Wikipedia talk:Content translation tool/Archive 2

While using the translation tool for translating from English to Hebrew, I've tried to load saved unpublished translation, and met shown error.

It translates to "Loading saved translation didn't work!", and "Critical error: translation content not loading due to internal error."

Is my work lost? YedidyaPopper (talk) 09:12, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@YedidyaPopper: looks like you aren't having this problem here on the English Wikipedia, but on another project? In either case can you provide details on the similar technical ticket here: phab:T323417 Giving step-by-step directions for what you are going, and your screen shot may help the people working on that. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:43, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Update: the issue resolved itself after waiting a few days YedidyaPopper (talk) 12:44, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello🙂 Content translation tool is very helpful to translate articles into other languages. Thank you! I use this tool to translate articles into Japanese.

One pain point is the replacement of red links in the content with Interlanguage Links template. If both language have articles, this tool create a link to target language properly. When using machine translation, the anthor text is also translated. It's helpful. However, if there is no article on the target language Wikipedia, this tool remains the link as is. As a result, the link become red link to non-existing page on the target language.

In that case, editors on Japanese Wikipedia usually replace every links with the interlanguage link. Is there a way or proposal to replace such link with interlanguage link template? If no, I'd like to request such feature.

Currently, in case that there is no article on the target language, "Mark as missing" button is shown and if we click this button, the link turns to a red link. Instead of that, I'd like to have something like "Convert to Interlanguage Link template" button. It will reduce a lot of time to do repetitive edits of templates. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TAKAHASHI Shuuji (talk • contribs) 01:44, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

@TAKAHASHI Shuuji: Strong support.--BoldLuis (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

This isn't something we can do for only the English Wikipedia, you can place a software feature request using the direction here: WP:BUG. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:40, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I had a similar idea and made a ticket:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T338690 Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

When returning to articles I have saved in the translation tool, it seems like some of the references are missing or corrupted. It says This reference is defined in a template or other generated block, and for now can only be edited in source mode. but there is no way to view them in source mode from the translation tool or retrieve the citation that was there. Saving the translation to my user page doesn't help either – the reference gets replaced with <ref /> and there is no way to see what I had previously. Any ideas? Thanks! flod logic (talk) 12:19, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Is this the problem described in phab:T275374? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:12, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@ 65.18.121.235 (talk) 00:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I tried translating Template:Sulfur_compounds in French wikipedia, but it wasn't accepted as a possible source page. For these "See also" templates, assuming they're not seen as link spam in other language wikis, translating them would be helpful. Categories like "Chemistry compounds templates", "Mammals navigational boxes" or other similar STEM categories may be useful for all language wikis. Wikidata for linked pages in the template may already supply a translation, if the tool is not already using that. Should this be fixed? RDBrown (talk) 02:17, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

What i would like is a "plain copy", but that does auto translate templates, citations (with additional ^{[verification needed]}) and links and their associated words (using wikidata, which i think it does for translation out of english)

I don't want to open the link, change language, close tab, delete link, type word, make link, type word, end.

I do not see how this could be abused in any way that regular translation could not.

Please let me know if this is feasible and where to propose this change to the policy.

It can then become a feature request. Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:18, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

See above. Grandmaster Huon (talk) 17:37, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Grandmaster Huon this would need wide discussion, feel free to start a WP:RFC - FWIW, I don't think "this new computer is smarter" is going to overcome the prior challenges though. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Google Translate and DeepL are by far the most competent of the machine translators. Grandmaster Huon (talk) 19:10, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I sometimes see maintenance categories such as Category:Articles with dead external links and Category:Articles with unsourced statements being included in pages created by this tool. These categories should be added by maintenance templates such as {{dead link}} and {{citation needed}} rather than being added directly. Why does this happen, and is there a way to stop it? Anomie⚔ 14:59, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

@Anomie I think you would have to track the origin language for each, because my suspicion is this is happening because maintenance categories are applied differently on some other version of wikipedia. When I translate from fr-wiki I'm always having to take off categories like "wikiproject europe articles", and when I translate from de-wiki I need to remove a bunch of "norm data" that is basically our Template:Authority control with extra steps. -- asilvering (talk) 01:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

This is still a problem: CXT is placing articles in Category:Articles with authority control information, which (as a container category) shouldn't have any articles directly placed in it. For reference:

• Ancien séminaire Saint-Sulpice
• Manon Azem
• Jan Baetens
• Nicolas Beau
• Camille Berlin
• Marisa Borini
• Françoise Cadol
• Claire Borotra
• Confédération Paysanne
• Camille Étienne
• Lorenz Hiltner
• Charlotte Julian
• Tristan Mendès France
• Noël Nétonon Ndjékéry
• Slim Pezin
• Séverin Pineau
• Salomé Saqué

These all have authority control in Wikidata. Maybe CXT should automatically turn Category:Articles with authority control information into {{authority control}}? jlwoodwa (talk) 21:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

This page says The English Wikipedia community has restricted article creation by the WMF's semi-automatic content translation tool to extended confirmed users., but that seems to be untrue? There are non-ec users in this list, for example: . -- asilvering (talk) 01:16, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

It appears (based on my examination of the recent changes and also Special:AbuseFilter/782) that only directly creating pages in mainspace with the CXT are disallowed (which is technically correct according to the wording: ...restricted article creation...); non-EC users can still translate the page into, well, practically any other namespace (the code in the edit filter only disallows for "page_namespace == 0"). Which doesn't make much sense to me, since autoconfirmed but non-ec editors can circumvent this limitation by simply translating the page into draftspace or their userspace and then moving it into mainspace (although it does leave behind a redirect). Liu1126 (talk) 10:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

@Liu1126 correct - check the archives above. This is by decision, and another decision was to not actively advertise that workaround. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:08, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we should change the confirmed restriction from the number of edit to certain bytes edited. That would be more fair to translator. Nguyengiabach1201 (talk) 06:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@Nguyengiabach1201 we don't have a way to do that automatically. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

In my notifications, I have several notices from three hours ago telling me that I have some CXT translations about to expire and reminding me to publish them. Then, I have notices from 40 minutes ago, saying they've been deleted. Surely we should be giving people more than three hours between notification and removal? Is there something we can do to change this timeframe? -- asilvering (talk) 16:40, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

…On the right sidebar of my desktop Wikipedia, there's the Tools menu, which I like having there. (Mainly for quick leaps to Commons or Wikidata when editing film articles and such.) Also Move and What links here.

But lately, there's one feature that's been very obnoxious: GoogleTrans (on). A while ago, I had issues with the Source editing, such as typing these very Talk page replies. Whenever I'd press shift to capitalize, it would jump to the beginning of the line/sentence. Once I turned it off, no problem. Hasn't been an issue for a while.

Yesterday into today, all of a sudden, it's back! And it's turning itself on AUTOMATICALLY. I cannot stand it. Utter nuisance. (Plus, the aforementioned "forcing the blinking 'typing cursor' to jump to the left margin instead of letting me capitalize proper nouns.)

Just dunno why or how this is occurring or how to make it stop. I keep turning it off, but a few pages later, it'll turn itself on while I'm editing all over again. Very peculiar.

So if anyone can either help me or point me in the proper direction of where I should be asking for help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you. --Cinemaniac86^Talk_Stalk 03:18, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

@Cinemaniac86: I don't use see this on my Tools menu, but maybe you're using User:Endo999/GoogleTrans? You can turn talk with the creator at User talk:Endo999/GoogleTrans and/or turn it off in your Preferences. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 19:40, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! By the way, I should've returned to update, but I figured out the issue: I had multiple windows open, haha: while I had turned it off in one, it was still open in another. So every time I opened a new tab, while keeping the original tab still open with it toggled on, it was futile.

Lesson learned: If you wanna toggle something on/off, one tab or window at a time! Or you all, too will…well, for lack of a better term, be going batty! =P --Cinemaniac86^Talk_Stalk 04:01, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Today I tried to start a translation of de:Allidochlor, but every time I clicked on an empty space to translate (copy over) the German text to start translating it, I got an error "Automatic translation failed" and it does not create a field where I can type anything in. I tried this on Firefox and Edge and got the same issue. This is making it impossible to use the tool. Reconrabbit 14:53, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

It looks like there are multiple problems going on here. Try using the right pane controls to change the behavior to "start with an empty paragraph". We likely need a couple of bugs open: (a) the "why" information can't be follows because of collisions with other scripts; (b) machine translation shouldn't be attempted on enwiki (c.f. phab:T138711); (c) the exact error you are getting (which I can't replicate right now). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:13, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

I am seeing no right pane controls. There are no options in the interface that I can find. I would be happy to start from a blank paragraph on each of these translations as it's easier than going back in and deleting every word to translate it or using insert-mode. I have found the settings. For whatever reason the initial translation settings would not appear on a new translation; I had to open an in-progress translation to find them. Please disregard this note. It seems like the option to start with an empty paragraph simply does not exist until the translation has already started - therefore it's impossible to write anything. All I see is: "1. Click paragraphs to translate You don't need to add them all 2. Make the text read naturally Machine translation is useful but you'll need to revise the text to make it accurate. 3. Publish the translation When you are happy with the result, press "Publish". View translation guidelines" This is specifically an issue when translating from any language other than Spanish. Reconrabbit 15:49, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Are you using a desktop or mobile browser? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:23, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

I am using a desktop browser. Reconrabbit 17:00, 14 February 2025 (UTC)