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Jump to the Background for the history and background of this issue. |
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Bug Reports/Observations with the new translation engine (updated January 2019)
Below are some of the bug reports/observations noted during testing.
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1
Missing emails from one list to another
In 2018, it was noticed that many emails are being silently dropped from one list, mainly emails from lacralo-es not being sent to lacralo-en
Comparing :lacralo-en archives at https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/ and
lacralo-es archive at https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/
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Number of lacralo-en emails
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| Info |
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Jump to the Background for the history and background of this issue. |
| Table of Contents |
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Bug Reports/Observations with the new translation engine (updated January 2019)
Below are some of the bug reports/observations noted during testing.
| Description of Issue | Noted by | Date Added | Status | Additional Notes on testing, fixes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1 | Missing emails from one list to another In 2018, it was noticed that many emails are being silently dropped from one list, mainly emails from lacralo-es not being sent to lacralo-en Comparing :lacralo-en archives at https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/ and
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| 2 | Better identification of
in its error response emails. When the translation tool has issues with the email, an email is sent from transbot-no-reply@icann.org with Dear <sender> Other questions :
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updated |
| Tool now identifies the subject line of the problem email in the body of the email | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | <DNT> tag isn't case sensitive. | 07/03/2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | The <DNT> tag will be seen in the original email but not in the translated one. See EN and ES messages. | 07/03/2017 |
| To achieve this, it would be necessary to re-architecture the transbot code. Upon investigating the issue it was discovered this is a known limitation, rather than a bug in the existing code. The request has been recorded as something to consider in a future iteration of the translation tool. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | ES Translated emails seem to remove several line breaks from the EN See EN and ES messages | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 | Re: attachments, new-transbot lists have a message and attachment limit of 200K Given many PDFs will be larger, will be hard to test unless message size limit is raised Tested with a smaller attachment, the attachment does go through. See EN and ES | 08/03/2017 |
| The new-transbot list email size limit has been increased to 400K. This is enforced for the entire email, including text and attachment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 | Handling an email sent to both new-transbot-en and new-transbot-es lists at the same time. When such an email to both lists happens, some emails don't get translated. | 09/03/2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Again, examples abound from a review of the archives but as one example, consider the subject line for an email on lac-discuss-es list
which gets translated and posted to the EN list as |
3) Missing [lac-discuss-es] in subject lines of translated emails posted to the lac-discuss-es list
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which is translated and posted to lac-discuss-es list as:
Email: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/2012/004552.html
Subject line: Lista completa de la ICANN solicitó cadenas de gTLD
The email at http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/2012/004552.html shows that the subject line is missing the [lac-discuss-es]. This hampers filtering by ES users and makes it difficult to track threaded conversations.
4) Unusual superscript and other odd characters in translated emails
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5Fmartes = 5F06 =? == iso-8859-1? q? = 5Fde = 5Fmarzo = 5F2012 = 5FA = 5Flas = 5F20_ = 3D_3A00 = 5FUTC? == iso-8859-1? q? = 3F_ = 3D? = |
3) Missing [lac-discuss-es] in subject lines of translated emails posted to the lac-discuss-es list
Consider example #1 again -
First email posted to lac-discuss-en list :
Email: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/2012/005932.html
Subject line: [lac-discuss-en] ICANN full list of applied for gTLD strings
which is translated and posted to lac-discuss-es list as:
Email: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/2012/004552.html
Subject line: Lista completa de la ICANN solicitó cadenas de gTLD
The email at http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/2012/004552.html shows that the subject line is missing the [lac-discuss-es]. This hampers filtering by ES users and makes it difficult to track threaded conversations.
4) Unusual superscript and other odd characters in translated emails
There have been numerous complaints about the quality of the translation of the actual body of emails with strange characters, some of which are superscript characters appearing in the translated version.
Examples aboud (repeating phrase, I'm afraid) on the LACRALO list archives, here is one example:
Email to lac-discuss-en : http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/2012/005858.html
got translated to this on the lac-discuss-es list: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/2012/004483.html
As you can see,
* a character like a double quote " is translated to "
* a word like "organisation" is translated to organización
* a sentence like "The highest decision making body in any organisation is also subject to rules." is translated to
"El más alto órgano de decisión en cualquier la organización también está sujeto a reglas."
History of machine translation of LACRALO mailing lists
- The LACRALO list in English: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/ and LACRALO list in Spanish: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/ were machine translated around September 2008. The translation engine was based on Systran.
- The quality of translation left a lot to be desired in terms of the language translation. Also, there were technical issues such as the subject lines of translated emails becoming garbled.
- During the LACRALO meeting in Cartagena in 2010, there were intense discussions regarding the quality of mailing list translations. Some wanted to disable the translation entirely. Others wanted to keep the imperfect translation for mobile users and disabling translation would send the wrong signal to ICANN when ICANN should be giving language services a higher priority. ICANN staff acknowledged the issues and stressed that IT staff were aware of the issues and would be looking to solve the translation problems.
- Around May 2011, the translation engine was switched from Systran to Google Translate.
- in May 2011, Google announced that it would be depreciating the (then) free Google Translate API (http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis.html) in a few months but later (due to public outcry) announced that a paid version of the translate API would be offered.
- Other issues noted around June 2011 were identified, one was the translation engine would stop translating emails when they became too big. This meant that a conversation thread would stop being translated leading to missing emails from one list not being translated to the other list. See http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/
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- for the solution to this (translation tool would stop translating quoted text)
- Around August 2011, the translation engine was switched back to Systran due to Google rejecting calls to the Google Translate API. See http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-
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As you can see,
* a character like a double quote " is translated to "
* a word like "organisation" is translated to organización
* a sentence like "The highest decision making body in any organisation is also subject to rules." is translated to
"El más alto órgano de decisión en cualquier la organización también está sujeto a reglas."
History of machine translation of LACRALO mailing lists
- The LACRALO list in English:en/2011/004368.html
- Update to the translation engine: September 2011, http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/ and LACRALO list in Spanish: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-es/ were machine translated around September 2008. The translation engine was based on Systran.
- The quality of translation left a lot to be desired in terms of the language translation. Also, there were technical issues such as the subject lines of translated emails becoming garbled.
- During the LACRALO meeting in Cartagena in 2010, there were intense discussions regarding the quality of mailing list translations. Some wanted to disable the translation entirely. Others wanted to keep the imperfect translation for mobile users and disabling translation would send the wrong signal to ICANN when ICANN should be giving language services a higher priority. ICANN staff acknowledged the issues and stressed that IT staff were aware of the issues and would be looking to solve the translation problems.
- Around May 2011, the translation engine was switched from Systran to Google Translate.
- in May 2011, Google announced that it would be depreciating the (then) free Google Translate API (http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis.html) in a few months but later (due to public outcry) announced that a paid version of the translate API would be offered.
- Other issues noted around June 2011 were identified, one was the translation engine would stop translating emails when they became too big. This meant that a conversation thread would stop being translated leading to missing emails from one list not being translated to the other list. See http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/2011/004308.html for the solution to this (translation tool would stop translating quoted text)
- Around August 2011, the translation engine was switched back to Systran due to Google rejecting calls to the Google Translate API. See http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/2011/004368.html
- Update to the translation engine: September 2011, http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/lac-discuss-en/2011/004498.html
- June 2012, detailed analysis of translation issues (as noted in the introduction above)
Testing of new translation tool for LACRALO mailing lists
ICANN Staff have created two mailing lists (New-transbot-en and New-transbot-es) with a select number of persons on those lists for testing purposes.
Some of the key changes implemented in the new translation tool.
- The lack of punctuation was identified as a key issue for the poor translation of emails. This is because the translate tool can only send a certain amount of characters to the Google Translate API. Without punctuation, the translation tool would have to send text mid sentence.
One of the outcomes from the LACRALO translation WG was the Proposed Notice when email is not translated message which would be sent to the user if the email had formatting issues. - Subject lines would not be translated to ensure the conversation thread would not be lost and reduce the chance of garbled subject lines. lac-discuss-en/2011/004498.html
- June 2012, detailed analysis of translation issues (as noted in the introduction above)
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Testing of new translation tool for LACRALO mailing lists
ICANN Staff have created two mailing lists (New-transbot-en and New-transbot-es) with a select number of persons on those lists for testing purposes.
Some of the key changes implemented in the new translation tool.
- The lack of punctuation was identified as a key issue for the poor translation of emails. This is because the translate tool can only send a certain amount of characters to the Google Translate API. Without punctuation, the translation tool would have to send text mid sentence.
One of the outcomes from the LACRALO translation WG was the Proposed Notice when email is not translated message which would be sent to the user if the email had formatting issues. - Subject lines would not be translated to ensure the conversation thread would not be lost and reduce the chance of garbled subject lines.
FY17 update
The TTF filed a budget request to the At-Large FBSC in FY17 for ICANN to finance the hiring of a programmer to assist the volunteer ICANN staff member to fix outstanding bugs - see At-Large FY17 Budget Development Workspace , this was approved by the At-Large FBSC and filed with ICANN Finance. On the 2016-08-08 At-Large Technology Taskforce Call, ICANN Staff member corinna.ace confirmed that a programmer/developer has been hired to sort out the remaining bugs.
To test the new translation tool, two test email lists: new-transbot-en and new-transbot-es were created and TTF volunteers and ICANN staff joined these lists to test the translation and to report bugs at discussion-of-LACRALO-mailing-list-issues page.
New versions of the translation tool were deployed to these transbot lists in late Dec 2016 and March 2017. The March 2017 update introduced new features
- translated emails will also include attachments (TXT, PDF, WORD, JPEG, PPT, PNG, GIF) from the original email
- If there is text that you don't want translated, you can enclose such text with a <DNT></DNT> tags
Since ICANN59, the TTF chairs have been discussing with Mark Segall and Corinna Ace from ICANN IT and with Silvia Vivanco and Mario Aleman from ICANN At-Large Staff on implementing the new version of the translation tool developed by ICANN IT on the existing LACRALO mailing lists.
To minimize the issue of persons posting to both lists at the same time which would create problems, members of LACRALO will be asked via online survey at https://goo.gl/forms/sEOEWqacRYLPk2Xc2 to indicate
* which lac discuss list do you wish to RECEIVE emails from (English, Spanish, or both)
* which lac discuss list do you wish to be able to SEND emails to. You can post to one list.
A conference call for LACRALO members was held on Tuesday Sept 5 2017 (see recordings at https://community.icann.org/x/yh8hB) to raise awareness of the planned changes to the translation tool used for the LACRALO mailing lists and what persons on the LACRALO lists need to do to prepare for the changes.
The tool was deployed to the main LACRALO lists on October 6 2017.
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Testers of new translation tool for LACRALO mailing lists
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