We should remove the Google Translate block

[gunchleoc]

I just noticed the Google translate block, and it worries me. Depending on the language pair, translations can be completely wrong. So, people creating projects can end up with displaying something completely incomprehensible at best, and foul and offensive at worst.

Google Translate was created to help people understand texts in languages they don't speak, and depending on language pair, it has gotten really good at that task. However, it was never intended for production use - there is a reason you have a translation project on Transifex with a review requirement. Training children to use it for producing published texts is a really really really bad idea.

If you wish to understand more about why it's a problem, please read these 2 articles:

https://akerbeltzalba.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/do-minority-languages-need-machine-translation/

https://akerbeltzalba.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/when-things-are-way-way-way-worse-than-you-thought-they-might-get/

[kyleplo]

You have a point, but I think this is already final. Maybe a warning would help though...

[benjiwheeler]

I think this is a manner of perspective. I would not expect Scratch users to presume that on-the-fly programmatic translations are production text in the manner of (to reference OP's links) a glossy airport sign. It's impossible to predict all the ways Scratchers put blocks to use, but I would expect that there would be little extensive, official or offensive text used, and instead much use of short, common phrases.

[gunchleoc]

Well, I am not worried about offensive texts here, although we can fully expect that to happen. For example, in Portugal, "puto" means "boy", and in Brasil it means "male prostitute". There is no way that Google Translate can handle these kind of subtleties, and neither can we expect it too, because even native speaker can fall into that particular trap.

I would not expect Scratch users to presume that on-the-fly programmatic translations are production text in the manner of (to reference OP's links) a glossy airport sign.

Well, you expect wrong. Adults do it all the time and put it on official signage, so how can we expect children who have less life experience be smarter about it? Since the block is provided by Scratch and they trust in Scratch, they will fully expect that it's production quality until they have enough language learning experience (that means multiple years) under their belts to know the difference. And from what I remember from the US American education system in particular, learning a foreign language before high school age is not common there. So, the life experience of those kids in this regard will be nonexistent. We have a teaching responsibility here, so the block should at the very least come with a warning or explanation.

[akerbeltz]

That's rather short sighted. Most users do not have the insight into how Scratch works to know that machine translation is dangerous or that this tool isn't actually Scratch. All they will see is "All this base are belong to us" type rubbish and they will immediately associate Scratch with a rubbish translations. This may have been a well-intended idea but probably only to monolingual English speakers... If this is "final" I have serious concerns about how much expert advice was sought by those who ok'd this because no translation expert worth their salt would ever say "oh, let's give kids Google Translate, what a great idea".

[osoitz]

After seeing #1840 I was tempted to add there that also Google's translations to Basque are of bad quality, but instead I'll add another point of view to this issue, hoping it's rethought altogether.

For background, the translation of Scratch to Basque was recently revitalized following a discussion in a group of teachers and parents that generally favour the use of Free (or Libre) software in education.

The motivations inside this group are diverse, some see Free software as good on it's own, some see it as a valid strategy in the revitalization of our language, and some approached because they are worried about the increasing presence of Google in education, and the implications it has to make under-aged kids dependent on the gratis tools of a company with such business-model and the difficulty to reverse that.

So, Scratch using Google Translate is to certain extent disappointing for all.

The situation of Basque is different to the situation of Gaelic described in #1840, a lot has been done in the area of automatic translation and tools with much better results than Google Translate exist, we could be asking for a particular solution, yet we won't, it's deeper than that.

One could argue that simply sending a string to translate to a server isn't so worrisome.

I'd like to argue that the long-term impact that Scratch could make by endorsing a Free (as in freedom) solution for automatic translation, despite the short term results, is huge.

I'd like to argue that Scratch is a tool that builds the future, that future that right now doesn't even know how to make divisions and much less a for loop, and that the very precise reason Scratch exists is to build that future we dream of.

I'd like to ask whether the short-term satisfaction that gives Google Translate to some now is comparable to the long-term foundation that the use of a Free (as in freedom) solution would cement for all of us.

[gunchleoc]

I have added a draft disclaimer text to the other bug.

But I would expect that there would be little extensive, official or offensive text used, and instead much use of short, common phrases.

One such short, common phrase in German that children will use all the time is "voll geil" in German, which until recently got translated as "really horny", which is the word's original core meaning. The error has since been corrected and the translation for "geil" that you get is "cool", which is still not great, but lots more accurate in most (but not all) contexts.

And for those who might not have understood the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us was so bad that it became a meme.