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Ok, so here I am with another question.
Suppose I am translating the sentence "How are you?" (let is be sentence E1) to Bengali. There would be three possible translations:
B1 - আপনি কেমন আছেন? (Polite)
B2 - তুমি কেমন আছো? (Familiar)
B3 - তুই কেমন আছিস? (Very Familiar)
Now, suppose E1 has also been translated to Spanish, where the possible translations would be (if I am not mistaken):
S1 - ¿Cómo está usted?
S2 - ¿Cómo estás (tú)?
So, B1, B2 and B3 as well as S1 and S2 are directly linked to E1.
Now, suppose someone wants to see the translation of S1 in Bengali. Here is where the problem arises, because all the above mentioned Bengali sentences, i.e B1, B2 and B3 would be shown as the translation, whereas only B1 would be the proper translation of S1.
So my question is, how could this problem be solved? Since I know a bit of Spanish, I could link S1 to B1, but what about other languages which have different pronouns for different level of politeness?
P.S.- The example above has been taken from the "How to be a good contributor" post on the Tatoeba blog.
--- Tanay
If the sentences exist and have already been linked correctly, B1, B2, and B3 will all be shown as linked to S1, but only B1 will be shown as directly linked to S1 (with a green arrow), while the other two will be shown as indirectly linked to S1 (with a gray arrow). We tell users that they should only trust direct links.
But I need to link S1 to B1, only then will there be a direct linking, isn't it? But what about, say, Italian which has, I think two forms of "you"? I don't know Italian, so I won't be able to link B1 to any of the Italian sentences. So an Italian sentence in the formal form, linked directly to the E1, would show B1, B2 and B3 as the translations of that Italian sentence, albeit an indirect one.
Actually Italian has three forms of "you": singular informal, singular polite, and plural. Also, there is a special plural polite form which is used rarely now, as I know.
Yes, it's a kind of problem. For example, Russian and Italian both have masculine and feminine forms of adjectives, but English doesn't have them. So, at first, when I sow Italian feminine form as an indirect translation of Russian masculine form (related to English), I considered it as a "mistake". It takes some time to understand, how it works. :)
Thanks. That's what I was talking about, you need to know both Italian and Russian to even know that there is a "mistake".
Something that needs to be made clearer is that by policy, only Directly linked translations are to be treated as 'official' translations. Indirectly linked translations should be trusted about as much as machine translations, possibly even less. Therefore, if B1, B2 and S3 show up, none of these are to be considered a translation of S1 or S2 until a user fluent in both languages constructs links between them.
As for your question about Italian, it must also be kept in mind that it is sound policy to only translate sentences or link them if you are absolutely sure of their meaning. In your hypothetical case, it may be best to leave the sentences be until a user fluent in Bengali and Italian can link sentences as appropriate.
ধন্যবাদ।