In regards to a translation of the Sequences: Is there truly a significant segment of the population out there that would potentially be open to benefit from reading the Sequences, and yet they haven’t prioritized learning English already?
Knowledge of English is probably the single most important piece of knowledge a person can have in the modern world—it’s utility highly multiplicative, because anything significant is currently translated to English, and sooner rather than later.
More importantly, anyone remotely rational will probably have already prioritized learning English.
So, in short, I’m not sure a cost-benefit analysis favors a translation of the Sequences to a different language.
If the Sequences will be translated by volunteers, they are the ones that should do the cost-benefit analysis. In my opinion, translating everything would be an overkill, but translating selected articles could be useful. Perhaps the most rational approach would be to translate something, then measure the impact, and then decide whether to continue or not. The answer may be different for different languages.
anyone remotely rational will probably have already prioritized learning English
English is very useful, there is no doubt about it.
However, I know a few people who don’t speak English, for various reasons. Some of them claim to be not gifted for languages; they tried learning, and they failed. Just because languages are easy for me, they are not easy for everyone. Others have learned different languages, which at the moment seemed like a good choice, and now they hesitate about learning yet another language. There are some people who were reading LW when they were 13 years old; I can imagine a 13 years old person that hadn’t mastered English yet, especially if they have bad teachers. I like the idea of providing some useful texts for these people. (Just like I like that some people are translating HP:MoR to other languages.)
Learning English is a rational choice, but people should not be required to learn English before they can learn how to be rational. Just like they don’t have to learn English before they can use Wikipedia.
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.
I am sure that knowledge of English is one of the most important skills for almost everybody. I am far less sure that this includes the level of fluency which enables reading articles on philosophy.
The cost-benefit analysis should take into account utilities of the translators, which may include not only promoting LW ideas, but also promoting their own language (by increasing the number of high-quality texts in that language), improving their own translation skills, spending time they would otherwise procrastinate...
Knowing English is a good choice in the modern world, but not everyone has good access to resources. Also, the Sequences are supposed to encourage rationality, so there’s some advantage in making them available to people who aren’t yet making the best instrumental choices.
I would hope that if the Sequences (or at least some of the most important articles) are translated, this could work as an incentive to learn English.
If the sequences are reworked into a book, and the English version of the book does sufficiently well, the publisher would have an incentive to pay a professional to do this job. I don’t know how common it is for non-fiction books to be translated from English. You would probably need a “best-seller” for this to be realistic, but it could well happen.
My impression is that translation from English is more common than translation into English (definitely true for science fiction) but I don’t know what the threshold is.
There’s at least one advantage to in-house translation. The odds are better of getting a translator who understands the concepts.
My impression is that translation from English is more common than translation into English (definitely true for science fiction) but I don’t know what the threshold is.
I have a sneaking intuition that this is more to do with the fact that English is the more common medium for most things from the outset than some other implied directionality.
A decent case-study of whether this is valid is to find some category of work that is frequently not in english by default and has a global audience. The most popular of such that springs to my mind is anime.
My only point was looking at the question of at what point something gets translation paid for by its publisher. I don’t know how much anime is translated by the company that produced it, and how much it gets translated by fans.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think translating the Sequences needs to be done by a single person or group, though consistency would be good.
Decent translations of single articles would be better than nothing.
Consistency would probably be pretty important for the Sequences. Eliezer frequently reuses phrases to reference previous ideas without having to explain any further. (Ex: phrases like cashed thoughts, leaky generalizations, how an algorithm feels from the inside.)
If people used different translations for these phrases, it would be much harder to read. Having those phrases repeated over and over acted as an extremely convenient way to express complex ideas.
A reasonable point. I suppose it’s possible to work on consensus translations for important words and phrases, but that might be even more work that getting one person to do the translation.
In regards to a translation of the Sequences: Is there truly a significant segment of the population out there that would potentially be open to benefit from reading the Sequences, and yet they haven’t prioritized learning English already?
Knowledge of English is probably the single most important piece of knowledge a person can have in the modern world—it’s utility highly multiplicative, because anything significant is currently translated to English, and sooner rather than later.
More importantly, anyone remotely rational will probably have already prioritized learning English.
So, in short, I’m not sure a cost-benefit analysis favors a translation of the Sequences to a different language.
If the Sequences will be translated by volunteers, they are the ones that should do the cost-benefit analysis. In my opinion, translating everything would be an overkill, but translating selected articles could be useful. Perhaps the most rational approach would be to translate something, then measure the impact, and then decide whether to continue or not. The answer may be different for different languages.
English is very useful, there is no doubt about it.
However, I know a few people who don’t speak English, for various reasons. Some of them claim to be not gifted for languages; they tried learning, and they failed. Just because languages are easy for me, they are not easy for everyone. Others have learned different languages, which at the moment seemed like a good choice, and now they hesitate about learning yet another language. There are some people who were reading LW when they were 13 years old; I can imagine a 13 years old person that hadn’t mastered English yet, especially if they have bad teachers. I like the idea of providing some useful texts for these people. (Just like I like that some people are translating HP:MoR to other languages.)
Learning English is a rational choice, but people should not be required to learn English before they can learn how to be rational. Just like they don’t have to learn English before they can use Wikipedia.
How would one measure the impact? I thought this was still a question mark for the English version.
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.
Bearing the consequences isn’t necessarily related to ability to make correct decisions.
I am sure that knowledge of English is one of the most important skills for almost everybody. I am far less sure that this includes the level of fluency which enables reading articles on philosophy.
The cost-benefit analysis should take into account utilities of the translators, which may include not only promoting LW ideas, but also promoting their own language (by increasing the number of high-quality texts in that language), improving their own translation skills, spending time they would otherwise procrastinate...
Maybe the main benefit from translations is capturing Google searches for key terms in non-English languages.
Knowing English is a good choice in the modern world, but not everyone has good access to resources. Also, the Sequences are supposed to encourage rationality, so there’s some advantage in making them available to people who aren’t yet making the best instrumental choices.
I would hope that if the Sequences (or at least some of the most important articles) are translated, this could work as an incentive to learn English.
If the sequences are reworked into a book, and the English version of the book does sufficiently well, the publisher would have an incentive to pay a professional to do this job. I don’t know how common it is for non-fiction books to be translated from English. You would probably need a “best-seller” for this to be realistic, but it could well happen.
My impression is that translation from English is more common than translation into English (definitely true for science fiction) but I don’t know what the threshold is.
There’s at least one advantage to in-house translation. The odds are better of getting a translator who understands the concepts.
I have a sneaking intuition that this is more to do with the fact that English is the more common medium for most things from the outset than some other implied directionality.
A decent case-study of whether this is valid is to find some category of work that is frequently not in english by default and has a global audience. The most popular of such that springs to my mind is anime.
My only point was looking at the question of at what point something gets translation paid for by its publisher. I don’t know how much anime is translated by the company that produced it, and how much it gets translated by fans.
Well, either metric (compared against itself, anyhow) would still be useful for deriving the principle in question.
(And is under contract to actually finish the job within a reasonable deadline.)
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think translating the Sequences needs to be done by a single person or group, though consistency would be good.
Decent translations of single articles would be better than nothing.
Consistency would probably be pretty important for the Sequences. Eliezer frequently reuses phrases to reference previous ideas without having to explain any further. (Ex: phrases like cashed thoughts, leaky generalizations, how an algorithm feels from the inside.)
If people used different translations for these phrases, it would be much harder to read. Having those phrases repeated over and over acted as an extremely convenient way to express complex ideas.
A reasonable point. I suppose it’s possible to work on consensus translations for important words and phrases, but that might be even more work that getting one person to do the translation.
As long as we allow edits, there’s no reason these can’t be settled on gradually, is there?