I have to say, I’m very unpleasantly surprised by the line of thoughts which are promoting ‘fight against double-post scammers’ by — downvoting translations! Incredible, isn’t it? Do we know what we are talking about?

This post was inspired with fiery, but in my view wrong position on translations by our member Hive account@nelyp, under the title Posting (or double-posting) in multiple languages? Read this! Our Hive account@nelyp is a reputable member of Steemit, with many good contributions, whose words has some weight on the platform, and therefore carry a certain resposibility. I really can’t imagine she had a bad intentions, but was probably just pulled by the mainstream of opinions without giving much thought to the consequences of the ‘solution’. It’s not the first time it happens at Steemit. We can fix that with a proper discussion, here and at Steemcleaners Discord channel.

Outlawing Translations

What could be a source of this kind of thinking? I’ve been researching through Steemit just since last night, and it could be these two main reasons:

First: Not clearly defined reposting, or double-posting abuse by the group of Hive account@steemcleaners, who are dedicated to eradication of abuse. For example, they say:

Copying and pasting previous posts or significant parts there of could be seen as spam when:

Reposting the same content without additional original content or significant changes

Reposting content within the same payout window

Spam is discouraged by the community and may result in the account Blacklisted.
Please refrain from copying and pasting previous posts going forward. If you believe this comment is in error, please contact us in #disputes on Discord

This formulation allows wide (and wrong) interpretations with the people who are instinctively understand that something is wrong, but can’t exactly construct an efficient solution, calling upon ‘common sense’, like our Hive account@nelyp has done in this line of commentary discussion…

Second reason are complaints of those users who are feeling handicapped because they only speak one language. They do not discern between ‘googletrans’ abuse and a regular translation, which is a backbone of widening community with the users from other countries and hence promoting Steemit worldwide. Wasn’t the difference obvious?

‘Googletrans’ is NOT a Translation

Automatic translations, from Google, Yandex or anywhere else, are still far from perfect. You can’t make a sensible translation just using it, without a serious effort in redacting the text. Therefore, abusive double-posts are easy to detect. And the first who will punish this kind of abuse will be those native speakers who can’t take any use of those ‘Googletrans’. They will downvote it, or report it to Hive account@steemcleaners, and we have a true solution.

So, reposting content cannot be interpreted the same as reposting translated content. Translating a content in other languages is growing a wider circle of users, and that is good for community. We do all want as much new users as possible, don’t we? Discouraging translations by asking people to decline rewards on translation is not fair, and will take more of our reward pool in the long run. Who is going to find interest in efforts to give a proper translation and not getting anything for it? This is a way into many small and separate language communities where nobody can find value.

Law considerations

Translated text IS NOT THE SAME CONTENT. In law, a translation of a poem is considered another, new artwork. Book translation is a new author’s work and is protected by law as such. So, before you ask one more time a question…

Is it ok that a user who happens to know ten different languages, posts the same content ten times?

…the answer is YES! Everybody who invested in his/hers education to learn 10 languages and put his/hers knowledge to build communication bridges between communities at Steemit, deserves all rewards he can get. But if you ask…

Is it ok that a user who knows how to use Google translate (which in most cases is terrible, by the way), translates the same content ten times and posts ten times? How about 20? Or 50?

…then the answer is NO. That is abuse and should be downvoted. But it must be clear that “Google translate (which in most cases is terrible, by the way)” is NOT A TRANSLATION.

Proposed ‘solution’ that anyone who posts translations must decline rewards on them is neither fair nor realistic, because it will reject valuable members of our platform, and the abusers will not accept it — or they wouldn’t be abusers in the first place.

One more point: We can see how YouTube uses de-monetization as an effective way of censorship. Asking of the real translators to decline their deserved rewards is in effect, de-monetization of their work on this platform. It is an abuse in itself. It has the elements of obstruction of free speech. Think twice before you support such thinking:

‘Solution’, real time…

Let’s see now how the wrong interpretation of the “community rules” are going in reality. Five days ago, we had a new member from Venezuela, Maite Marante, blogging as our Hive account@ramonjose. She presented herself with the real translation in English and Spanish, and I consider this completely legal. The English speaking members will vote for English version, Spanish will vote for Spanish version. ‘Redirecting’ to one post for voting is very cumbersome, especially to the new members who still can’t tell link lines, and do not have a knowledge of English to read enormous documentation. As soon as our Hive account@ramonjose (as a Venezuelan suspect) posted another post, she got downvote from Hive account@steemcleaners. Thankfully, Hive account@tonyz intervened at Hive account@steemcleaners, our esteemed members Hive account@arcange and Hive account@sgt-dan welcomed a new valuable member (who is BTW a nurse, designer and musician), and the mistake is corrected. That was an excellent example how broad and arbitrary interpretation of the “community rules” can damage the platform.

Could she made both languages in the single post? Theoretically yes (it’s a short text), but you can’t expect that someone who just log in know how to do those things. It takes time.

I had a bit long discussion at Discord with one of the Hive account@steemcleaners administrators, our Hive account@guiltyparties. Very reasonable guy ready to listen to other opinions. His question was as following:

Does this mean that some people are better than others? Look at it from the perspective of a non-translator. How does that make you feel about your rewards in comparison to someone else who for some reason may publish twice what you see as the same content.

That means that some people have more education than others. And if they use that education for the benefit of community, they deserve rewards. That way we will incentivise those who know only one language to start learning. Making a platform preference for the whims of less educated is a road to disaster. We must not de-incentivise translations.

Steemit limits

Then we are coming to the objective limitations. You can send a translation of a shorter texts in the same post, like this, whenever it is possible. But what will you do when you have a story that fills the limit of 64,000 characters? Like this one: Они Жабини. It cannot be translated in the same post even once! And would you think that the one who translates it does not deserve any reward just because there is a group abusing ‘googletrans’?

I had to remove and minimize text on my galleries of ballet photography because system does not accept post by some internal criteria.

Here is my suggestion…

Translation is not an abuse or spam/scam. Translation is a noble task, hard job which is allowing necessary bridge of communication between nations and cultures. It must not be treated as a source of abuse. I would suggest a specific format of Abuse Reports. This is a current Steemcleaners Abuse Form:

The abusers should be discouraged, but they cannot be discouraged by asking real translators to renounce their rewards. They are abusers and they will not listen to an ‘appeal’ for blocking their rewards. So, you can’t stop them by putting a translations in the same category as scam/spam. What you can do, is to put another, clear type in the Abuse form at Steemcleaners.com which currently have 11 types:

Comment Spam
Copy/Paste
Cybersecurity Threats
Identity Theft/Deception
Photo/Image Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Spam
Tag Abuse
Tag Spam
Unverified Identity
Other

The missing type should be named

Abuse of the automatic translation

That way it would be clear that not every translation is a bad one, and only those who are really abusing the reward pool would be a legitimate target of Steemcleaners.com. Arbitrary interpretations would be prevented, and we could as a community pinpoint abusers. Native speakers who do not consider the translation useful could downvote it or report as what it is — a “googletrans” (automatic translation) abuse. Then Hive account@steemcleaners can take appropriate action.