Help talk:Translation

Creation of this Help page
This page was redirect I have created this page by splitting text out of the Translation page. I did this because some users were confused by the "how to" advise in "Wikipedia" namespace and thought it was a guideline. As the page had diverged from the guidence in WP:TFOLWP this was confusing. Fixing the divergence and moving the "how to" into the "Help" namespace ought to end this confusion.

What I have done is split the Translation page into two. I have left most of the text there, but have moved the "How to translate" section and the citations section into this page (Help:Translation) (Revision as of 20:44, 15 February 2021 of Translation, Revision as of 20:42, 15 February 2021 of Help:Translation). -- PBS (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to move the Expand language template to Talk pages
A discussion about moving the Expand language template (and its associated templates, Expand French, Expand Spanish, and so on) from article pages to Talk pages is taking place at Templates for discussion/Log/2021 April 16. Your feedback would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Style for translating isolated phrase
This article discusses translating an entire article, but it does not address the question of translating a single phrase within an English article. For example, a recent edit to Geometry changed Theorema Egregium (remarkable theorem) to Theorema Egregium ("remarkable theorem"). I have no idea which, if either, is correct, or whether there is a template that generates the approved rendering. Also, if there is an article that discusses this then there should be a hatnote template linking to it, e.g., about. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:58, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Avoid machine translation
Considerable advances in machine translation have been made since the section "Avoid machine translation" was drafted. While careful checking and copy editing of the output is still essential, results often provide a good basis for a new article in English. Knowledge of the source language is of course a major advantage. (cc:, , , ) --Ipigott (talk) 10:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed, there should no longer be a major concern on some of the biggest western languages. I don't have experience with Chinese and Japanese so can't say for those, but I would guess very good now too. I wish more people would make an effort to learn languages themselves but not speaking the language absolutely shouldn't be a deterrent for translating. DeepL is of an extremely high standard in particular. ♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:25, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Machine translation from Chinese is often still a complete joke full of embarrassing errors, or missing context and abbreviations (recently I read an article about Taipei where Taipei was abbreviated 北市. Google not-so-helpfully translated this as "Beijing"). "Don't use machine translations unless you know exactly what you are doing" is still a good message. —Kusma (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * One problem with machine translation is that it is too easy. If somebody uses DeepL or Google or whatever to translate a foreign language Wikipedia article without checking a single source, the output mimics a decent Wikipedia article but there has been zero source verification. I fear that we won't be able to control the unverified translators if we allow them to copypaste foreign Wikipedias at a large scale. Cleanup of such articles is often more work than writing them from scratch, and a lot less fun. Direct translate copies from foreign Wikipedias are also inferior to using browser translation on an interwiki link (where both the translation and the linked article are likely to improve over time; copying today's version is less likely to result in future improvement). —Kusma (talk) 12:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, you should never translate content from another Wikipedia without checking a source and avoid translating unsourced stuff. But we're talking about quality of translations. ♦ Dr. Blofeld  15:25, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * We can change Machine translation almost always produces very low-quality results to Machine translation often produces low-quality results if you like, but I oppose a removal of an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing. We need to make it crystal clear that cut & paste machine translating from other Wikipedias is not wanted.
 * What is great is that machine translation allows people to access more sources, if done with skill (SusunW is a shining example here, especially because she is aware of her limitations and networks with native speakers when necessary). We should promote the use of MT for this, but I do not think we gain by allowing unlimited trans-copypasta. —Kusma (talk) 15:38, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * "Machine translation almost always produces very low-quality results" is highly inaccurate. "Machine translation may vary considerably in quality of translation from language to language, and caution must be exercised" would be more ideal I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld  15:45, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, something like that would work. The following sentences about what can go wrong still sometimes apply, though. —Kusma (talk) 16:21, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would support tweaks to the wording such as changing the heading to "Avoid unedited machine translations". I have put a notice on Wikipedia talk:Translation as that page has more watchers than this one. TSventon (talk) 13:03, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
 * My take is that machine translation is valuable but like anything should be used with caution and verified with multiple methods, just like one would do with any type of sourcing. If one doesn't know how to use it, it can be abused. Barring its use serves no purpose; however, if in doubt, ask an expert. SusunW (talk) 15:46, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The consensus in 2021 (that section was written before then) may have been that unedited/lightly-edited machine translations are worse than nothing, but that's changing for large languages, where translations need less and less work to clean up.  There are still different style guidelines and sourcing standards, &c.  But that's another issue. If we leave in claims about consensus we should include an "as of" date for the last time there was a consensus check.  – SJ +  18:39, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, the quality is excellent between main European languages (but not others). I came to wonder whether in some cases, the rule should be inverted : 'Avoid human translation'. Indeed, when I searched a topic and could not find it in my language (French), but in another one, I had the habit of creating a new page containing my translation, thinking it could help others not versed in the other language. I can see that these pages are often poorly maintained. For these languages, shouldn't we instead rely on machine translation, choose a reference page, and translate dynamically on request so that maintainers of all these languages see their efforts shared? But a first step is needed, currently automatic translators don't know about varying Wikipedia conventions (personally, I think most of this variation could be standardized away). Pyschobbens (talk) 10:34, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Pyschobbens those are some interesting suggestions, however I think that the problem of updating probably applies to all new articles rather than just translations. For controversial articles it is useful to have a choice of language versions which you can check for bias. TSventon (talk) 12:47, 12 May 2024 (UTC)