Improving BT Quality Discussion

[cloudii]

Baka-Tsuki has a reputation for having extremely variable quality translations.

Some projects are helmed by incredible translators, and other projects are pushed along by... mediocre ones. As a community, we generally seem to agree having any kind of translation is better than having no translation. However, due to our acceptance of this so-called necessary evil, Baka-Tsuki has somewhat garnered a relatively poor reputation for average quality.

If you've ever spent time talking to Nanodesu, you've probably heard his point of view that poor translations cause readers to gain undue biases and aversion to certain series that are actually quite good. It does a disservice to the Japanese author, and even worse, poorly done translations are rarely checked or re-corrected. Nanodesu will tell you he strongly believes no translation is better than a poor translation. In fact, Nanodesu's translation group has built itself upon having a high standard of quality.

To many readers, this quality is important. We can't really deny that fact that Baka-Tsuki is most commonly bashed on the internet for its quality.

I know that many of us have given up on attempting to bring higher quality to existing BT translations in a proactive and organized fashion.

I also know that many of us have thought about trying to bring TLCs to random auxiliary projects... but we're all aware our TLC perform-ing population is even scarcer than our population of translators. In the end, we just tend to let things slide.

But... that doesn't mean we can't try to come up with a treatment plan. ^___^
Here's one suggestion below:
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Tsuki-chan Brigade Project.

Project Proposal

EDIT: The material contained below is from the original post. The ideas have evolved slightly since then, so read the Project Proposal from above to start. Feel free to peruse the original ideas, etc.

Spoiler! :

BASIC IDEA AND PREMISE:

--Formulate a special quality standard that we'll call, for example, "Tsuki-chan Brigade Certified". This is an optional quality certification (really just a set of additional, stricter guidelines) that supervisors for projects can choose to implement if they'd like (no harm done if they don't).

--These "stricter guidelines" basically mean a certain project is undergoing higher editing/TLC/translation standards comparable to to independent light novel translation communities (such as Heretic or Nanodesu).

--Having these "stricter guidelines" does not restrict anonymous patrolling edits, nor would it slow the process of translations by withholding updates. It is meant as a means of tracking documentation to demonstrate individual chapters have been checked at least once by a qualified editor and TLC.

--Projects that implement this project can get a "Certification Tag" so readers know that a certain Baka-Tsuki project is validated for higher quality.


EXAMPLE TSUKI-CHAN BRIGADE STANDARDS IN ACTION:

1). The registration page will contain two additional columns. One for EDITOR, and one of TLC. When a *certified* editor finishes an editing a COMPLETE chapter (Editing MUST be done on the FULL chapter. Random typo correcting doesn't count), they add their username to the registration page to signify the chapter has been edited once by a certified editor. Ditto for the TLC. When a *certified* TLC-checker finishes reading the Japanese side-by-side with the current translation, they add their name to the registration page.

2). The project page will have little symbols next to each chapter to signify the editing status of translations (a key will be provided on the project page). Example:

Code: Select all

[[Sakurasou:_Volume_1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1: Welcome to Sakurasou]] <font color="red">ǂ ϟ</font>

--The ǂ signifies editing by a *certified* editor has not been performed yet (or has not been completed on the entire chapter)
--The ϟ signifies editing by a *certified* TLC-checker has not been performed yet (or has not been completed on the entire chapter)

3). The first time a complete edit/TLC pass has been performed, the symbols may be removed from the project page. If a different certified Editor/TLC happens to check the chapter again in the future, their names may also be added to the registration page as another pair of eyes that approve the translation.

4). The little symbols will... remain there until a *certified* editor/TLC finally gets annoyed by them enough that they actually finally decide to do the work. A notice will be posted on the project page requesting that the symbols NOT be removed until a *certified* editor/TLC performs the full proofread. There will also be a notice informing *uncertified* editors of how they might become certified if they wish to have the power to remove the obnoxious symbols (and add their names to the registration page). Note that *uncertified* editors can still edit as they please. Their edits just don't count towards the record until they get certified.


HOW TO GET CERTIFIED:

TLC-Checkers - role: Read the English translation side-by-side with the Japanese. Correct ERRORS IN TRANSLATION. It is not the responsibility of the TLC to correct for style/grammar/fluency (though they may if they'd like).

• Only TLC-checkers who read the original language of the light novel will be accepted for certification
• Must be fluent in the source language (ex: Japanese)
• Will take a reading comprehension diagnostic to prove their fluency in the source language.

EDITORS - role: Edit the translation for grammatical mistakes, and reword sentences for fluency and fluidity.

• Must be fluent in the target language (ex: English)
• Will take an editor diagnostic to prove their fluency and understanding of grammar in the target language.

TRANSLATORS - role:

• Must get checked for each project they take up, due to the varying difficulties of different projects. (TLC/Editors are good to go after getting certified once)
• Will translate a short excerpt of the desired project, and submit it to an existing *certified* TLC-checker for approval. The goal of this is to ensure that translators are using high-enough quality raw sources (for non-Japanese TLs), and/or translators are not taking projects much beyond their capability level.
• Translators who are already *certified* TLC-checkers are exempt from needing to get checked.

ALSO, A NOTE:

An individual who is certified as a translator, editor, and TLC cannot perform ONE read-through and mark everything as completed at once.

Why? Because attempting to translate, edit, and TLC all at the same time doesn't work. I know we have some very skilled translators, but editors and TLC exist in the publishing industry because writers miss things in grammar when they're composing. The same occurs with translating. The same also occurs when reading two languages at once.

As a result, here's my suggested rule: With EACH pass of the chapter, you can only mark ONE of the jobs as completed (ex: TLC or Edit, but not both). That same individual, however, can do a SECOND pass of the chapter after doing their first pass, focusing on edits if they spent the first time doing a TLC. That counts. Basically, the idea is that every chapter is will go through AT LEAST TWO QC READTHROUGHS (though they may be done by the same individual since we're short on staff).

...and, that's all! T_____T And there goes another one of cloud's ridiculous suggestions.

EDIT: ATTACHING DRAFT PROJECT PROPOSAL. http://notepad.cc/share/DPCJv7RrRn

[MineRiko]

Well, why not? Sounds like a plan.

With this we'll probably have to draw up the diagnostics... Any idea where we should get one?

Hm, seems like I'll need to get myself tested in a few years

[NanoDesu]

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.

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.

-ND

[larethian]

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. Also, a person or a group's personal beliefs should not be taken as the 'Right' or 'Only' way. A person who believes things on the other side of the spectrum may have a good intention and see things from a different perspective. Thus quoting the beliefs of Nanodesu is moot to me personally, no disrespect meant.

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. 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. If someone's free to TLC, I rather he uses the time to translate. This is of course just my own opinion.

BOT, still I think your points hold merit in a way. And people can start some kind of 'quality' control in their own projects. I'm going to dish out tests for people who apply to my projects, though I know no one will apply to unpopular stuff I work on. However I'm going to do this on things I'm sure to work on and not on things I may not see through. Because people improve over time if they persist, and I rather give people a chance with little restrictions on stuff that I won't commit to. You can only get quality after you have quantity, never the other way round. I'm starting to digress again, but my point is, while individual projects can have their own quality requirements, we cannot 'impose' things on people as it goes against the openness of the BT community, unless BT goes back to becoming a translation group.

[Nurin]

Well, we could implement this, but leaving it up for the project supervisor to decide. I also think that would be good to have the "Quality" template on the project page, to make difference of the projects that do and that not do.

[Misogi]

Baka-Tsuki has a reputation for having extremely variable quality translations.

Baka-Tsuki has somewhat garnered a relatively poor reputation for average quality.

What's sad to know is that people only think the latter, even if, of course, the quality varies between all the projects.

Coincidentally, I used the symbol method on some French projects, but many chapters are still in a "barely edited" state.

Actually, there are several problems, some of them were already mentionned:
- The translator is the translation quality's main factor. Without a decent profiency and an excellent editor, salvaging it may be almost impossible.
- 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.
- And these two effects imply direct consequences on these Alternative projects, which are often relying on English translations. A lack of editors aggravates the situation.
- The Project Guidelines page needs to be revised and more complete, as it lacks a lot of interesting content (punctuation, useful tools for translation or edition, and more). Furthermore, I advise to split it into two pages, one about translation, and another for the wiki use.

Still, if no one wants to improve or read a page that gives a lot of advices, we can't really do anything, as mentionned before.

[Simon]

To many readers, this quality is important. We can't really deny that fact that Baka-Tsuki is most commonly bashed on the internet for its quality.

As larethian is an infrastructure for hosting the translations. Those who bash Baka-Tsuki for the quality of the translations, are not able to grasp that we are not a group but a community. Every individual here has it's own goals and expectations.

And as nano said, enforcing... low, the possibility that it would succeed are really very low.

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).

[cloudii]

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.

- 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.

The translator is the translation quality's main factor. Without a decent profiency and an excellent editor, salvaging it may be almost impossible.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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).

[/quote]
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

[TheCatWalk]

Compare baka tsuki to facebook and this matter becomes very clear.
First of all, BT = A community where people who are interest in translating light novels translate the ln they are interested in and upload their translated works to share with everyone. Weather the translation quality is good or bad doesn't matter at all. Baka-tsuki as a whole, does not have a set goal to supply the readers with quality translation. If that was so then we'd have schedules and other annoying stuff. [well, it actually does a bit but you guys get what i am saying right?]

Secondly, the individual translators with their individual little projects translate the works however they desire, be it passive or active EN or any other mutated form. of course there are editors out there but they mostly edit or rather, makes the stuff what the translator tl'ed more...readable. Most of them are only good at the target language and have less experience with the source one. So the texts they change into making it more readable might sometimes deviate from the original meaning, and the translator might fail to notice this. The problem here is that a good editor who can read both the target and the source language is the rarest thing out there, even more than a translator.

I like the general idea of what you proposed. It would be great to actually be able to implement them but lets bring the facebook logic here. the administrators of FB dont, or rather cannot implement their every policies to every single groups,pages,communities created by facebook-ers. its impossible to control them. [unless of course its something really violent and bad,worse,worser or anything related with actual terrorism and other evil/banned stuff]
All facebook can do is create a general guideline for everyone to follow. the facebook-ers do that. but when they create their own groups, that becomes their own territory. they are the admin of it. If the FB admins create something like absolute rules for every single group out there then m-chan wouldnt exist.the lack of freedom would be more irritating than anything and facebook will loose its popularity and will be forced to give it's NO.1 spot to twitter.

BOT, baka-tsuki can create an administrative party but they can't nor will control how the translators work. but the translator [like how larethian and ping does it] can create their own administrative parties for their own individual projects. do TLCs on their own. What you suggested can only be applied individually to singular projects it the project translator/s agree to it. The projects are like their individual little nations. Enforcing rules on them is suicide for this 'community'.

[I know my english isnt good and i might not have been able to convey what i was trying to say but.....shmuck,doesnt matter. Personally, i like cloudii's idea but i dont see any value of it when it needs to be 'enforced' and nor do i see a way to enforce it.]

[lygophile]

I like the certification idea quite a bit.

However, perhaps certification of a project should be done after it's translated. For example, if I spent a great deal of time translating my short excerpt perfectly and then translated everything else poorly, my series would still be certified. Perhaps there could even be a small group of people just going around the projects, checking them, and sticking certification tags on.

Administrative burden shouldn't be a huge burden if the projects themselves have to take the initiative to get certified. There would still have to be a few people in charge of certification, though. Who would they be?

And to emphasize something that might have been overlooked: This would be optional. A project chooses to follow these rules and get certification if it wants to.

[Cthaeh]

From the perspective of a sometimes editor, I think one of the practical difficulties would be what TheCatWalk mentioned, that there are few editors that can check the source material. That fact prevents most editors from making significant changes without risking altering the intending meaning, or otherwise deviating in some important way. If one such editor made the changes anyways, then you would want to have someone (a translator or tlc’er) check those major edits. But at that point it’s effectively forcing that person into the role of tlc’er. And I imagine it would be tedious for that person to check those isolated lines (though I guess it’s still less work than a full tlc).

In cases where the translator is gone or has moved on from the project, I’ve found it frustrating when I came across lines that were ambiguous/awkward, but I couldn’t fix them because I didn’t know which of the possible meanings was correct. I think the solution to that is editing as the translations come out, so that the translator can review the edits and/or comments while the translation is still fresh enough in their mind. But for your plan in general, I think this issue will make it very difficult to improve quality in what is already on the wiki. Making closer ties between the editors and translators as the translation is ongoing is what I thought would be the best way to improve quality going in future translations.

I don’t know actually know how ND, Heretic, and other outside groups operate with their editors, but I assumed the editors work more closely and discuss more with the translators than is common on BT. The fact that the editors and translators have a more formal arrangement that encourages that to happen is, I assume, one factor that enables them to have more consistent quality.


As far as certifications and tests go, I’m hesitant to fully support it because it could be very close to rating the translators or editors themselves. BT’s openness for translators and editors is one of it’s most important aspects in my opinion. With the plan's focus on optional enrollment and using broad or binary classifications (ie ‘edited’ vs ‘not edited’), most of my concern should be null. So my comment in general is that any changes should try to avoid excluding members of the community.


I would support a system that can encourage or enable higher quality as long as it doesn't hinder BT's openness.

[NanoDesu]

I would like to address one issue that I don't think many people are aware of (which is reasonable, considering it's not something that's easy to be aware of internally from BT). Yes, BT is not a group. I'm aware of that, other translators are aware of that, and anybody who's worked at BT for longer than 5 minutes is aware of that. And this is the reason that a lot of people bring up for keeping BT free of formal quality control infrastructure. This would be totally valid, if only readers actually understood this. In fact, readers seem to collectively not understand this. And I don't think they will ever understand this no matter how much you try to tell them.

So as much as BT staff might cite this as a reason to not implement QC, readers will continue to look towards BT and go "why is a group as big as this so lax in standards?" BT staff can say that this is not their problem and is the reader's problem for misunderstanding BT, and in a certain context they would be right. But this isn't useful because as long as this misunderstanding exists, BT will be judged as a group, and its reputation will continue to be in danger. Doing something incredibly simple as implementing an easy translator's diagnostic to weed out machine translations and the people who are obviously and painfully underqualified would be a fairly simple way to at least meet these readers halfway and would alleviate a lot of the pressure directed at BT for quality issues. It might offend people at an ideological level, but from a practical level it solves so many problems at a relatively small cost and it doesn't make sense to continue to skirt this issue by citing a mission statement that almost no readers actually try to understand or will ever try to understand (unfortunately).

I'd like to remind people that animelyrics.com (which is also definitely not a group but a loose community) has a translator's exam for people who want to translate song lyrics. If you have to take a diagnostic to be able to translate song lyrics (which let's admit, is just a random collection of nouns and can be done with a dictionary and some patience), it's strange to be able to translate full-blown novels without any baseline quality standard.

Just one more thing: without naming names, we have had a translator move from BT to our group before, and even though the initial chapter or two were just copy/pasted from that translator's BT work, we received comments that the translation was "better." We plan to edit these chapters even more later, but I don't think anything can be more eye-opening than having the same translation on BT and an external group, and having it judged to be better when posted on the external group just because it is not on BT. I think the people working so hard at BT to produce content deserve their work to be judged without bias, and taking the first step of implementing just a very base level of QC would do a lot in that direction.

[cloudii]

Administrative burden shouldn't be a huge burden if the projects themselves have to take the initiative to get certified.

Yes! That's exactly what I had envisioned. Maybe I didn't express it so well... but lygophile nailed it. xD

I know that even as a hosting infrastructure, Baka-Tsuki technically has no regulatory role. Baka-Tsuki has no power over individual project supervisors and translators.

This is exactly why something like this would have to be initiated by project supervisors and translators for their own projects after making their own, uninfluenced decisions. Baka-Tsuki cannot force any project to undergo revisions or take QC. I think many of us feel similarly about this matter.

However, I suppose I've brought this up because many of us (translators and editors included), have felt we'd like to prove there are standards on Baka-Tsuki. As Nanodesu pointed out, Baka-Tsuki hosted translations have a stigma of being poor quality, for no reason other than being hosted by Baka-Tsuki. It can be unfair to project teams who work really hard to produce accurate and good translations, but aren't recognized for that effort.

If Baka-Tsuki can come up with a set of optional standards that mark a high quality translation, I would seriously consider talking over with my editing and project team about if they're interested in eventually aiming for that higher mark. This doesn't mean all projects are required to do so, but I do think some of us are over-achievers and would like to aim for the "High Quality" benchmark if it exists. Alternatively, less comfortable translators (like myself), would like a mechanism that might eventually push the translations I do into a higher quality range... because in some cases, I don't have access to a dedicated TLC. Supposed five years from now, I'm not on BT anymore. I'd prefer that there were flags saying my translations have not been TLC'd, as opposed to no flags at all, which would add my mediocre translation to the puddle of projects that contribute to BT's poor overall reputation.

Of course this is a personal opinion -- but I prefer higher standards to benchmark myself against because I don't consider my own translations to be stellar. Individual projects and translators are certainly allowed to have their own opinion about whether they want to openly display the QC status of their translations.

I should reiterate -- BT may be a hosting infrastructure, but that doesn't mean BT can't produce tools and widgets that individual projects can choose to implement as they choose. An analogy would be the e-signatures on the programs you download from the internet. It isn't an alien concept to have have a third-party provide validation services for a product because the developer requested it. Thus, by this logic, BT can still be the hosting infrastructure yet still provide services if individual projects request for it.

In this case, I'm more-or-less requesting that BT come up with a set of standards that I, individually, as a project translator, can potentially apply to my project to reassure readers (and myself) that my project is at least as good as translations hosted on external LN Translation Groups. As a translator that TLs exclusively on BT, I'd like to see some semblance of QC checks [eventually] performed on my translations. I can't do it myself. Is there any alternative for me on BT short of quitting and starting my own external translation? (or joining an existing external?) Furthermore, it's hardly rewarding for the individuals that are doing the TLC and editing; as the translator, I get all the thank-yous and fluff. Okashira hardly gets a word despite TLC-ing every single chapter of OreShura up until volume 4. Maybe I'm just being vain, but it feels unfair to me that way. It'd be nice if we could provide some kind of recognition and motivating factor for these dedicated project editors. A "validation stamp", in my opinion, is an immense accomplishment to be proud of. And more than anything else, it the fruit of dedicated and skilled project editors that really worked for it.

Doing something incredibly simple as implementing an easy translator's diagnostic to weed out machine translations and the people who are obviously and painfully underqualified would be a fairly simple way to at least meet these readers halfway and would alleviate a lot of the pressure directed at BT for quality issues.

I know Nanodesu wants to push for a universal mandatory minimum standard for BT translations. I respect him for his opinions, but I feel that conflicts with the spirit of Baka-Tsuki translation community as mentioned by Cthaeth. At BT, we're not going to stop anyone who'd like to help out on a project from helping out (unless the project supervisor has something else to say). That's pretty much the convention we've fallen into, and I don't see that changing without a huge debate.

I just wanted to clarify that my suggestion is the opposite. I'm pushing for a system that will commend above-standard quality translations. It's positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. Interested editors/translations would take the diagnostic offered by BT to get their project certified as a "high-quality" translation.

[Mystes]

For the issue of unskilled translator: First, unskilled translator != lazy translator != fake translator. Fake translators (plagiarizing idiots, GT-people) probably saw their work taken down. Lazy translators are those too lazy to search in a dict or ask someone for help, and BT cannot really make them change their ways, but a senior translator can always help them get better translation habits. They won't get caught by a translation test. As for unskilled translators, I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, filtering them out would indeed improve the overall quality of BT, no doubt about it. However, having been watching BT for more than 3 years, I have seen people improve a lot by translating there. So there needs to be a similar system BT must find in order to make unskilled translators better.

BT right now has a lot of problems, IMO, because it has always been depending on two things: First, the translator must know Japanese/Chinese/Korean and should know how to write acceptable English. Secondly, readers must participate in improving BT by editing mistakes and making the translation better. The problem now is that, for one, we have translators with English as a third, or maybe fourth language. Secondly, even though there are more readers, there doesn't seem to be more good editing done. And because of these two reasons, the system's flaws have been perhaps more apparent.

[Tony Yon]

while i like the idea (who don't want a high quality translation..?), it might be hard to implement it here...
umm, please don't take this one as offense :3
first, not every users here is familiar with how the wiki work... (even if there are guidelines here and there). adding some rules at certain projects might...make translators who would like to join hesitate.

oh, but i think how it will attract the editors and make them feel rewarded is a brilliant one. i also feel that way. editor sometimes viewed as inferior one (though their admin power is higher than translator....i'm derailing..).

secondly, which is i feel more important..., it might make the project staffs who don't (or can't) implemented this method, feel inferior than those who did. or make the readers feel those with that mark is superior than the rest, something like that.. (even if it's true i won't like that feeling fufu)

and actually the most crucial one is.... seeking a dedicated editor/TLCs is harder than finding translators (which is already hard)...
ok, this one is common fact.

@Misogi: even if Indonesian alternative project had a lot of translators, it lack editors... except for popular projects of course...


P.S. for those who said that BT has poor/low quality translations...i wonder from what angle did they view it? the difference with Japanese one? or grammatical on target language? if it's the first, they should try translate it themselves... if the second one, bear with it.
ok kidding.
i believe some readers will be fine with the current one... since i've been reading BT translations since ages ago and can't tell the differences...
as long it's not sucked too much, i can still enjoy it... well this is my personal opinion and might not (or might?) represent majority readers...
i believe most of the readers want 'fast, bring me next chapters!' than 'please increase the quality on the previous chapters!' ok, this one is my delusion..
*salute*


P.S.S.
if big boss agree then i'll have no objection