Cryptoprocta Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 21 hours ago, spacecadet said: In case anyone missed it, Alamy has stated that with the new dedicated language sites you don't need to add translations as the sites will do it. But I was reassured personally by James Allsworth that existing keywords wouldn't hurt one's search results. But I'm backing off on it in future. BTW it's always OK to include the foreign name if that's how the place is known in English. Can you remember which languages will be in this scheme? It can't be all languages, probably not languages of possible/probably buyers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 Spanish and French to start with, maybe search for the thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 4 minutes ago, spacecadet said: Spanish and French to start with, maybe search for the thread. Thanks, I didn't think it was all languages. If one keyworded in a foreign language, that would for sure confuse the translation, but still, I'd think if a pic was taken in a specific country, at least the main keywords should be in the language of that country, viz the actual subject of the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 Original thread Alamy contributed to the thread - basically don't do translations yourself. Quote 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. However, common sense would say that doesn't include proper nouns such as place names. I have a significant number of images from Spain and I give the Spanish place names. When I was first keywording Spanish pictures I would sometimes add a few Spanish words but I stopped doing that a long time ago. From a small sample of my images, the Spanish translations seem very good overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 That's what James told me 26 minutes ago, MDM said: However, common sense would say that doesn't include proper nouns such as place names. That's what James told me. The bit about changing your strategy is right- if you already put in some relevant words, you can carry on. But I am backing off, particularly in German. I've had search returns in German but I can't tell if they were from Alamy.de translations or my German tags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imageplotter Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 Yeah that was partly what prompted my Cuba question on the previous page, I had a few zooms on "Kuba" this month. I still think idioms and local specifics should be ok to be included in the native language if relevant, automated translation, however good, can never capture those Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imageplotter Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Bill Brooks' "Scarborough Town Centre" "Canada" is a great example actually, because using just "Scarborough Town Centre" or even the American version, "Scarborough Town Center" will also bring up a lot of images of the town of Scarborough in Yorkshire, and its town centre. Add "Canada" and it obviously eliminates the British images (with both "centre" and "center" spellings). The Yorkshire town images also have a few images of shop fronts, so a North American buyer in a hurry who forgets to add Canada...may well find himself giving a publicity boost to a sleepy town up'Norff. Does the search engine take the searcher's IP address/location into account? Would be interesting. Do these Yorkshire images also come up on your Toronto based search? I've checked the translations of some of my news image headings on the .de site, and they're quite obviously automated glibberish. The keywords are not too bad, with the exception of idioms, but whole sentences are clearly too complex for the system to process. Another thing: The Google Maps thing when adding location often doesn't help, it suggests North American places by default, which sometimes leads to absurd (and funny) suggestions of tiny places in the middle of nowhere. Plausible, but not less annoying, for example, when trying to input "Brighton Beach" as a location, all 5 suggested locations are in the US (Brooklyn, the most obvious one as there is an actual Brighton Beach, followed by Minnesota and Wisconsin (both apparently have a "Brighton Beach Road"). Ditto for most London suburbs, ie typing in Kensington as the location will bring up...5 places called Kensington in the US. It's not really a complaint, I tend to just ignore the Google Maps suggestions as they often don't have enough detail anyway (plus GM gets it wrong quite often), but it's easy to see how a contributor in a hurry can accidentally end up with a lot of "US based" images. Would be interesting to know if buyers actually use the location search a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 28 minutes ago, imageplotter said: Would be interesting to know if buyers actually use the location search a lot. Unless things have changed recently, the location field is not searchable. They disabled this a few years ago, I think because people would put in locations when they were completely irrelevant, for example, product shots that were taken in a studio where location had no relevance. If location is relevant, then it should be in the caption and the keywords Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imageplotter Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Thanks - interesting, I wasn't aware of that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 2 hours ago, imageplotter said: Bill Brooks' "Scarborough Town Centre" "Canada" is a great example actually, because using just "Scarborough Town Centre" or even the American version, "Scarborough Town Center" will also bring up a lot of images of the town of Scarborough in Yorkshire, and its town centre. Add "Canada" and it obviously eliminates the British images (with both "centre" and "center" spellings). The Yorkshire town images also have a few images of shop fronts, so a North American buyer in a hurry who forgets to add Canada...may well find himself giving a publicity boost to a sleepy town up'Norff. Does the search engine take the searcher's IP address/location into account? Would be interesting. Do these Yorkshire images also come up on your Toronto based search? I've checked the translations of some of my news image headings on the .de site, and they're quite obviously automated glibberish. The keywords are not too bad, with the exception of idioms, but whole sentences are clearly too complex for the system to process. Another thing: The Google Maps thing when adding location often doesn't help, it suggests North American places by default, which sometimes leads to absurd (and funny) suggestions of tiny places in the middle of nowhere. Plausible, but not less annoying, for example, when trying to input "Brighton Beach" as a location, all 5 suggested locations are in the US (Brooklyn, the most obvious one as there is an actual Brighton Beach, followed by Minnesota and Wisconsin (both apparently have a "Brighton Beach Road"). Ditto for most London suburbs, ie typing in Kensington as the location will bring up...5 places called Kensington in the US. It's not really a complaint, I tend to just ignore the Google Maps suggestions as they often don't have enough detail anyway (plus GM gets it wrong quite often), but it's easy to see how a contributor in a hurry can accidentally end up with a lot of "US based" images. Would be interesting to know if buyers actually use the location search a lot. Ditto with Scottish Place names, even Leith and Edinburgh. Also, it doesn't by default include Scotland, unless you type it in, which considering it is an actual country seems a bit remiss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Christine and Sally: be aware that in America we might spell "center" "centre". Theater is more often spelled "theatre" over here too. All the Broadway theaters in NYC end in RE. And let me confirm that on Alamy's new AIM the location is not searchable. I put the location in both the caption and the tags. Alamy sent me a little questionary this morning asking about the use of other languages besides English. Anyone else get that? Edo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Just now, Ed Rooney said: Alamy sent me a little questionary this morning asking about the use of other languages besides English. Anyone else get that? Edo Yup. Haven't completed it yet, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdh Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 12 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said: Christine and Sally: be aware that in America we might spell "center" "centre". Theater is more often spelled "theatre" over here too. All the Broadway theaters in NYC end in RE. And let me confirm that on Alamy's new AIM the location is not searchable. I put the location in both the caption and the tags. Alamy sent me a little questionary this morning asking about the use of other languages besides English. Anyone else get that? Edo 10 minutes ago, John Mitchell said: Yup. Haven't completed it yet, though. mee too - I tried to answer the questionnaire, found it too simplified and then decided to send an email instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Richmond Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Completed it but I think it could have included an option for translation from English English to American English. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 I found the survey oversimplified as well -- for instance, it didn't mention place names in other languages. Have now completed it and sent it off, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 14 hours ago, imageplotter said: Bill Brooks' "Scarborough Town Centre" "Canada" is a great example actually, because using just "Scarborough Town Centre" or even the American version, "Scarborough Town Center" will also bring up a lot of images of the town of Scarborough in Yorkshire, and its town centre. Add "Canada" and it obviously eliminates the British images (with both "centre" and "center" spellings). The Yorkshire town images also have a few images of shop fronts, so a North American buyer in a hurry who forgets to add Canada...may well find himself giving a publicity boost to a sleepy town up'Norff. Does the search engine take the searcher's IP address/location into account? Would be interesting. Do these Yorkshire images also come up on your Toronto based search? Searching the english version from Toronto (EN on the top bar) the Alamy search engine treats me the same as UK clients. Searching "Scarborough Town Centre" returns 109 images including locations in both UK and Canada. Searching "Scarborough Town Centre" and “Canada” returns 53 images Searching "Scarborough Town Centre" and “UK” returns 51 images So it does not take my IP address/location into account. 1 hour ago, Ed Rooney said: Alamy sent me a little questionary this morning asking about the use of other languages besides English. Anyone else get that? Edo I got one as well. Good sign. Glad that development of search is continuing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Lewis Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 4 hours ago, Ed Rooney said: Christine and Sally: be aware that in America we might spell "center" "centre". Theater is more often spelled "theatre" over here too. All the Broadway theaters in NYC end in RE. And let me confirm that on Alamy's new AIM the location is not searchable. I put the location in both the caption and the tags. Alamy sent me a little questionary this morning asking about the use of other languages besides English. Anyone else get that? Edo Got it too. They obviously do read this Forum. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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