Project Babel: Translate our website to many languages

Here in France I have a problem. I meet many people who are very afraid of AI, but their English is bad. According to some (source?) there are many people in the world who do not speak English.
So I think we should:

Translate our website to many languages (starting with the homepage)
Find a way to be more inclusive on this discord to people who do not speak English
Potentially, and particularly if 2. fails, build regional chapters of Pause AI

This project, for now, will mostly focus on 1.

How you can help?

Big: Take the lead on this project.
Small: Write a translation of the homepage in your language. Use Deeple for a first pass, then fix the mistakes, it's quick. Skills: write
Medium: Rework the website to make it international. Skills: Code

dead-brownOP•4/6/24, 11:50 AM

!track

ProjectBot•4/6/24, 11:50 AM

Project "Project Babel: Translate our website to many languages" was added to the database.

cold-orange•4/6/24, 12:49 PM

i hope i can contribute things about Japanese languages . i am native ot that .

awake-maroon•4/6/24, 1:50 PM

Don’t most browsers offer translation now? Is using that feature too uncommon?

Aawake-maroon Don’t most browsers offer translation now? Is using that feature too uncommon?

faint-white•4/6/24, 4:44 PM

It's not quite human-translated quality yet.

Ffaint-white It's not quite human-translated quality yet.

awake-maroon•4/6/24, 5:21 PM

Yeah I just wasn’t sure whether it’s worth the effort but you are probably right

dead-brownOP•4/6/24, 5:28 PM

I have people in mind who would give up as soon as they see content in English and have never used the translate feature on the browser. My assumption is that there are a LOT of people in this case (ie that the vast majority of people in the world does not use the translate feature in the browser)

awake-maroon•4/21/24, 1:36 AM

GitHub issue for technical discussion: https://github.com/PauseAI/pauseai-website/issues/157

GitHub

Offer translations · Issue #157 · PauseAI/pauseai-website

Discord discussion: https://discord.com/channels/1100491867675709580/1226136907046588476

awake-maroon•4/21/24, 4:16 PM

Two challenges I can think of right now:

Outdated translations
Links to pages that haven't been translated

sacred-rose•4/21/24, 5:03 PM

Yeah, we're changing the pages all the time

awake-maroon•4/21/24, 5:14 PM

They are by no means unsolvable but they require thinking about if and how we want to solve them. We'd probably need an active team of translators and a mechanism to coordinate them

yucky-gold•4/22/24, 6:08 AM

I can do/proofread

versions if there's a plan to go there. For now it seems other areas are a priority though.

sacred-rose•6/11/24, 2:22 PM

I think the way to go is: have LLMs translate the pages and updates to drafts, and to have people from the native language/ translators approve those translations to publish the articles

sacred-rose•6/11/24, 2:23 PM

I think it makes sense for PauseAI to use LLM everywhere it seems necessary. Its too much of a cost not to. We will have a page about or AI usage "policy"

standard-azure•6/24/24, 4:07 PM

@here Okay, I have translated some sites of our website to Polish. I need some1 from website team to contact me to make a polish version of PauseAI website.

Sstandard-azure @here Okay, I have translated some sites of our website to Polish. I need some1 ...

hurt-tomato•6/24/24, 9:02 PM

That's great!

Do you have a domain name in mind yet?

Hhurt-tomato That's great! 😁 Do you have a domain name in mind yet?

standard-azure•6/24/24, 9:19 PM

Maybe something as simple as "PauseAI.pl"?

Sstandard-azure Maybe something as simple as "PauseAI.pl"?

hurt-tomato•6/25/24, 6:07 AM

Perfect. Let's continue here: Set up local / national PauseAI websites

broad-salmon•6/26/24, 11:37 AM

Hello friends, My name is Erfan, I can participate in translating the website to Persian, is there anyone in charge of coordinating here I can help, I also have some questions. thanks a l ot

hurt-tomato•6/26/24, 1:00 PM

@Iris could help translating italian and spanish!

yucky-gold•6/26/24, 1:18 PM

It occurred to me that I might be a good person to translate the website to Russian and Ukrainian at some point. Though presently I see much more pressing projects and I'm sort of weary of my famously-trollish compatriots..

hurt-tomato•6/27/24, 6:55 PM

@daintydysphemism wants to help! She has a lot of expertise in multi-cultural / translation / language stuff

precious-lavender•6/27/24, 7:00 PM

hurt-tomato•6/27/24, 7:24 PM

We just discussed the value of translating things in the Action meeting.

Summary:

We shoud set up an efficient pipeline for translating both web content as well as video content.
AI generated content is probably not good enough for videos! Get volunteers to at least check the output in every country.
Ideally we also have social media accounts for each country.
We should prioritize languages that have more impact (Manderin, French, Spanish)
We should think carefully about who the videos are for.

yucky-gold•6/27/24, 9:11 PM

Again, it makes most sense for countries that have direct relationship to frontier models or can influence them, and who don't have a strong English second language proficiency.

standard-azure•6/27/24, 11:03 PM

Hey there! May I ask, whether the article on our website about risks of A.I. is written by a human? Or maybe I should ask, whether it is written by one, or multiple people? I am translating it now (the old fashioned way, with a book dictionary at my side, sentence by sentence) and I see inconsistency in syntax and overall quality of text between different paragraphs of this article. It's not critique - it's just seems to me that more than one person has written it. And I'm curious to know, if I'm correct in this assumption. I am human - it's my childish curiosity that speaks now of itself.

Sstandard-azure Hey there! May I ask, whether the article on our website about risks of A.I. is ...

awake-maroon•6/27/24, 11:05 PM

Yup, it has been written by multiple people. In fact everyone can contribute to the website by clicking the edit button in the footer

Aawake-maroon Yup, it has been written by multiple people. In fact everyone can contribute to ...

standard-azure•6/27/24, 11:08 PM

Yay, I got a correct assumption! I am a happy monkey now!

Ddead-brown Here in France I have a problem. I meet many people who are very afraid of AI, b...

broad-emerald•6/27/24, 11:25 PM

I love this idea!

we need far more content on this in different languages. Translating the site into other languages is a must!

Anyone who speaks another language, also think about making content in that language, even where you don't show your face (just with captions or voiceover and screenshots or stock footage).

there is so little content in other languages on AI dangers that it can be easy to rank highly in search results and get a lot of engagement. People are interested in this topic and are searching for information on it. I've made some very simple TikTok videos about AI dangers in Spanish that got relatively high views and make my videos come up in search results on TikTok for these things now. For example, this took like 2 minutes to make: https://www.tiktok.com/@ai_risks_trends/video/7385024260487662879

this one was pretty easy: https://www.tiktok.com/@ai_risks_trends/photo/7382030958779714847

message me if anyone wants to think about content creation in other languages or for targeting other cultures (even if in English but where it would show up, say, as relevant for Indian audiences). it can be easy and there are ways to do it where you don't show your face or identity.

TikTok

TikTok · AI Risks Trends/Riesgos de IA

Check out AI Risks Trends/Riesgos de IA’s video.

TikTok

TikTok · AI Risks Trends/Riesgos de IA

Check out AI Risks Trends/Riesgos de IA’s post.

Ddead-brown Here in France I have a problem. I meet many people who are very afraid of AI, b...

precious-lavender•6/28/24, 12:44 PM

“Rework the website to make it international”. What needs to be reworked? Have we talked to the website team about what is needed here?

“Write a translation of the homepage”: do we have a location for storing these atm? (Eg a Google Drive)

Hhurt-tomato We just discussed the value of translating things in the Action meeting. Summar...

sacred-rose•6/28/24, 12:55 PM

Each country? Holy shit. Why isnt each language enough?

Pprecious-lavender “Rework the website to make it international”. What needs to be reworked? Have w...

hurt-tomato•6/28/24, 1:25 PM

In the github repository! That's where all the website data resides.

I still have to come up with a technical approach to translations though...

colossal-harlequin•6/29/24, 7:43 PM

Well, Pause AI need to, and as per other thread I'm keen to hear your take on existing Svelte approaches to i18n and l10n. They look a bit basic and unloved but not that unusual.

colossal-harlequin•6/29/24, 7:47 PM

...
Anyone who is currently localizing existing English content, or knows that someone else is, please read my post in Set up local / national PauseAI websites

I do think your one-off efforts are much more likely to easily fold into what we end up doing if you take this approach.

colossal-harlequin•6/29/24, 8:00 PM

...
I'll also note @Joep Meindertsma and friends that much like other things we're setting up, our localization approach needs to not completely break at sudden scale.

(It's ok for it to break a bit. I think what we do should be as simple as possible. Some wise i18n and l10n nuanced thinking arose in the context of projects that needed to help an only slowly growing team, to stay efficient, and work extremely reliably. If when all this is over we can see how translation could have eight times as efficient or three times higher quality in principle if only we'd added n extra complications, I really don't care much - we need robust approaches that we were able to throw multitudes at in practice, and win with, because they were simple.)

precious-lavender•7/1/24, 9:17 PM

How often does the website update? Even if no new pages are added, there still needs to be an update every time some text changes in the original. That means for every language there will be 1) request for translation 2) machine translation 3) quality control & fine-tuning 4) push to the website.

precious-lavender•7/2/24, 8:16 AM

This to say, we shouldn’t view localization as a one-time setup, but as a continuous process requiring human resources on standby.

Pprecious-lavender This to say, we shouldn’t view localization as a one-time setup, but as a contin...

hurt-tomato•7/2/24, 9:14 AM

Agreed, we should expect a lot of updates

colossal-harlequin•7/3/24, 4:50 PM

Definitely. We also want a system that fails gracefully while new content is pending a particular localization. (Easily see older version of content in your locale, newer version untranslated, etc.)

I want to ask again @Joep Meindertsma any opinion re Set up local / national PauseAI websites ? I know l10n practices well, but not the Svelte ecosystem in particular. It looks a bit unloved in this regard.

Ccolossal-harlequin Definitely. We also want a system that fails gracefully while new content is pen...

hurt-tomato•7/3/24, 6:54 PM

I don't have opinions on workflow yet, would love to hear some ideas. I know there's a framework for json translations and we'll probably need to build something custom for markdown

https://github.com/PauseAI/pauseai-website/issues/157#issuecomment-2202642228

GitHub

Offer translations · Issue #157 · PauseAI/pauseai-website

Discord discussion: https://discord.com/channels/1100491867675709580/1226136907046588476

hurt-tomato•7/31/24, 12:35 PM

@Imotaru

has relevant experiecne!

dead-brown•7/31/24, 1:14 PM

hey everyone, I was in charge of managing the localization of a top grossing mobile game into 40 different languages for a couple years, so I think my experience can be valuable for this project

colossal-harlequin•7/31/24, 3:00 PM

That could be great.

I want to note, explicitly, that we probably don't want a system for l10n across chapter websites.

I've discussed some with those running these and noted that if they do translate a particular en-US source then to please capture the source text too so that the work can be shared.

But that's about it. So far every local chapter website has reasonably had slightly different takes on what they want to do, with the only common theme being to at most take inspiration and links back to the original site, then lean into doing their own thing. I think this makes sense.

See my https://discord.com/channels/1100491867675709580/1265426528691421264/1267546131882315952

in that mho context I reckon even at this relatively early stage before hyperscale, local chapter websites seem to naturally fall on the KISS side of things: we should embrace difference and local passion.

issenting opinions?

Independently, I do think l10n of at least some key subset of the main pauseai.info site makes sense, leaning on what good practices, conventions and Frameworks there are.

Like Imotaru my previous experience is with software rather than website content, and I know the cases differ (for a website we have much more text and fewer exact layout concerns.)

I will note a related adjacent requirement: for sudden demand, we will want to have either really good arrangements with redundant providers, or the option be able to publish a static copy (i.e. serve pre-assembled pages not text streamed by website code) of the site to a CDN. L10n can interplay here - you can even see a static copy as a localization if you squint right.

sacred-rose•8/7/24, 11:05 PM

I don't understand the technical stuff being discussed but we are getting ways to translate the website with one click or something like that, no?

I really think we shouldn't care much for regional stuff, it's ok if chapters want to do it, but the important thing is different languages for the main website.

Ssacred-rose I don't understand the technical stuff being discussed but we are getting ways t...

dead-brown•8/9/24, 7:43 PM

yeah the plan currently is to on the main site have a language selection button at the top and have everything translated

colossal-harlequin•8/9/24, 10:37 PM

UX-wise maybe plus a default locale based on GeoIP, if that isn't hard.

There are quite a few design choices here. Note there can be interaction with any website CMS and social media automation purchase choices we make and what l10n options come as standard with those, and how we choose to address sudden hyperscaling (https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GUvSTJkJgVNPPUZm5cj6j1Q_-L---aClFucPkPM-RA/edit#heading=h.3iqcv496ie6g)

I would usually advocate buy vs build, and following standard practices but I think these will be in flux given emergent contemporary auto-l10n capabilities. We're kind of good with LLMs so that combined with some unusual requirements may mean contrary to usual we might choose to partially or totally build something bespoke.

We will have to decide what to do about manual curation and override vs automatic translation, and change management in those scenarios.

E.g. Is source text always en-US? Are auto localizations of new text displayed by default? I presume they will allow manual override: is that done via a commit to the website Git repos or replacement CMS, or independently? Either way, do we flag them for review? How do our answers change if source text changes and a localization of the previous source was overridden?

Existing CMS and localization practice has some conventional answers here but again I suspect auto-l10n means those are being re-examined.

hurt-tomato•8/28/24, 7:26 AM

@Imotaru

Are you blocked with doing translations? Let me know if I can help. I think we may need another tech session

hurt-tomato•8/28/24, 7:30 PM

@Imotaru

is probably not gonna lead this project. @anthonybailey.net

hurt-tomato•8/28/24, 7:31 PM

@BorjaHQ made the Spanish translation! Nice!

dramatic-maroon•8/28/24, 7:32 PM

Project Babel: Translate our website to many languages

How you can help?

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