#askFedi Does anybody know if there is an #ActivityPub software that *produces* multilingual objects leveraging the contentMap feature?

[helge@mymath.rocks]

The funfedi.dev support tables contain an example. Unfortunately, codeberg has hiccups and the site is thus unavailable.

From what I recall: No application tested by funfedi.dev supports the feature properly.

I'm also skeptical that proper support is possible. Just consider the text is available in German, English, and French and an image alt text is available in English and French. The person decides to display the post in German. How do you decide the language of the alt text?

The above is an example. Being able to resolve that question does not really resolve the question of how to go from multilingual object -> single language object to display, with all possible cases considered.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@helge thank you very much, that's an interesting project. You're absolutely right about the issues about a multilingual posts, but I don't think they are unsolvable, and even a provisionally inadequate solution would be a better starting point than no support For example: an indicator could be shown that other languages are available for a post, and allow switching to a different one (compare with the Edited feature), and users could choose the languages to show by priority, if missing, etc

[oblomov@sociale.network]

#askFedi would you like to have the possibility to make multilingual posts, i.e. a *single* post/toot with the text available in multiple languages *at once*? Currently, you have to either do separate posts, or squeeze multiple languages within the character limit of your instance and only mark it for one of the languages (see e.g. https://sociale.network/@oblomov/110872023337803783 + https://sociale.network/@oblomov/114983566130691059).

#poll #internationalization #languages

[oblomov@sociale.network]

Relevant Mastodon issues:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/11013
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/16692

TBH, I find the comments suggesting that “DeepL [or any other client-side translation service] is enough” to be appalling.

[filobus@sociale.network]

@oblomov I don't think that posting messages in multiple languages is the solution
Client side translation is enough, only it should be made easier to have them (less steps, less clicks, maybe a button right there)
There could be cases where it's necessary to have a translation by the author (difficult or ambiguous or not poetic translations by local software)

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@filobus hard disagree. Client-side translation should only be considerd a low-quality fallback for the cases where the author did not/could not provide a translation themselves. Allowing users to provide their own translations is an important step to improve the internationalization of the Fediverse.

[filobus@sociale.network]

@oblomov it is not so clear: the author should provide a translation in... English? Or all the languages of all the readers? Esperanto? The author should be very proficient, and who is not? Software translation could be even better, but the author could not use it because thinks it's better h* own

And one thing doesn't exclude the other, the reader is free to use client's software, the author is free to provide different translations

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@filobus authors should be ALLOWED to provide translations in any language they want. It's not an obligation, it's an option.
I for one would like most of my posts to be dual Italian/English. @valhalla often makes the same post twice, once in Italian and once in English (yes, I'm aware that gl-como is on Friendica so an improvement to Mastodon wouldn't benefit it).
@Puxi also does multilingual posts, encountering exactly the issues I mention in the poll (wrong language tagging, and need to fit.)

[filobus@sociale.network]

@oblomov @valhalla @Puxi yes, I'm not against it, I too write in Italian OR an awful English, and writing in both I tried and found it awkward
Maybe I overreacted to you finding appalling using client side translation, I find client side translation still awkward too

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@filobus @valhalla @Puxi I'm not against client-side translations as a matter of principle. I am against their existence as a reason to not allow authors to provide their own translations.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

Of course those who follow me know that I'm a big fan of #multilingual authoring if not else because of my 2023 article about implementing the #SMIL #switch element in #HTML plus #CSS —which isn't actually possible, requiring a little bit of #JavaScript too:

The element

Things I wish HTML inherited from SVG: the element.

wok (wok.oblomov.eu)

(And I'm not saying Mastodon should implement them using the trick above; it definitely needs a better interface.)

#internationalization #languages

[aslakr@mastodon.social]

@oblomov Post like https://no.fedimeteo.com/trondheim/p/1761455314.991738 might benefit from using multilingual objects

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@aslakr yeah, the recent conversation on the possibility to make the fedimeteo posts more international is exactly what triggered this thread in the first place 8-) Of course in that case the _production_ side is up to the platform used by fedimeteo, which is snac, but Mastodon being at least able to properly present such posts would be very useful.

[apicultor@hachyderm.io]

@oblomov Why not have an option for machine translation of posts while reading?

[helge@mymath.rocks]

Thanks! I will appreciate when people call funfedi.dev interesting.

Anyway, I opened an issue explaining more on how language support works.

Issues like this are why I submitted a proposal to nlnet to rework funfedi.dev.

I think working out a POC for multi language support in the Fediverse would be interesting. However, the first step here should be to find somebody making multilanguage social media posts, and ask them: "What features do you want? What's your workflow?"

[thaumiel999@mastodon.social]

@oblomov 저는 워드프레스에서 contentMap에 접근하는 방식에 대해 이슈를 작성했습니다.

Do you want to include multiple language versions when publishing an article of more than 7,000 characters in WordPress?
If you include 14 language versions, a single `Create` activity would contain about **98,000 characters** of content — and every time you update one of those localized versions, the `Update` activities will keep accumulating.

ActivityPub Internationalization · Issue #2257 · Automattic/wordpress-activitypub

When using contentMap, it is generally better not to include content, since the two are functionally redundant. The only real difference is that contentMap carries explicit language tags. A default language can be specified via the JSON-...

GitHub (github.com)

[thaumiel999@mastodon.social]

@oblomov What I mean is: microblogging isn’t Wikipedia, and traffic isn’t free.
Make active use of automatic translation instead.

[bitbonk@mastodon.social]

@oblomov Honestly, automatic translation has become so good that I doubt it‘s worth adding this complexity to Mastodon/ActivityPub. The UI for making posts already has too many option and buttons and stuff.

Translation can and should be a concern of the client. It works very well elsewhere.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@apicultor several clients already do that, and it can work as a fallback if the author doesn't provide a translation of their own, but what I'm talking about here is the possibility to author multilingual posts directly, which several people do already, but through impractical gimmicks like the ones I mentioned in the poll post.

[bitbonk@mastodon.social]

@oblomov @filobus My guess is that only 0.1% of users would ever use this feature. But the additional UI for it would probably be forced upon everyone.
In many cases I also expect that the manual translation of a non-native speaker is worse than an automatic translation. I see this regularly happen here at work.