic symbols available in BBO chat and BBO forum?

Thanks in advance, Misho

[csdenmark]

Фирма МС-АУТОРЕНТ предлага автомобили под наем (рент а кар) за бизнес цели, сватби, делегации, туризъм, трансфери при следните изгодни за клиента условия:

 

You see Misho here it works - but this is only displayed as ???????? on my PC at the BBO client. But I think they can as Fred once told me they have enabled such.

 

Here below you see some chinese signs - but also here BBO dont display. I dont remember how I once was able to produce the chinese signs on BBO - but they can for sure.

 

设计维护

[slothy]

Hi Slothy!

"Perhaps even Russian, but this may cause unnecessary probs with code-paging..."

You probably don't know that russian and by the way all slovenian use cyrillic alphabet which was invented and used first in bulgaria. So "unnecessary probs with code-paging" affect all bulgarians and they unlike most of other nations can't write in chat on his own language. Probably nobody asked Fred to correct this unsuitable for us chat environment, because normally bulgarians are friendly and patience, except for enemies... Do you know that about half milliard of people use cyrillic symbols?

 

In fact Mr Vnbg :) i did know that - You probably don't know that russian and by the way all slovenian use cyrillic alphabet which was invented and used first in bulgaria.- but saw no reason to include such an irrelevant fact to the spirit of the thread in my post :P . It is worth knowing and i am sure many people would be overwhelmingly interested in bulgaria's contribution to linguistics, and as a proud Bulgarian I am sure you were enthusiastic enuf to express that fact with little hesitation :ph34r:. Out of curiousity, were you asking whether i knew that bulgarian used Cyrillic alphabet or that it was invented in Bulgaria???

 

If people really want to know, I believe it was invented in the 9th century by a priest, called Cyril (hence Cyrillic), to translate religious manuscripts (the power of religion ;) ) from Byzantium so they could be read by native Slav-speakers . (please correct me if i am wrong Mish). For the avid readers amongst us, especially the addictive smokers, hee hee, D. Dimov's book "Tabacco" (hard to get hold of translation now) is well worth reading and a book of poems called "Motor Songs" (forgot author sorry :angry: )...

 

NB. You may be wondering why i wrote the above. I bought a Bulgarian woman a coffee in a bistro once. Unfortunately she made a rather annoying noise when she drank it so that relationship didnt mature. However, she had the nicest pair of legs i have ever seen on a woman (or a man for that matter). Thus i wrote it out of nostalgia.

 

Mish, you may like to know that the character Uncle Bulgaria in the Wombles series (english TV series ;) ) was so called coz he looks very much like you :lol: Although your bridge may be significantly better i am sure he can dig holes in the ground with his hands more expertly ;)

 

What i probably didnt know, however, was your comment "normally bulgarians are friendly and patient". but i am VERY open-minded and patient too. hee hee

 

I am currently writing some web-based software to allow people to interact using Maltese script (Latin script with a few variant characters) and it is proving quite challenging, to me anyway. That is the only reason why i said about the difficulty with the code-paging...

 

Your Fellow Slavic Sympathiser, Alex . :D

 

PS Misho (and Rado jaja) , please appreciate my ambassadorial function of promoting the history and literature of Bulgaria :D

[fred]

I dont think so Misho. At least BBO supports chinese signs/letters. Those I have enabled on my PC and they are displayed on BBO too. There have been Vugraph sessions in chinese language. I think you will be right assuming the BBO client supports all the languages you have installed.

I can be wrong of course, Claus...

 

Fred and Uday, sorry about bother you, are cyrillic symbols available in BBO chat and BBO forum?

Thanks in advance, Misho

I don't know about BBO Forums, but I am 99% certain that

there is no way to get the current BBO client to produce

cyrillic characters.

 

Non-English character sets (like Greek, Japanese, and Chinese)

required extra programming. I have done this for the 3 languages

mentioned above and I am working on it for Arabic, but I have

not done the necessary work for languages that use the

cyrillic alphabet (yet).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Rain]

Just a quick question regarding languages: Its said that languages like Hebrew are read right to left. (Chinese used to be this one, but adapted to modern computers and books) So is Hebrew or Arabic and all else still this way? Will Fred have to do a right-to-left version of BBO?

 

:D

 

 

Rain

[JRG]

Just a quick question regarding languages: Its said that languages like Hebrew are read right to left. (Chinese used to be this one, but adapted to modern computers and books) So is Hebrew or Arabic and all else still this way? Will Fred have to do a right-to-left version of BBO?

 

:D

 

 

Rain

Hebrew is still right-to-left.

[JRG]

Having the vugraph schedule in EST & CET may be convenient for people who live in those timezones but is quite a hassle for people who live outside of those timezone and even more hassle for people in the southern hemisphere who have daylight savings at a different time of year.

 

Also, showing EST & CET together often causes date errors as for 25% of the time EST & CET are on different days.

 

An automatic means of the vugraph schedule being presented in the user's own timezone would be fantastic, but in the meantime GMT and GMT only would be much for convenient.

I only mentioned this as an example of the easyness to take advantage from standard tools free available to all on internet. What I mean here is fx. stating time as: Time is fixed on Wednesday, 26 May 2004 3:00:00 PM Paris time

 

Aut. translation John Goold will be able to put in for help files tomorrow and those important sites will be available in 10+ languages at once.

 

So simple is translation of BBO help sites:

 

Dutch language

 

German language

 

French language

 

Italian language

I'm not as fast as Claus! However, I am looking into his suggestion. It may be a while before you see anything (if at all), as I am leaving for Canada in a couple of days to attend our daughter's university graduation. [For two weeks to take advantage of the trip.]

 

Here are the reasons I want to take a bit of time over this (besides being a little slow on the uptake):

 

- When I tried a quick test of the Altavista tools, it failed (because I don't have my own web site and the tool attempts to retrieve the text by downloading the page having the translation icon on it).

 

- The test I tried online (i.e. not translating a BBO Help file) was abysmally slow. I need to determine if this is normal or was just an occasional thing. I don't think we can subject everyone to slow loading of the Help pages. Too many people would feel the Help is worthless if it took too long to display.

 

- The Altavista icon takes up a considerable amount of space on the displayed page - in one test (putting the code in the Table of Contents frame), it was superposed over the Bridge Base Ace of Spades. So I would have to find a way to prevent this translation mechanism from messing up the look of the Help pages. I have tried to minimize the amount of scrolling people have to do, and so far it looks like this would force more scrolling.

 

So, here's the bottom line.

 

The translators may do a poor job, but for some people I can see that a poor job may be better than none at all (I could understand the instructions I used to get with electronic gear, though I used to laugh myself sick at the English). This means it may be worthwhile to implement Claus's suggestion of using the Altavista translation facility.

 

If it is too slow to be worthwhile to anyone, there is no point.

 

If it is just a bit sluggish and I can implement it without totally destroying the Help format, I'll try and do so. This may mean asking Fred and Uday for more disk space (and possibly another link in the BBO client) so I can maintain two copies of the Help files (one with the Altavista link embedded).

 

Oh, one other thing: I dislike going into one web site and having it link to another (e.g. using BBO, bringing up the Help, then the Help linking to another site). This would happen automatically using the Altavista icon (when the page loads, a script that links to Altavista is activated, even if you don't click on the Altavista icon). Also, it would introduce what is effecdtively an advertisement for Altavista into the BBO Help. I need to get Fred and Uday's thoughts on this matter.

[uday]

We're hoping that our friendly bbo-humans will do a much better job of translating the many terse phrases that we use in BBO.

 

Typical examples:

 

Close news window

Resume

Authorize payment

Conditions of contest

 

 

I can definitely see some value in using a machine translator to *initialize* the "translations" before we ask the human to proofread.

 

And maybe there will be languages for which there will be no available humans. In this case, maybe a machine xlation will work.

 

We'll see. I'm nearly finished w/the website to allow xlation and while we're waiting for humans to show up maybe i'll initialize a couple of languages with google and see what it all looks like

[uday]

I can also see that a machine xlation of the help might - might - be better than no help . But as CSDenmark shows us, BBO need not take any action except supply a link.

[csdenmark]

Looks like we are now reaching the right arguments. Who do we want to help with translation? None of us posting here. We can handle english and most prefer to do it in that way. We are talking of those who cannot and probably never will be able to. Approx. 25% of the BBO members. Those people cannot read the help information, they cannot read the "Rules for these sites".

 

We are not talking about the choice perfect translation versus imperfect translation. We are talking about the ability to guess the rest of a meaning from a text you can understand the language of or to guess the meaning of a text from which you understand nothing of or only the modern english words nowadays adopted of all languages like computer terms.

 

Machine translations need to be worked over after translation. Regarding the kind of using we are talking of - such will not be possible. We therefore need instead to try to prepare texts for best possible translation avoiding known problems. Let me give an example.

 

"Well done partner" is machine translated completely silly as "Watercontainer good partner". The reason for that is the syntax and that the word "well" have 5 meanings in english. As the machine cannot decide the interpretation the word is interpretated as susbstantive and translated as a watercontainer". Changing the sentence to "Good done partner" - the text is prepared for translation and you will have the translation you assume.

[the hog]

Can any of translate English into Australian?

[csdenmark]

http://sc.groups.msn.com/tn/A4/22/bridgeFILES/3/ad.jpg

If you mail me in danish(swedish or norwegian will do too), no matter how poor. I will have your conclusions right. I will be able to read/guess your arguments right. I will be able to understand even your cultural biased arguments.

 

http://sc.groups.msn.com/tn/A4/22/bridgeFILES/3/c7.jpg

If you mail me in english I will have your conclusions right. I will be able to have most of your arguments right and cultural biased arguments I will be able to guess fairly well if I have some kind of knowledge of the topic.

 

http://sc.groups.msn.com/tn/A4/22/bridgeFILES/3/b2.jpg

If you mail me in russian I will understand nothing. I will try to machine translate into english. I think I will be able to guess your conclusions right. I doubt I will be able to guess your arguments right. Cultural biased arguments I will need to give up.

 

http://sc.groups.msn.com/tn/A4/22/bridgeFILES/3/b6.jpg

I you mail me in polish I will understand nothing. I will try to spot some keywords for machine translation into english. If I am lucky - I will be able to guess your conclusions. Nothing else.

 

http://sc.groups.msn.com/tn/A4/22/bridgeFILES/3/b7.jpg

If you mail me in turkish I will understand nothing. I will thank you in english for your kind interest.

[JRG]

Can any of translate English into Australian?

ROFL.

 

There's too big a cultural difference. It's a daunting task!!!

[willow23]

I always keep asking what other possible changes can come about...and no sooner I ask . B) .I am smacked with another brilliant idea or improvement...I think that the translation project is insightful...one should not miss out on the best bridge site in the world to a language barrier...sounds like quite a bit of work...but who ever thought that we would get this far right~!...:D...Home Run Guys ...Good Luck on the project...

[Abadaba]

I think it is just one more example of how much Fred, Uday and Sheri care about their worldwide audience. And one more example of why BBO is the greatest site there is for online bridge.

 

Now if they could only figure out a way for all my typing mistakes to be translated.

 

If you can read Abalese you are indeed a genius

 

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: