I mainly ID birds, many of whom are migratory in the Americas, which span two continents, many island nations, and many languages. Because I select North America including the oceans for my ID zone, I often encounter people who comment in Spanish—I get to see “our” birds on their wintering grounds and there are a ton of cool observations (iNat includes Costa Rica and Belize, among other amazing places!). It is a very warm and fuzzy experience to see the love for our birds from people all over the Americas as well as all over the US. As Bad Bunny said, “Together we are America.” He did not add, “for the birds,” but he could have.
Is there a boilerplate statement in Spanish about adding general IDs? Is it helpful to translate comments into Spanish? (I only accidentally do Brazil or the Caribbean—islands have a ton of endemics.) My only option is Google Translate, which I know can lead to really goofy translations. Any thoughts would be appreciated! For now, I either add my comments in English, Spanish (from Google Translate and so labeled), or English and Spanish.
And to clarify, I generally only comment to explain a general ID to an Unknown or to clarify a disagreement or an added ID.
P.S. I’ll try learning Spanish again once I finish French in Duolingo, but found it “not as easy as one would hope.” Maybe in a few years…
Just speaking generally… one of the really positive sides to today’s technology is that language boundaries have practically dissolved. There are, of course, still incomprehensions and ambiguities, but broadly speaking on-line translators are now so good it really doesn’t matter that much in what language we write and/or read. There will naturally be people who are worried about the use of AI and other language technologies in this process, but from my point of view, anything that helps us understand others has to be a good thing. Roll on the universal translator I say (speaking as an ex-translator, now in pension).
To my knowledge, best practice is to include the same message in both your native tongue (here, English) plus the localized tongue (here, Spanish). That’s what I do with English/Hebrew, English/Arabic and English/Farsi when I do my IDs across the Middle East and Persia. That way other people can cross-check. Also, that means tourists’ observations will have English available.
As you get to know your colleagues in Spanish-speaking America, you can ask them to check your translations for mistakes. This will not only make sure you’re comprehensible to native Spanish speakers, but strengthen social bonds.
eg:
“each observation should be of one organism (animal, plant etc). please divide up the photos so each observation has its own subject.
כל תצפית אמורה לכלול בעל-חיים אחד (או צמח/פתרייה
אחד). אנא תפריד.י את התמונות, כדי שלכל תצפית תהיה מטרה אחת”
…it formats a little better when both languages are written in the same direction.
A good idea! I do the same type of bird ID, but hadn’t thought about translating my own comments, sort of assuming someone else would do that if needed. I have translated Spanish comments (Google) and copy/pasted the English translation into the comments. Having some standard text ready would help.
To answer your specific question, about boilerplate language about adding general IDs, from the page I linked in my comment:
Opción 2:
(Agregando una ID general)
No estoy seguro de que especie sea esta, pero una identificación general ayudará a otros usuarios que si la conozcan a encontrar esta observación. Muchas de las personas que identifican en iNaturalist filtran las observaciones por grupos generales como “plantas”, “insectos”, “hongos” y estas identificaciones generales les ayudan a llegar a las observaciones correctas de manera más rápida.
I don’t think this is necessary anymore - everyone can translate anything they want nowadays. I prefer that people communicate in langiages they know and let me translate it - that is the way to the least confusion.
What a great answer from a very cool perspective! Thank you so much, lynkos. I keep hoping, as my wonderful mother used to say, that if the translation is goofy, at least it will give them something to talk and laugh about at dinner…
I do Araucaria ID, so I sometimes see stuff in Portuguese–I always write in English, since I’m assuming they can use software to translate what I wrote into Portuguese just like I used software to translate stuff into English.
This was very much true in the beginning of “automatic” translation and in my professional capacity, I’ve seen some pretty wild things in my time. But in recent years, it has become so good, at least for the most commonly used languages, that it often comes up with much better translations than I could ever dream of, particularly in the technical field where A=B is true more often than not. Obviously with less commonly used languages, there is more possibility of error, but the important thing is to be understood and it usually manage that.
I write in my English. But autotranslate battles with Afrikaans - not enough back to back translations online to work with. And Facebook is always determined to translate scientific names. Don’t nobody understand that ! What I really struggle with is when I ID across Africa - for notes when I have no idea what language - is that a place name, a common name, something like ‘a tree’. And autotranslate flounders with me.
For longer text translations from English to Spanish or vice versa (and many other languages like Dutch, German and French), DeepL works a bit better than Google Translate. Usually with small sentences Google Translate is okay, but DeepL is the tool you may need for longer replies. It is also free.
I think you’re right overall, but something I’ve found is deepL tends to produce much more plausible sounding mistranslations which is something to be wary of. Like in my experience when google translate mistranslates something it is often quite obvious since a word will make no sense in context or whatever. But I’ve found deepL almost always outputs something that at least sounds good, even if it has to deviate from the source quite a bit to get there. (Though both platforms are guilty of this to some degree)
I work in the Unknowns a lot, and I heavily rely on Google Translate for the observer’s placeholder ID (if there is one), and any comments they have left. These are sometimes invaluable because they may ID a species already.
As for comments, my Spanish is super rusty, but I do sometimes leave comments in Spanish. Every other language, I type in English and assume they use Google Translate like me
Don’t use software to translate. I’d rather read something hand-translated by someone who doesn’t know the language well than computer-translated Babelrybski like “At the bottom of birth there was an air pie with nuts”.
I speak Spanish and French, so I leave comments in those languages. If the local chuck-will’s-widow is found in Brazil, I’ll try to leave a comment in Portuguese, which will probably come out as Portuñol. I’ll make no attempt to translate to Chinese, as I know only a few words.
As to trying to translate scientific names, “la clase Aves” would come out “the class Birds” — “aves” is the same in Spanish and Latin and hasn’t changed in 2000 years, except maybe in Nodicia-de-Kesos spelling or the like.
Personally I write in English and then I’ll add a machine-translated version as well, and clearly mark it as machine translated so anyone reading it knows I don’t speak that language and any mistakes are from the translation model. I feel like including both make it more likely someone will read it.
+1 for leaving a comment in both languages. Mistranslations can be awkward so including the original text can help readers navigate it and makes it clear that you’re using a translator.
+1 untuk meninggalkan komentar dalam kedua bahasa. Salah terjemahan bisa canggung jadi menyertakan teks asli dapat membantu pembaca menavigasinya dan membuatnya jelas bahwa Anda menggunakan penerjemah.
