Please take into account that billions of people speak more than one language.
If I’m fluent in German, English and French, I would like to see the original, untranslated content if it is in any of those three languages.
At the moment, it appears that I can only select one language, and all content will be translated to that one language. Because translation is inevitably a lossy process, that is very frustrating to me if I would have understood the original perfectly well.
Why don’t you use translations only when you don’t understand?
Here comes Babel…
Is there a way to opt out from becoming AI-food?
I spent some time having conversations with people in Palestine, they would write in Arabic and I would write in English, both sides would receive contents in their own language. Although it’s useful for basic conversation, it really becomes very hard to catch subtleties and requires forming very explicit and unambiguous sentences for the AI not to trip. A translation error can have disastrous consequences. Such features should really not become common place. For Discourse Meta, it makes sense, because it enables non-English speakers to ask questions and get solid technical feedback. But be careful with what you wish for. Once you have your forum overwhelmed by people speaking a language you don’t understand, not only you become dependent on Gaggle AI, but you also lose agency, and your community content becomes AI fodder. Who wants to discuss in a place where meaning is lost in AI translation? If there’s no way to distinguish a human speaking through a babelfish from a generative AI babbling, we’re going down.
Which one is bigger threat to you:
Because that way I red it.
Stealing or spying it can’t be, because bot-traffic is never ending, follow pixels are everywhere and 8.8.8.8. does rest of the job, but you aren’t worriying those.
But you have freedom to choose — don’t write or even visit if a forum/media is open or using AI.
You obviously do not know who you are talking to, and make wrong assumptions all the way.
“Freedom to choose” between not communicating or being forced into something you don’t want? How is that a choice? I call it bullying, at the very least.
Reddit disagree with you by the way their are using translation in real time and adapting each lang with his own ways maybe using deep learning with human feedback? Anyway.
The road to hell is paved by good intentions.
We say in Czech. I understand what you both mean. And you are not talking about the same subject.
It is not a fear of AI. It has nothing to do with it. Maybe you didn’t live through enough of misunderstanding. In the same language, same culture, people you know for years. Maybe you did not study enough languages so yo cannot imagine how subtle one language can be in one word where it takes hours to find something that will almost but not exactly say what you meant. And that all assumes that you are TRYING to communicate.
Now this approach (that everything has to be easy and available to everyone) might result into people not being forced to care about what they say and to whom. Didn’t we have enough of it already?
I talk differently to Germans. Differently to Polish. Differently to Swiss. Differently to Icelandic. Differently to French. Differently to Slovak. And now maybe differently to Finish. I know their languages and cultures enough to be careful. If everyone is trying to talk in English, you at least know we are different and assume some level of misunderstanding. If I speak just Czech from now on, 30 % of what I say gets lost. You will never be able to grasp our humor we have in our language. I have to say it differently to each culture. Yet you will speak to us in our language through the bot. It will sound rough. Unempatethic. There is so much in languages than pure content as you suggest.
Btw I stumbled upon a topic here where people say something about peeing in a shower :)) So funny. I am wondering how this gets auto translated to Chinese or Arabic. Maybe I don’t want to know…
I also know people that learn a new language just to be able to read books in their original languages. Because translations cannot give you the original emotions. There ARE emotions in what you write. And they definitely get lost in translation.
Discourse is about civilized discussion. There is so much done about it in the product. Automatic translation can leverage it or kill it for good if not done carefully.
And now I actually realised that what I wrote just now was translated automatically into other languages. I have no idea what the translation is. And people speaking those languages might not even realise I am not speaking that language. What do I say there? I feel strange. Someone is creating an image of myself in another language, another culture and I have no way to influence it.
Me. The one careful about his words. Very interesting feeling. Disturbing, I must say.
EDIT: btw I made a typo in this text and it would completely change the way it sounds. One letter. As I know Discourse does not retranslate on post changes because of the costs, again. Maybe in another language my post sounds completely stupid.
No, I really don’t know some random and anonymous nicks 
So, all I do is read what you wrote.
I think everyone should decide for themselves in their community whether to use the translations or not. If there is a Czech community writing about comedy and jokes, then you just don’t activate it and that’s fine. My English is very poor, and I am grateful for the function that translates it into my language. So far, I have been able to understand everything here, and the members of my community, who are mostly from Portugal, Spain, Germany, and some Asian countries, also accept the function well. The members also know that this function exists and how it works.
Or maybe I done… and yet the main question is here very simple: do we communicate somehow or don’t we communicate at all. Nothing less, nothing more.
BTW, that proverb is common thru all western world, and even more.
And it is matter of AI in general… I remember quite well what active ones have complaining here.
So this very easy question:
Is it better for communication to use broken i.e. English or doesn’t communicate at all, or is it better to use the mothertongue and others who can’t gets perhaps not-so-good translations? Which one it is, because there isn’t any middle ground, or nothing philosophical or linguistic about this.
And again — if (AI-)translations feels any kind of threat or bothers in any way… it is just one click and the problem is solved. But you can’t Finnish and I can’t Czech, so what are options here to understand those nuances?
But if the need is to make that decision for others, what they can read or not — then it is totally another ballpark and -game, and IMO very disturbing way.
You see. And we have a misunderstanding right here. And we are both giving an energy into our conversation by expressing ourselves in a common language.
Czech is inherently funny. We do not have to talk about jokes to play with words in strange funny ways. We are funny in technical, political, health, everywhere. The language is made that way. Yet some languages are not funny at all. The cultures are not either. Or on a different level.
And now imagine I read from you what you just wrote in Czech. I might think “what a strange guy, no sense of humor whatsoever”. Because I assume you ARE Czech. And so I make a joke maybe — here on Meta. Just to make things smoother. And it gets even weirder…
I love the way Discourse goes. It’s nothing against. Some of us are just raising flags about things we lived through. So Discourse does not need to repeat some huge mistakes we made.
My opinion — it is better not to communicate at all. If it is too easy, it’s a disaster. Look at social media. 99 % trash. Most of the people should not have a surface to say what they think in the way they do. Maybe including myself. No problem with that.
EDIT: to be more precise: one thing is to talk in your local pub, everyone somehow understands you and you don’t have to try so much. But if you go to an international forum, full of different cultures and languages—and the barrier is really low (you don’t need to know anything)—you might not do very well. Maybe you should learn French if you want to do foreign affairs. Because you will learn not just that but much more along the way. And if you do not want to invest anything into understanding or talking to other people… why are you talking to them in the first place? I believe it is good that some things are hard and that we should at least think about it before making it too easy. So easy that it will backlash.
@Jagster I am wondering (in a good way!). You wrote one message to me in Finnish, letting it translate. I don’t see you repeating it in our conversation. As you seem to be much more rational, less concerned and happier with the current translation functionality than me—why didn’t you stop using English and start using Finnish from now on? It should be much easier and faster for you?
Das war eine bewusste Übertreibung 
Ich bleibe aber bei meinen Punkt das dies ein sehr gutes Feature ist und man dieses nicht aktivieren muss wenn man es selbst oder auch die Community nicht möchte.
I am talking about discussions here on Meta where I can only decide if I participate or not.
I am for example worried that I get translated to Chinese (as an example, same goes for many other languages). I don’t speak it and yet I will be SEO’d in Chinese now. I am not sure if I want it. If people like to hear what I have to say, maybe they should learn English? I did not want to talk to the whole world and I am not automatically happy that I do now. It’s not AI’s fault, it’s not Discourse’s fault. I am not blaming anyone, you do not have to defend anything or give me hints how I should live. I am just raising a voice here that there are also different people with critical thoughts (and this topic was actually calling for them so I am just doing what was requested ). And also reminding that blind use of technology for example led us where we are. Disconnected and not talking to each other and misunderstanding more than ever. Despite everything is so easy. Actually—because of it.
I do also worry that meaning and subtly can be translated incorrectly by AI, I’ve seen it myself.
Also it’s bad that edits are not translated. Lots of people make mistakes and edit them quickly after posting. Or they have another thought and edit it to add it at the bottom. All that will be lost, and AI will try to translate typos with potentially disastrous consequences.
What is Rad Ford? That’s a mistranslation or a typo. It can never be fixed now.
Very strange to launch this and say it’s ready for everyone to use!
Why is this quote showing in the original language at first, but English when I expand it?
This feature isn’t ready.
Because there is a German quote in an English post. AI detected the post as English so it wasn’t translated to English → the quote is still German.
When you expand the quote you load the whole post that was quoted and you see it as you would see it outside of the post - translated or untranslated depending on what you chose in the toggle.
Are you sure they are not? There is a “done 
” behind that in the first post.
I think the change was made in FEATURE: Allow re-localization twice a day if post version has changed by nattsw · Pull Request #34023 · discourse/discourse · GitHub
What do you mean? It basically works already. And they’re still working on making it even better.
