Language choice errors in Kudoz (English-English chosen instead of source-English) Thread poster: Marie-Hélène Hayles
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There's been a recent exponential increase in the number of incorrect Kudoz questions sent in the English-English category, when the asker quite clearly actually wants a translation into English from the source language. I think the reason is clear - these emails all arrive set in a foreign language, which strangely seem to coincide with those languages in which the site is now aavilable... Spanish, Portugese and Polish seem to be the most common.
The askers generally seem to be les... See more There's been a recent exponential increase in the number of incorrect Kudoz questions sent in the English-English category, when the asker quite clearly actually wants a translation into English from the source language. I think the reason is clear - these emails all arrive set in a foreign language, which strangely seem to coincide with those languages in which the site is now aavilable... Spanish, Portugese and Polish seem to be the most common.
The askers generally seem to be less experienced Proz users and the most likely explanation would be that if you've got the site set in a foreign language (I haven't, so I'm making an intelligent guess here) it's not clear enough how to set the required source and target language.
I confess I fail to see how it could be clearer - if I go to the "Ask a kudoz question" I'm invited to enter it as Italian-English, English-Italian or English, which seems clear enough - but enough people are getting it wrong that I have to assume there is a real problem, and therefore suggest that something should be done to make the language choice more obvious. ▲ Collapse
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NancyLynn
Canada
Local time: 04:38
Member (2002)
French to English
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MODERATOR
because
1) It takes time to clean up these errors and notify the Asker
2) When this occurs, the question is not recirculated to its intended audience, so the Asker's chances of getting active responses is reduced
3) I've been guilty of it myself, despite my role in point 1 above
It's true, I wonder if we could colour-code our languages or something, or maybe make the target language ... See more because
1) It takes time to clean up these errors and notify the Asker
2) When this occurs, the question is not recirculated to its intended audience, so the Asker's chances of getting active responses is reduced
3) I've been guilty of it myself, despite my role in point 1 above
It's true, I wonder if we could colour-code our languages or something, or maybe make the target language bigger than the source, something.
Thanks MHH
Nancy ▲ Collapse
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| ah, I didn't know it didn't get recirculated! | Sep 30, 2006 |
I noticed you'd actually deleted some questions and invited the asker to repost them in the correct language pair - now I understand why.
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Steffen Walter 
Germany
Local time: 10:38
Member (2002)
English to German
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| Taking this one step further ... | Sep 30, 2006 |
... I'd SUGGEST that notifications of such KudoZ questions be re-sent whenever language pairs are changed by moderators/editors. The resulting traffic shouldn't be that high that it would annoy those who may have activated notifications in both pairs/combinations.
We might also include a sentence/note in the KudoZ asking form to guide askers to the right pair if they chose monolingual, saying, for example,
"Please note that you are about to ask/post a(n) {name of langu... See more ... I'd SUGGEST that notifications of such KudoZ questions be re-sent whenever language pairs are changed by moderators/editors. The resulting traffic shouldn't be that high that it would annoy those who may have activated notifications in both pairs/combinations.
We might also include a sentence/note in the KudoZ asking form to guide askers to the right pair if they chose monolingual, saying, for example,
"Please note that you are about to ask/post a(n) {name of language} monolingual question. If you wish to receive a translation into another language, please change the language pair accordingly."
Steffen ▲ Collapse
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| yes, they both sound sensible. | Sep 30, 2006 |
Steffen Walter wrote:
... I'd SUGGEST that notifications of such KudoZ questions be re-sent whenever language pairs are changed by moderators/editors. The resulting traffic shouldn't be that high that it would annoy those who may have activated notifications in both pairs/combinations.
We might also include a sentence/note in the KudoZ asking form to guide askers to the right pair if they chose monolingual, saying, for example,
"Please note that you are about to ask/post a(n) {name of language} monolingual question. If you wish to receive a translation into another language, please change the language pair accordingly."
Steffen
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| It's only laziness | Sep 30, 2006 |
I see the site in Spanish, it looks exactly like the English one and before a question is sent there is a preview of the question with the languages, speciality and so on.
Our programmers have already done a lot of work here, not only improving and creating this preview page, but also with an automatic research in the glossaries for those who don't do that before asking...
The only problem here is that Human Factorthat Human Factor.
Claudia ▲ Collapse
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| KudoZ course and test | Sep 30, 2006 |
It's been suggested many times before, but I'd like to reiterate that we should seriously consider implementing a very short course on KudoZ with a pass/fail test. The asker would be asked, "for what language pair would you like a translation?". What context do you have? etc. Then the new user is given a sample question form to fill in. If he enters English-English as the language pair after having stated that he needs a translation from Spanish to English, he gets a no go on the test and will h... See more It's been suggested many times before, but I'd like to reiterate that we should seriously consider implementing a very short course on KudoZ with a pass/fail test. The asker would be asked, "for what language pair would you like a translation?". What context do you have? etc. Then the new user is given a sample question form to fill in. If he enters English-English as the language pair after having stated that he needs a translation from Spanish to English, he gets a no go on the test and will have to repeat it till he gets it right. ▲ Collapse
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