Request for help splitting a Japanese sentence for eligibliity for Kudoz...
Thread poster: Wendy Cummings
Wendy Cummings
Wendy Cummings  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
Dec 19, 2016

Dear All,

I would like to post a Japanese sentence on Kudoz. However, the sentence is too long and therefore needs to be split. Not speaking Japanese, I do not know how it can be split.

Is anyone able to suggest a suitable way of splitting the sentence:

AllCost のメッセージで送信する QoS が確認なしで強制的に再送するまでのタイ�
... See more
Dear All,

I would like to post a Japanese sentence on Kudoz. However, the sentence is too long and therefore needs to be split. Not speaking Japanese, I do not know how it can be split.

Is anyone able to suggest a suitable way of splitting the sentence:

AllCost のメッセージで送信する QoS が確認なしで強制的に再送するまでのタイムアウト

[source: https://docs.unity3d.com/ja/current/ScriptReference/Networking.ConnectionConfig.html]

into shorter chunks that fall within the word limit permitted for Kudoz questions?

Many thanks.

Wendy
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Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:04
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Why? Dec 19, 2016

Hi Wendy,
I don't think you can split a sentence, post it in two halves, expect a correct translation of each and then glue it back together. Why do you need to translate this sentence?
The webpage your link points to (by the way, there is an extra square bracket at the end of the link that breaks the link) is in Japanese, so if this page has to be translated, then it is not for KudoZ questions, but a job for a Jpn-Eng translator. (If you don't speak Japanese at all, how would you se
... See more
Hi Wendy,
I don't think you can split a sentence, post it in two halves, expect a correct translation of each and then glue it back together. Why do you need to translate this sentence?
The webpage your link points to (by the way, there is an extra square bracket at the end of the link that breaks the link) is in Japanese, so if this page has to be translated, then it is not for KudoZ questions, but a job for a Jpn-Eng translator. (If you don't speak Japanese at all, how would you select the best answer anyway?)

If you just need to understand what it is, here is an "English" translation:

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Networking.ConnectionConfig.html

[Edited at 2016-12-19 16:26 GMT]
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Wendy Cummings
Wendy Cummings  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Comments Dec 19, 2016

Dear Katalin,

Thank you for your reply.

First of all, if you have read the English translation provided on the Unity website, you will see that it is a very poor translation indeed and virtually unintelligible. It was this that prompted me to post this question.

I am fully aware that sentences cannot simply be cut and pasted together. However, as a preliminary stage before instructing a translator to translate what is just one sentence, and not knowing any
... See more
Dear Katalin,

Thank you for your reply.

First of all, if you have read the English translation provided on the Unity website, you will see that it is a very poor translation indeed and virtually unintelligible. It was this that prompted me to post this question.

I am fully aware that sentences cannot simply be cut and pasted together. However, as a preliminary stage before instructing a translator to translate what is just one sentence, and not knowing any Japanese speakers who may be willing to do me a "favour", I decided that it may be worthwhile calling on the generosity of the Kudoz community. My hope is that the sentence perhaps contains two conjoined clauses, or that certain parts can be omitted in order to create chunks that can be submitted to Kudoz.

Although I do not speak Japanese and am therefore handicapped in my ability to judge the quality of a Kudoz answer, my knowledge of English and programming will hopefully suffice to determine whether the translation is of good quality.

Wendy
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Jennifer Levey
Jennifer Levey  Identity Verified
Chile
Local time: 03:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
It’s pretty clear what it means Dec 19, 2016

This might perhaps be posted in the en/en pair, where we are accustomed to handling longer phrases.

That said, based on an engineer’s understanding of communication protocols:

Defines timeout in ms after that message with AllCost deliver qos will force resend without acknowledgement waiting.

--> +/-

Defines the timeout (in ms) after which a message that has been sent with the QOS criterion “AllCost deliver”, will force a re-se
... See more
This might perhaps be posted in the en/en pair, where we are accustomed to handling longer phrases.

That said, based on an engineer’s understanding of communication protocols:

Defines timeout in ms after that message with AllCost deliver qos will force resend without acknowledgement waiting.

--> +/-

Defines the timeout (in ms) after which a message that has been sent with the QOS criterion “AllCost deliver”, will force a re-send without waiting for an acknowledgement.

IOW, if the message must be delivered “at all cost” (i.e. regardless of connection problems that may arise) it will wait ‘AllCostTimeout’ milliseconds before sending it again, without bothering to wait for a (potentially negative) acknowledgement from the receiving end. It’ll keep on sending the message, at intervals of ‘AllCostTimeout’ ms, until it gets a positive acknowledgement.

HTH
RL
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Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:04
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
The purpose is still not clear to me Dec 20, 2016

I know the "English" translation at the link I provided is not very good. That is why I put "English" into quotation marks.
I think RL's explanation is perfect, and the sentence translation is good, with the exception that it is not the message that will force the resend, but the system. The system will perform a "force resend" action on the message. But it is a minor detail.

I am still not clear what is happening with this website. Wendy, are you a programmer and trying to us
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I know the "English" translation at the link I provided is not very good. That is why I put "English" into quotation marks.
I think RL's explanation is perfect, and the sentence translation is good, with the exception that it is not the message that will force the resend, but the system. The system will perform a "force resend" action on the message. But it is a minor detail.

I am still not clear what is happening with this website. Wendy, are you a programmer and trying to use these scripts? Or is it a job where you were asked to do a monolingual edit of the English translation? Or something else?
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Wendy Cummings
Wendy Cummings  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks Dec 20, 2016

Robin Levey wrote:

Defines the timeout (in ms) after which a message that has been sent with the QOS criterion “AllCost deliver”, will force a re-send without waiting for an acknowledgement.



Thank you so much Robin for answering my [indirect] question and providing a translation of the whole phrase.

Katalin, surely the motivation for my asking the question is irrelevant? However, since you have asked, this question was a favour to my husband, a director of several programming companies but who, despite his experience in the field, was finding it hard to unravel the poor English translations on the Unity website (we've all had those days where we can't see the wood for the trees!).

He has assured me that Robin's explanation combined with your further comment have clarified the matter completely for him, and passes on his thanks.


 
Jennifer Levey
Jennifer Levey  Identity Verified
Chile
Local time: 03:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
Non-standard questions need non-standard solutions Dec 20, 2016

Returning to Wendy’s original question about how to post an extract from a text in a language she doesn’t understand, so it will fit the Kudoz rules, this is one of those “special cases” that Kudoz clearly isn’t designed to handle (or, rather, is excluded by the general rules).

I’m sure we all, occasionally, come across a sentence in a source text that is obviously a poor translation from some other language, and we start thinking “if only I could go back to square one
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Returning to Wendy’s original question about how to post an extract from a text in a language she doesn’t understand, so it will fit the Kudoz rules, this is one of those “special cases” that Kudoz clearly isn’t designed to handle (or, rather, is excluded by the general rules).

I’m sure we all, occasionally, come across a sentence in a source text that is obviously a poor translation from some other language, and we start thinking “if only I could go back to square one”. Only to discover that “square one” was written in a language we can neither read nor write.

What are we supposed to do?
- Pay a USD 50 “minimum fee” to have a single sentence translated as a “job”? And even then, without the source-language skills we need to determine whether the new translation is any better than the first one?
- Post the poor translation in the en/en Kudoz, in the hope that it’ll get past the mods - or other colleagues, always quick to jump on folk who post long phrases?
- Post it here in the forum – in the hope that the forum mod won’t delete it and send the asker off to Kudoz?

Whichever option is chosen, when the translation we have is so poor as to be unintelligible to most readers, it’s no longer just a question of language translation but also (more especially…) a question of specialization in the subject matter. The matter in hand has been resolved, to the end-user’s apparent satisfaction, without recourse to the Japanese original, nor indeed, to any special linguistic skills, but on the basis of a telecom specialist’s ability to “read through” the garbage to find the meaning.

I agree with Wendy that the motive for asking the question is irrelevant. It is reasonable to assume that if a colleague comes here seeking help, then that alone is sufficient motive for the site – and us – to offer whatever help we can. Jared let this post stand here in the forum where, arguably, it doesn’t belong, and that is perhaps a sign that the increasingly mercantile Proz.com still seeks to foster the voluntary spirit on which this place was founded.

Coming back briefly to the offending sentence, I must disagree with Kaitlin’s comment it is not the message that will force the resend, but the system. “AllCost deliver” is a flag associated with the message (part of the message’s metadata, no doubt), and it is that message-related flag which triggers (forces) the system to resend the message. The system doesn’t take initiatives - it merely executes whatever action the message demands. Whether that is a a minor detail is open to debate - in another place, at another time...
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Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:04
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
The reason I asked Dec 20, 2016

Wendy Cummings wrote:

Katalin, surely the motivation for my asking the question is irrelevant?


Irrelevant? Maybe.
However, I have seen requests from translation agencies where they wanted a native English speaker to do a monolingual "edit" of a text that was a very jumbled translation. It was impossible to do without actually comparing it to the original source. The best approach is to reject such jobs.

Another, more frequent case is when the client wants an English->whatever language translation, but the "English" is already a translation, and on top of it, a bad one: some of the text is completely impossible to decipher.
One actual example: a few years ago a colleague was translating a manual for a refrigerator from English into Hungarian and posted a sentence in KudoZ that was talking about a "gallbladder". It was hilarious on one hand, but very frustrating for him, as you can imagine. The English text was a very poor translation from Chinese. As it turned out, the infamous gallbladder was referring to the inner lining of the fridge. (I think you can still find this question on KudoZ, if you are interested.) I am not sure what he did in terms of talking to the client, but that was probably a job that should have been rejected, as it was a complete mess.

So, I asked the purpose, because I was afraid that you found yourself in such a situation, using the "English" as the source text for a translation, trying to make sense of the English based on the Japanese (that you don't speak). If that were the case, I would have suggested to contact the client and tell them about the problems. I could have written a short note to support you in that, if you wanted (I have done it once for another colleague) - but luckily this is not the case, so I guess all is well.

[Edited at 2016-12-20 18:36 GMT]


 
Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:04
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Non-standard solutions - yes Dec 20, 2016

I agree with what RL wrote in terms of non-standard solutions.
By the way, counting "words" in Japanese source text is not a straightforward thing, and depending on the method, the sentence in question could be counted as 9 words. (But it also could be counted as 10, 11, or even 15. That is why the volume of Japanese text is normally defined in characters, not words.)

The KudoZ asking interface would not prevent
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I agree with what RL wrote in terms of non-standard solutions.
By the way, counting "words" in Japanese source text is not a straightforward thing, and depending on the method, the sentence in question could be counted as 9 words. (But it also could be counted as 10, 11, or even 15. That is why the volume of Japanese text is normally defined in characters, not words.)

The KudoZ asking interface would not prevent posting this sentence, so you would not be forced to split it.
My experience with the Jpn->Eng KudoZ participants and moderators is that they are usually very helpful.
If you were to post a sentence like this with a proper explanation (it is not a translation job, but you need to understand it for programming, and here is the "English" you found that doesn't make sense to you), then the question would not be removed, and you would get help.
If a sentence like this is posted as a question without reasonable explanation, then people may be more reluctant to answer (and mods are more likely to remove it), as they may suspect abuse of KudoZ.
One-off cases of deviating from the rules is OK, but unfortunate past abuses makes people more sensitive, that's all.

[Edited at 2016-12-20 18:38 GMT]
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