larethian wrote:cloud, you must understand that baka-tsuki is not a group with a unified goal. It is an infrastructure (though I hope all those external groups do something to give back to the community, rather than just leveraging on the already available network = market, and just taking. Some may be already giving back, I'm just making a neutral comment here.). I mean, I feel that the suggestion you took time to formulate and post is certainly a commendable action in trying to give back to the community. But I'm afraid it's not very applicable due to the fact that baka-tsuki is now an infrastructure (and no longer the translator group of Haruhi) and people are just interested in their own projects and hardly anyone would actually reply to this post (you guys can prove me wrong). It may be applicable to individual projects or established groups but a community like this can be made up of people with different beliefs, views, and goals.
I understand very well that Baka-tsuki is not a group. I wouldn't profess to claim that BT is a group. If anything, it's more like a collection of Projects, headed by independent Project Supervisors.
However, this doesn't mean as a community (as a whole), we can't come up with a set of standards that we think is a
high representation of quality. This doesn't mean all projects are required to adhere to it--project supervisors would be welcome to attempt implementing it, or leave it. It's really a quality goal that reflects the desires of the community as whole (aka: what we as a community would ideally like to see), relaxing the restraint of whether we have members available to do this or not.
All in the mean time, this isn't supposed to interfere with the existing spirit of Baka-Tsuki's translation process. These high standards wouldn't bar uncertified and random editors/translators from editing or translating. We won't be denying people of their work. This system is more so of documentation to mark specific chapters have been reviewed at least once by a qualified individual.
Misogi wrote:
- There's also a lack of skilled and efficient editors in general. Especially on Alternative projects (with the exception of Indonesian ones), in which there's more EN translators than editors.
There's actually two side goals of this Tsuk-chan project.
1).
Provide a means of documentation to mark which chapters have been edited/reviewed by a qualified individual.
Currently, this isn't a BT guideline even though some individual projects do this anyway. The benefit of doing this, is that it will more efficiently focus the attention of dedicated project editors that are out there. These flags can draw attention to chapters that never have been edited before (but persist), or chapters that are relatively poorly edited by have gone unnoticed. Any patrolling but *certified* editor would be allowed to read the chapter (this isn't restricted to Project editors, etc)--if they didn't need to make any edits, they still can approve the chapter.
2).
Provide a form of recognition to dedicated project editors and TLC.
Currently this doesn't exist at all. By adding a dedicated EDIT and TLC columns to the registration page, we recognize the work that the editor did on a per-chapter basis. While this may seem like a minor thing, I think it's extremely important. Psychologically, I think it'll give the editor a feeling of reward that's quantifiable--basically the same feeling of satisfaction that translators get from translating units of chapters. Putting editors onto the same recognition model as translators would hypothetically help build a population of editors as dedicated as the translators we already have.
3).
Attract new skilled editors that previously weren't as motivated to join BT.
I get the feeling that many people on the outside have the impression editors on BT don't do moot; that… editors appear only to exist for typo-correcting purposes. Because of this impression, we don't get very many dedicated editors.
By putting a notice on Project Pages implementing this standard, we could in short actively "recruit" for *certified* editors. I know BT doesn't recruit. But the reason why we don't have skilled editors is because we don't recruit, combined with the fact that prospective editors feel their edits aren't valued on BT. Actively recruiting for Tsuki-chan Brigade could hypothetically improve this--the existence of the Tsuki-chan brigade demonstrates to prospective editors that Baka Tsuki does have an high quality department where editors
are valued… and is actually more likely to attract skilled editors than doing nothing at all.
I'm aware that most likely, if we were to put this to a test, we'd end up with a lot of symbols flagged next to chapters that would never go away. At the very best, they'd go away very slowly. However, I don't think that should write off this effort just because we think it'd happen too slowly (slash we don't have enough editors/TLC). I'm proposing a mechanism here that would eventually get projects to a quality standard that we as a community think is fair. The best part of this is that it's a tracking/documentation process. Theoretically, we wouldn't get as much duplicate work (aka: a lot of concentrated edits in the early volumes but not as much in the later volumes).
Currently, some of you may know that my project, OreShura, gets obnoxious "Pending TLC/Proofread" tagged next to every chapter I translate. Assuming Okashira and cautr are certified TLC/editors, you can go glance at the OreShura project page to see how it would progress along. The difference is, instead of having that obnoxious text, we'd have symbols to show TLC/EDITS have been performed.
The potential results we could get out of this plan is balanced between two points: how
stringent we make the examination for editors/TLC, and how
many *certified* individuals we want out there. Naturally, the more certified individuals there are, the fast this plan would proceed. However, the semantics of this balance is up to you guys to work out.
Misogi wrote:
The translator is the translation quality's main factor. Without a decent profiency and an excellent editor, salvaging it may be almost impossible.
NanoDesu wrote:
Just to note, I do think the idea of implementing a diagnostic for translators/TLCers is one of the most crucial parts to actually making a difference through a plan like this. If you want, you're free to just use our translator's diagnostic. Just ask if you need it.
Larethian wrote:
On another side personal note, having done some extensive TLC before, I find TLC to be an unproductive affair when it comes to light novels and visual novels. If you want accuracy, get a good translator.
I didn't originally account for having a formal diagnostic for translators, because theoretically a translation could be salvaged through a TLC even from a mediocre translator. However, if people think it's necessary, we could restrict chapters marked as certified to only those that were translated by a certified translator.
The point of a translator TL-ing a short excerpt of a project and submitting it to a TLC-checked was supposed to satisfy the purpose of ensuring the raw translation is at least good enough to be salvageable. The translator was supposed to do this once a project, especially among the Chinese TLs where there's a varying quality of the original source of the raws.
If the concern is TLC-ing is unproductive, then I'll propose another solution: If we do implement a formal translator diagnostic (it's really the same thing as the TLC-diangoistic… guys… |D), translators who are *certified* will not require a TLC to be performed on their translations. Chapters completed by uncertified translators, however, would be flagged as needing-TLC by default. It makes sense, because sometimes we have many translators working on a project. Sounds fair?
Larethian wrote:
If you already have a good translator, he may have a different view on how something should be rendered in English, and you can't say the TLC-ker is better and the former's wrong and later's right. This will make you lose people faster than you can blink.
Naturally, there would be rules regulating this. Edit-wars and fights break out on the Wiki already, and they're supposed to be resolved by the supervisor. Also, our editing/translating guidelines state that the translator gets the final word. The plan wouldn't change any of those existing guidelines.
As a matter of fact, this effort is meant to bring more editors and eyes into more neglected projects. You can't really say that having more TLCs/Editors are a bad thing, right? They pick at things that deserve to be picked at, and when the discussions gone far enough, the project supervisor is supposed to shut things up. It's an unavoidable consequence of working on BT.
NanoDesu wrote:I would support this plan overall of course, but the question is where you are going to get the requisite administrative support to carry this out. With so many parallel projects going at once, you're going to need a strong core team of administrators to be able to create the new standard and, more importantly, to actually enforce it across the entire wiki.
First of all, this isn't envisioned to be something that "will be enforced across the entire wiki". This plan is an optional level of QC that supervisors may choose to implement if they feel like it.
There is no enforcement going on at all. This is an
optional system to certify editors, TLC, and translators, and an
optional system to track which chapters have been translated/edited by said certified individuals. That is all. It is nothing more.
It's true that we're going to need a board to review applications. However, beyond that, I don't think this plan requires any more additional administration. The Tsuki-chan project would be very deregulated--after an individual is certified, they're free to work on whatever they want. After they perform their edits, they add their names to the registration page and remove the flags on their own. No one's going to tell them what to work on, or on what schedule.
No matter what we do, Baka-Tsuki is still Baka-Tsuki, after all.
Simon wrote:
But, you could try and use it as an option on your projects or on the projects of the translators that have agreed to it. Agreement is a must, or this whole thing might backlash.
On the other hand, it might be possible to use polls and then generate a template that will indicate the quality. But as before, you need an Ok from the TL and you have to talk to TLG as it's a change to the wiki(extension).
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No one said this was being applied across the board. The idea is that Project Supervisors (with the consent of their TLs) who like the idea are welcome to implement it. Otherwise nothing happens.
The reason why I've posted here is because it is an extension to the wiki I'm suggesting. Nothing's happened and nothing will happen unless enough members in the community like it (and naturally we get approval from TLG). These are community standards we're talking about, after all.
I'm just a reckless rabble-rouser who's poking a sleeping dragon, after all. xD