1584178 - Google Translate modifies whitespace within placeables, causing translation errors

Status: RESOLVED MOVED

(Webtools Graveyard :: Pontoon, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Matjaz Horvat [:mathjazz]]

We should prevent certain pieces of text from being changed in the machine translation output in order to prevent translation errors.

For example: Google Translate translates
fileSizeProgress = ({ $partialSize } of { $totalSize })
as
fileSizeProgress = ({$ partialSize} od {$ totalSize})
(mind the spacing).

Such translations often result in errors, because they mess with the developer variables. Additionally, changes are hard to spot.

We should check if there's a way to annotate substrings that should not be modified in the MT output. Looking at the comments in https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/119256504, we might need to post-process the output instead.

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Adam talked about that in our conversation around optimizing our MT use, too.

Comment 3

[Axel Hecht]

https://modelfront.com/machine-readable-text/ has some tips

Comment 4

[Matjaz Horvat [:mathjazz]]

(In reply to Axel Hecht from comment #3)

https://modelfront.com/machine-readable-text/ has some tips

After playing with the API a little, I can confirm this is indeed looking promising:

payload = {
    "q": 'Testing %S Placeholder',
    "source": "en",
    "target": locale_code,
    "format": "text",
    "key": api_key,
}

# Output: 'Testiranje% S rezerviranega mesta'

payload = {
    "q": 'Testing <span translate="no">%S</span> Placeholder',
    "source": "en",
    "target": locale_code,
    "format": "html",
    "key": api_key,
}

# Output: 'Testiranje <span translate="no">%S</span> rezerviranega mesta'

We have logic for marking up placeables on frontend, where we'll need to put them in wrappers. And unwrap the results.

Now that we know what to do, let's bump the priority of this.

(Note: The fact that the logic is in frontend will bite us when we'll try to apply it during pre-translation).

Comment 5

[Matjaz Horvat [:mathjazz]]

Attachment: GitHub Pull Request

Comment 6

[BMO Automation]

*This bug has been moved to GitHub.*

*Please check it out on https://github.com/mozilla/pontoon/issues.*