Bitcoin Forum

Question is how forum or moderators detect automated translation? And if someone cought what is the action from forum/moderators side?

For example, user sellinglegandaryaccount (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2592662) is using multiple local language (almost more then 5 different languages). May be its possible he/she know all languages and also there suspicion that he/she is using automated translation tools.

What is appropriate action about this case since it's related with forum rules.

It's the same as other rule breakers: report it, so Mods can remove the post.

Generally it requires a native speaker of the language to spot vocabulary or grammar errors that are characteristic of machine translation. (Obviously human translations can have errors too, more so if the translator is not fluent in one of the languages in question, but the types of errors made will be distinctive enough that a native speaker can tell the difference.)

How will I detect also if I am not native? Actually question regarding detection of automated translation. How it will detect? Perhaps poster would claim that he/she know multiple languages. Then how it would be moderated? I am not wondering about report, I am wondering how moderators will handle it. Based on what?

On my local board one can spot them due to the way the expression are constructed, and especially when inaccurate words are placed in the phrases (this makes them stand-out). If I see them I report them, but more often than not, my local moderator detects them himself and deleted them. One good thing that our local moderator often does is to leave a comment stating the reason for an action (deleting a post, moving a thread to a given section, and so on).

I think the detection can ve done by any member who is a native speaker of that language then they report to the mods... Pretty much like reporting spam.
It's just a community thing.

I am still learning Spanish, and I am coming to your Local board soon. Hope my poorly constructed Spanish sentences won't be mistaken for automated translation  ;D

Since the rules was created on 2014, back on those days translation tools like google translate is still poor to translate a sentences or even some difficult words.
So native speakers might be easily to recognize that and report it to the mods/admin.
however, nowadays translation tools have a huge improvement and it's hard to recognize which one using a whole auto translation and the one who doesn't (atleast on my own native language, bahasa).

We have that Thread "  Übersetzungs-Spam gefunden? Hier könnt ihr ihn berichten (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415262.0) " ( Translation spam can be reported here ) it means !

If we find some Translation spammer or someone who used Translation Tools we write it there and report the post or thread with the reference link to the thread we have for !

We got no problems with that and all Translation spam gets deleted !

Sometimes it's easy to spot fake translators. As here (https://archive.fo/dWjoQ#selection-671.0-673.24) (see the selection of this archive).

Unfortunately, they're smarter than above. But it's usually quite easy to spot. There are technical terms where translation tools fail completely.
Some examples (for french):
Mining pools: translation tools often translate 'pool' into 'piscine' which means swimming pool. And we end up with ridiculous translations saying: Mining swimming pool.
Whitepaper : the literal translation is 'Papier Blanc'. But in good French, we say "Livre Blanc" (White Book). So when I see 'Papier blanc', it makes me very suspicious.

If I have any doubts, I compare with the original ann and look at how I would have translated it. Or sometimes I use the translation tools and if the result is the same (and with incomprehensible sentences), I'm pretty sure it's an automatic translation.

And I also rely a lot on the number of reports I receive about an ann. If several (trusted) members tell me that it is an automatic translation, my investigations are shorter and the sanction comes quickly.

Deletion of the ann (and I hope that the fake translator will not be paid).

It is indeed very suspicious, but recently I had the case where behind one account there were several translators. After discussions, the "Lead" translator fired the fake french translator. I don't know if that's true or not, but he didn't come back with his bad translations.

It's more complicated, but if the mod receives several detailed reports or if the fake translator is already red trusted for bad translations, he doesn't have to think too much.
Otherwise there is the possibility to open a topic in Reputation and ask people who understand the language you don't know. And you link this topic in the report and mod will act according to the answers of this topic.

Easy to spot for a native speaker.
If you have to read the same sentence 3 times to understand it, you probably have a case of someone using a translating tool.
Some of the expressions used are also obvious proof of a fake translator. Some of them are just grotesque.
But a fake translator can also be a native speaker, one lazy fucker who just did his work very fast and didn't care much how it would look.

I can see many users using automated tools for translating content but since there is no moderator in the Indian section, nobody checks these posts. Reporting them makes no difference as some of them change two-three words here and there to make it unable to detect the difference. There are some translators who claim to have a team but those team members all use automated tools in most bounties.

I sometimes see these being posted in our Croatian board. Usually ANNs or a thread advertising a website or a service. The forum cant detect these translations on its own, its the users of that particular board who report it and based on those reports the post gets deleted.
I dont know what kind of checks the mods do to check if the report is valid and automated translation tools have been used. Mods any more info on that?

Somebody asked me to check few ANN in Indian section to check whether they are automatically translated . (Unfortunately , I never looked too deep on it.)
But my initial investigation was pointing that in Indian section, even native speakers are doing automatic translation to save the effort required in manual translation.

I think the easiest way is if the native speaker who reported the fake translation describes those words/sentences that are weird/wrong and why he/she thinks that the translation has been automated.

I've reported such translations before, here is an example:
The translation to Bulgarian, but many words were in Russian.

You should distinguish between automatic translation and some language errors.
Second: Google Translator gives excellent results for *Most Spoken Languages* ​​and weak content of unknown/unused languages:

1. Translate some well-known words: This is an example of what happens when you translate some well-known ANN words:

We notice errors in the translation of Snapchat and Telegram because the words (Snap= شبح  Chat = محادثة) have several meanings.

2. Some shortcuts: peer to peer (P2P), A.K.A, ....etc
3. Full-text translation: Google Translate may not understand some words so it leaves it as it is, causing a problem understanding meanings.


4. The direction of symbols: Some languages are written from right to left and vice versa.

Google Translators performs better with machine learning (I believe Google actually use it for this tool), so it's hard to automatically use other tools to find fake-translations from users if they use provided translation from Google Translator (especially for popular language, as @hugeblack pointed out). That is why we need moderators for local boards.
However, another thing will appear. Moderators can not do it themselves, they don't have time to do it, and they even should not spend most of their time to do it. It belongs to community responsibility. Members of local boards should report such fake translations if they find them.
Another component that results in abundant of fake translations is laziness of developer team whom come from (mostly) scam projects. They simply use their free money (from their scam projects) to pay for fake translators. They even don't check, don't care about quality of translations.

Heisenberg_Hunter has mentioned the list of translators who have used automated tools (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136138.0) and I also helped him out. Still nobody replied regarding this and plus don't know which moderator to report to as there is no Indian mod now.

Yes, .Heisenberg_Hunter  requested to check the translation. I guess you can ask someone having DT powers to tag these translators.
You can still "Report To Moderator" , it will go on Global Mods queue in absence of local mods but I have no idea how they will be able to take action when they also do not know the language.

The main problem are Bitcointalk ANNs of shitcoins, often done by lazy bounty hunters using automated translation tools to translate for various languages they don't know and get more tokens. As Lafu already said, we have a dedicated topic and the points posted by Halab are a very good start.

In addition I'm going through the post history of the user and it's suspicious if he translates into various languages where no connection is between (like Chinese, German, Arabic and Russian) and never did a normal post in a discussion thread of my language.
A direct comparison between the original ANN, the translated version and test-translated using Google Translate is also very helpful, like we did it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415262.msg43246222#msg43246222 or here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415262.msg40965515#msg40965515
In German we have also some words where automated translations can be spotted, like "Bergmann" (means mineworker in German) (Miner) or other gibberish.

I don't see a single point as sufficient proof on it's own until it's not very clear. Most patterns are similar for fake translators and easy to spot when you know where you have to search.

As a result we list fake-translators because using automated translation tools is not allowed according the bounty rules. They are bounty cheaters and get a red tag if they are doing it repeatedly. Normally I give them some doubt and start tagging them after they have done 3 fake translations.
That's important to warn the bounty managers to stop hiring these scumbags for the next bounty.

ANNs of devs who are posting automated translations are just getting their topic removed because they don't cheat a bounty.

The problem is that we don't have a moderator in the German section because phantastisch was removed in November 2018. A native speaking moderator would be essential to ensure a correct handling of fake translations.

If we are talking about other languages translated to English literally anyone can spot the grammar mistakes of a word for word translated text, if someone has detected the text then the user can always report it, either way users found this way are either plagiarizing or just posting in English-language topics. If we are talking about English text translated to foreign languages it's the same thing since any native language user can detect the awful translation and report it right away.

Another option is also reporting the user to the bounty manager for the project he translated for as well as to DT members like members already mentioned in the thread. That way he can get blacklisted and reconsider his actions in the future. 

That is why you don't see an French moderator moderating the Arabic local board, because that will result in terrible judgment, there is no way for someone who doesn't speak the language to know how was a text translated unless it's super obvious.

automatic translation can be accurate in terms of understanding , you take a text in French, translate it to English, most of the time you will get a "clue" of what is it about, but going from English to French and posting the results - it is going to be ugly.

a week or two ago, there was a topic translated to Arabic about some new ICO , and OP was asking for "prime minister"  ::) ( i think he was looking for a manager) but google failed him.

if the Moderator did not understand Arabic, he would not have deleted that post.

I used to report to Benson first who was the Indian mod but he also used to take no action and it will be tough for the global mods to deal with it as they don't understand Hindi. Only once one topic got deleted for using automated tools but that was because the project manager complained I guess else all others go unnoticed.

^
No mod ?
That's a terrible situation to be in. Before Halab was named mod of the French section, a few of us had to take care of that "fake translators" problem. We wasted a lot of energy there.
I suppose you made a request to Theymos about having a new one ?

I tagged one translator after checking his recent thread. this user  rangnatht (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1136275) clearly using Google translator for translations.

I will check rest of them tonight and will proceed accordingly.

A request was made in Meta here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3125174.20

But no mod was elected as it is said that Indian section doesn't have much activity and since many languages are spoken here, the mod may not be able to handle such reports. I can see some other Local sections also without a mod like the German section and hence members are handling such issues and reporting them.

Been a little busy yesterday to reply to this topic. I have approached both r1s2g3 and erikalui for helping me out in revealing the fake translators and the result was Overview of Fake Hindi Translators in the Indian Board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136138.msg50772796#msg50772796). Probably most of them were aware of the fake translations taking place in the Indian Board, but not much reported them nor the action were taken by moderator and the DT to tag them or remove those topics. r1s2g3 triggered the wrong translation work and erikalui spent their time to provide the evidences. The translators are getting out of control in the board, and even though if I report those posts they are not being removed. I do mention my topic as a reference in the comment while I report but to the contrary they are not being removed.


I am aware that Benson wasn't really taking any measures when he was a MOD to prevent the abuse and with the increase in the ICO's and Bounties in 2017-2018 the fake translators have risen enormously in the Indian Board too. The translators are receiving easy money by just shitting all over the board with their filthy translation spams.

As far as I have figured out Greek moderator mitzie and other global mods like rickbig handles my reports most of the time. I am quite sure few of the local board mods are acting as a global moderator in the shadows without having an official title. Since there isn't really a moderator for the board right now, we need to depend upon global mods and DT people by providing enough evidences and helping them to clean the board.

The translated topics in the Indian Board are quite easier to find out since they are most probably being translated by Google Translators which doesn't add any real meaning to the topic.

---

Situation 1 :

The Indian Board is literally very terrible right now, but they are atmost readable to an extent. I report quite often and within a day or two they would be handled. Brand New Members who are not Indians are using the situation (A board with no MOD) to promote their shit. At times, a group of spammers just like the Chitauri clan rush inside the board and spam with the same messages unless they are being reported and nuked.

Situation 2 :

2 weeks back, a group of Brand New accounts came to the board, necro-bumped 3-4 year old dead topics and posted a bitcointalk link. Once I clicked through the bitcointalk link, they linked to a fake phishing Electrum software download. All of a sudden I reported all these topics (should have been 5+) and they were removed the following day. The problem is that, we Indians are diversified and very few of them are non-spamming people. Most of them indulge in Bounties, Scams and spamming the forum endlessly in the Altcoin Subs.

Such situations happen quite a few times in the Indian Board too but they can be left aside. I have seen a user posting translated announcements in more than 3-4 languages but they seem to translate only one project. So they should have been an employee of the project and post topics related to the project which cannot be considered as a translation abuse.

P.S If theymos cannot appoint a MOD, he could better delete the board. It is becoming worse than the Off-Topic and Archival board  ;D

Well is very simple, generally the mod of the section know the language where the moderate (I hope) in that case if you report a message translated with google or other tools they can read and find the errors done by Google, for example on the Italian section we sometimes have f....ed up translations done clearly with those tools, verbs are often wrong from the translator.

This is true for the most smaller languages, where google translate has not enough content to fine tune the translation. For some of the languages, it's not possible to use the google translate becuase of the poor performance...