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Has anyone else noticed this: Alamy promises four dedicated language sites – Spanish first

 

Spanish Alamy site now up and running. Good news! Will this mean more direct sales in foreign climes?!

 

Should we (where possible) be including European tags in our images to take account of this (i.e. not just names of things/places, but direct translations of keywords - could then justify using up the 50 tags and turn everything green!)?  I have had a quick look at one or two of my images and the translation of the captions is reasonable, but not perfect.  Is there anything we can do about this?  Alamy?

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4 minutes ago, losdemas said:

Has anyone else noticed this: Alamy promises four dedicated language sites – Spanish first

 

Spanish Alamy site now up and running. Good news! Will this mean more direct sales in foreign climes?!

 

Should we (where possible) be including European tags in our images to take account of this (i.e. not just names of things/places, but direct translations of keywords - could then justify using up the 50 tags and turn everything green!)?  I have had a quick look at one or two of my images and the translation of the captions is reasonable, but not perfect.  Is there anything we can do about this?  Alamy?

 

Maybe Alamy are using translation software so we don't have to add other language tags. Sincerely hope so as I am useless with other languages and too old to learn any.

 

Allan

 

 

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The German site's been up for a while. And I hate it. Mainly because the translations are pretty bad. Just had a quick look and the captions have gone back to English. Yay! But looks like you can see the German ones, too, when you zoom in on them. 

 

I used to do translations for a German stock library (English/German and German/English) and they used Google for the initial translation which we then had to bring into shape. Tricky and challenging sometimes, but I loved it. However, I think Alamy use a different system for their translations. Would like to find out more. 

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Only the captions are translated into Spanish and they look pretty good but not perfect as Los Demas says from a glance at a few of my images. They certainly get mre than the gist of what I wrote in English. The translator can do some funny things with Irish place names but then English has been known to do that as well. Testing a few captions with Google Translate gives similar but not identical and reasonable results as well. I would think it is not worthwhile adding other language translations in tags - keywording is time consuming and boring enough already without doing multilingual versions unless you have discovered the secret of eternal youth. Also if this is as far as it goes, then Alamy is not translating the tags, just the captions.  I think writing accurate captions in the first place is the way to go and I'm guessing the automatic translation will do a reasonable job in most cases.

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3 hours ago, losdemas said:

Should we (where possible) be including European tags in our images to take account of this (i.e. not just names of things/places, but direct translations of keywords - could then justify using up the 50 tags and turn everything green!)? 

 

Hi everyone,

 

Alamy is licensing images with captions in languages other than English. This is a great opportunity for contributors to increase sales in territories where Alamy has not traditionally been so strong.

 

We do the translation by using a machine translation system to translate content from English into the other languages.  This is an automated process and we do not want you to change your captioning and tagging strategies at all. Specifically:

  • All captions should be written in English and only English. Do not add any of your own translations.
  • All tags should be written in English and only English. Do not add any of your own translations.
  • Adding your own translated content to captions or keywords could confuse the system and could lead to your images being demoted in the search results.
  • Contributors cannot affect the translation of a caption other than by re-writing their English caption. The better and more grammatical the original English sentence, the better the translation is likely to be.

If there are any significant factual errors caused through the machine translations, please contact the contributor relations team (contributors@alamy.com) where we will look at the cases and act accordingly.

 

Just FYI, we won't edit any translations where the issue is over the style of the caption. It's only where there are significant factual errors which could seriously mislead customers that we will change a translated caption.

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

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I've just had a reassuring phone call from James Allsworth to say that it's unlikely to affect individual tags. So  wein, vin, vino are OK to use my examples. It would only be a potential problem if one translated phrases, such as " a glass of beer" into "ein glas Bier". It also wouldn''t affect English searches.

He's also asked me to send him some examples of the sort of images I was concerned about.

Alamy is listening.

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Just to clarify - if you have the occasional tag which isn't in English, it's unlikely to have a big detrimental effect but unless the "thing" you are describing is known in it's local language, eg, "Champs-Élysées" or "Coq au vin" then you should always use the English words only. This would go for phrases and individual tags. Basically, stick to English for all metadata please as this reduces the risk of the translation software getting it wrong. :)

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

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Wow, that Spanish is pretty good.  The keywords still appear in English but I assume it's like the duck swimming, all the translation work goes on inside the search engine?

As an aside, it's a good advertisement for concise but comprehensive captions. "Tres vasos de cerveza de trigo Hoegaarden belga en una bandeja" . Mmm.

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1 hour ago, Alamy said:

 

Hi everyone,

 

Alamy is licensing images with captions in languages other than English. This is a great opportunity for contributors to increase sales in territories where Alamy has not traditionally been so strong.

 

We do the translation by using a machine translation system to translate content from English into the other languages.  This is an automated process and we do not want you to change your captioning and tagging strategies at all. Specifically:

  • All captions should be written in English and only English. Do not add any of your own translations.
  • All tags should be written in English and only English. Do not add any of your own translations.
  • Adding your own translated content to captions or keywords could confuse the system and could lead to your images being demoted in the search results.
  • Contributors cannot affect the translation of a caption other than by re-writing their English caption. The better and more grammatical the original English sentence, the better the translation is likely to be.

If there are any significant factual errors caused through the machine translations, please contact the contributor relations team (contributors@alamy.com) where we will look at the cases and act accordingly.

 

Just FYI, we won't edit any translations where the issue is over the style of the caption. It's only where there are significant factual errors which could seriously mislead customers that we will change a translated caption.

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

 

How is the machine translation system going to handle place names and names of buildings (e.g. churches, government buildings, etc.) already in other languages?

 

Also, I have a lot of Spanish and quite a few French names in my captions and tags along with the English versions -- e.g. palacio de gobierno / government palace, hotel de ville / city hall, marché Atwater / Atwater market, etc.  Are my images going to get demoted because of this?

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James did say that names won't be affected, but we should probably stop putting translations in the tags unless the place is known locally by the non-English names, which I'd say would cover your examples. I'll certainly be continuing to put hôtel de ville and rathaus in. Especially if that's what it says on the front of the building.

Marché Atwater- no, I'll leave that off as it's a generic term.

BTE do you have é on your keyboard or do you type alt0233 like the rest of us? Search ignores diacritics but it's polite to put them in captions, I think.

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11 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

James did say that names won't be affected, but we should probably stop putting translations in the tags unless the place is known locally by the non-English names, which I'd say would cover your examples. I'll certainly be continuing to put hôtel de ville and rathaus in. Especially if that's what it says on the front of the building.

Marché Atwater- no, I'll leave that off as it's a generic term.

BTE do you have é on your keyboard or do you type alt0233 like the rest of us? Search ignores diacritics but it's polite to put them in captions, I think.

 

In Canada, especially in Quebec, places often have two official names, one English and one French. For instance, in Montreal, the "Marché Jean Talon" is also the "Jean Talon Market", the "Hotel de Ville de Montreal" is also  "Montreal City Hall", etc. , so I often put both names in my captions and tags.

 

I generally use ALT + 130 for é (ALT + 0233 also works). I don't always put accents in, though, because the search engine doesn't seem to care.  Didn't realize I was being impolite, very un-Canadian of me. B)

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7 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

.  Didn't realize I was being impolite, very un-Canadian of me. B)

No, you weren't, it's genetically impossible.:D

I just meant it's my way of being respectful to the language in question. It's also good practice for the French and German emails I occasionally send. I have a handy printout with all the alt codes on.

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1 minute ago, spacecadet said:

No, you weren't, it's genetically impossible.

I just meant it's my way of being respectful to the language in question. It's also good practice for the French and German emails I occasionally send. I have a handy printout with all the alt codes on.

 

I'll keep that in mind. I too have a handy printout next to my computer, with different ALT codes it seems. Should start consulting it more often.

 

My genetics are a mixed bag -- Anglo Saxons and Vikings as far as I can tell.

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10 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

It shouldn't be a comma though!

If the user is accessing the Spanish site, it is reasonable to assume he/she is a Spanish speaker, so the use of the comma is correct. A comma replaces the decimal point in Spanish, and in many other languages, including Portuguese, my mother tongue.

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26 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I'll keep that in mind. I too have a handy printout next to my computer, with different ALT codes it seems. Should start consulting it more often.

 

My genetics are a mixed bag -- Anglo Saxons and Vikings as far as I can tell.

You can configure your keyboard for "English-International Keyboard". That way, you only have to type:

' + c = ç

' + e = é

` + e = è

' + a = á

~ + a = ã

^ + e = ê

and so on...

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35 minutes ago, Rubens Alarcon said:

You can configure your keyboard for "English-International Keyboard". That way, you only have to type:

' + c = ç

' + e = é

` + e = è

' + a = á

~ + a = ã

^ + e = ê

and so on...

 

Thanks, I'll see if I can figure out how to do that.

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28 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Fantastic news that Alamy are expanding into markets in different languages. 

 

I'm in the centre of Madrid hearing thousands of voices most of them, as everywhere, using mobile devices. 

 

Imagine people in their millions  searching Alamy for 50 cent pics to send to Facebook to show where they are out having fun - better pics than they could take, like postcards of old.

 

Yes, good news indeed.

 

It's amazing how digital photography and the Web have changed the nature of travel. People now go places to verify what they've already seen on social media, etc.

 

"Golly, the Eiffel Tower looks just the same as it did in Uncle Bob's FB pics. Why the heck did I spend all that hard-earned money to get here?" ^_^

 

But I'm going off on a tangent...

 

 

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