If there is a rule that the discussion under the translated article should be in the same language, then we can translate a few articles and look at the discussion below them. If there is no discussion, or just the same 2-3 people talking, then it does not make sense to continue. If there are 10 or 20 people talking, then… well, it depends on translator’s cost-benefit analysis.
(There are usually more people reading than talking on web. I heard about the 1:10 rule—of 10 people reading the site, 1 will register to write comments; of 10 people writing comments, 1 will write an article.)
Then there is a question about type of the impact: are all those LW readers improving their lives, or just procrastinating? This I don’t know. (I propose a “null hypothesis” that the ratio of readers who really benefit from reading LW will be approximately the same in all languages.)
If there is no discussion, or just the same 2-3 people talking, then it does not make sense to continue.
The new readers attracted by the translated texts should have some time to find the site; if you translate one article on LW into Swahili, there will almost surely no discussion, even if there was a big number of potential Swahili speaking LWers: those who already read the English version have probably commented on the original article and have no reason to comment on the translation; for those who would become regular users of the Swahili version a single translated article isn’t enough.
If there is a rule that the discussion under the translated article should be in the same language, then we can translate a few articles and look at the discussion below them. If there is no discussion, or just the same 2-3 people talking, then it does not make sense to continue. If there are 10 or 20 people talking, then… well, it depends on translator’s cost-benefit analysis.
(There are usually more people reading than talking on web. I heard about the 1:10 rule—of 10 people reading the site, 1 will register to write comments; of 10 people writing comments, 1 will write an article.)
Then there is a question about type of the impact: are all those LW readers improving their lives, or just procrastinating? This I don’t know. (I propose a “null hypothesis” that the ratio of readers who really benefit from reading LW will be approximately the same in all languages.)
The new readers attracted by the translated texts should have some time to find the site; if you translate one article on LW into Swahili, there will almost surely no discussion, even if there was a big number of potential Swahili speaking LWers: those who already read the English version have probably commented on the original article and have no reason to comment on the translation; for those who would become regular users of the Swahili version a single translated article isn’t enough.