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marioo marioo July 10, 2019, edited July 10, 2019 July 10, 2019 at 9:49:41 PM UTC, edited July 10, 2019 at 9:52:15 PM UTC link Permalink

Here is a situation where I would need the more experienced users to propose how to resolve it.

The problem is with Sentence #13214:

< Bin, aimes-tu le baseball ? >

The author used "Bin" which is an expression from Québec:

http://www.je-parle-quebecois.c...n/ben-bin.html

(Also the pronunciation of "in" in French doesn't really have a equivalent in English or Esperanto [I don't know about other languages]. It is not "bin" like in "storage bin". See
https://french.stackexchange.co...-a-back-vowel)

Simply said, it means in English, "Well", like in:

< Well, do you like baseball? >

or in Esperanto, "Nu", like in:

< Nu, ĉu vi ŝatas la basbalon? >

or in more international French, "Alors", like in:

< Alors, aimes-tu le baseball ? >

However, everyone who translated the original sentence assumed that "Bin" was the name of a person. This resulted in some very silly sentences like:

Do you like baseball, Bin?
Bin, houd je van honkbal?
¿Te gusta el béisbol, Bin?
Ĉu vi ŝatas la basbalon, Bin?

and with the Galician sentence, "Bin" was even replaced by "Bill".

How do we go about fixing this mass hallucination?

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soweli_Elepanto soweli_Elepanto July 10, 2019 July 10, 2019 at 10:38:13 PM UTC link Permalink

Personally I think that no need to do anything about it. Those "wrong" translations indeed may be as good as the "right" ones. Your case is not unique. For example, the name "Tom", when translated _from_ Russian, can be understood as "volume", and "Tom's" can be understood not only as "of volume", but as "volumes" as well.

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marioo marioo July 10, 2019 July 10, 2019 at 10:51:32 PM UTC link Permalink

What happens with cases like the "Tom-confused-as-volume"? If an original English sentence is about Tom but the Russian translation makes it about volume, then the translation is false. Is there a mechanism (perhaps a tag? a marker?) to indicate that the meaning of a translated sentence differs significantly from the original sentence?

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User55521 User55521 July 11, 2019 July 11, 2019 at 7:14:06 AM UTC link Permalink

> If an original English sentence
> is about Tom but the Russian translation
> makes it about volume, then
> the translation is false.

Russian would be about *both* Tom and volume. The word 'tom' means 'volume' in Russian, and if 'volume' is placed at the beginning of the sentence, then it will be written with a capital letter.

If Russian is only about a volume, then it's a mistake and it should be unlinked from the translation.

Aiji Aiji July 11, 2019 July 11, 2019 at 1:22:27 PM UTC link Permalink

Considering "Bin" as a name or as the equivalent to "Ben" would both give correct translations. Of course, one could argue that "Bin" is a silly name, etc. but basically I don't think there is anything wrong (as long as the misunderstanding is not systematic)

We can also use tags, for example we have a "français du Canada" tag. Although nobody would read it when translating because it wouldn't be displayed on a results list.

And finally, one can leave a comment to say that Bin = Ben.

Objectivesea Objectivesea July 11, 2019 July 11, 2019 at 8:29:49 AM UTC link Permalink

These sorts of misapprehensions can often be prevented by supplying a usage note in a comment with an unusual word's actual meaning when creating the original sentence.

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marioo marioo July 11, 2019 July 11, 2019 at 11:04:11 PM UTC link Permalink

Mia amiko, vi parolas la vero.

Thanuir Thanuir July 12, 2019 July 12, 2019 at 5:31:34 PM UTC link Permalink

Contribute the translations you deem as correct. A sentence can mean several different things.