jdev - 2023-03-07

> you can even have multiple <body/> elements with different xml:lang to send translations of your message! Yep, absolutely terrible antifeature for chat

1. No one is going to manually type the same instant message in multiple languages, this isn't email 2. Privacy leak 3. Security problem and UX problem because other people may or may not be seeing the same messages you are 4. Automatic translation, if it's gonna be done, only makes sense to do at the receiving end

For messages sent by humans, yes. But for bot services sending you a preset message, it may make sense to send you multiple languages rather than asking tou or querying your client which one you want?

Or it could make sense in a multi lingual room

You can ignore the languages you dont understand

Or put the original and a translation in a multilingual room

Instead of the english homogeny we have now

_yes_

multi-lingual rooms are a pain today

though those technically don't need multiple <body/> elements

There are not many users in multilingual rooms. I guess there are only such rooms in the open federation. Most xmpp messages take place in private rooms or closed networks, and 1:1. Also *I* wouldn't want to ban one language from beeing seen, because others might still answer to that instead of ignoring it. If everyone from a different language is ignores, why not just have different rooms? All in all I just want to say: is it worth the effort?

Menel, but what's cause and effect?

I am not in multilingual rooms because they annoy me when I see languages I cannot read.

Better push "spaces"?

If one room only is somehow preferred

Because spaces are more flexible... Buy basically the same

(If it is Somehow better to have one chatroom instead of one per language)

Hm, or "thread" like cheogram challs it..

You dont ban the language from being seen in the room. You declare your preference on your client to what you want to see. The thing it solves it that instead of me being on 4 different rooms with different languages, i am only in one. Then i dont have to find and maintain rooms for different languages

There are not that many users in multilingual rooms *because* i have to see all the other languages i dont understand. If you could filter them it would workable

^ that

You actually want to just silently not see messages in other languages? That sounds like the worst UI

I'd rather see a local translator bundled with clients

good thing you dont have to choose :)

There's theory and practice. It's easy enough to see there are multiple languages being sent, and if that's an issue then talk to the people. You know, communication, the thing we're doing everday around here :)

Hey pep. ! Can I interest you in somehow integrating https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/ into a client? :)

"a client"? :P

a server would be fine too

fwiw a server would be more efficient for public rooms. When e2ee comes into play we'll have to do it differently probably

After much digging I found some giant C++ project and some models doing the actual translations, but it just translated everything to "Segmentation fault"

I doubt I'd work on something like this right away, but yeah that's one of the possible applications and it doesn't look too bad

(The giant C++ thing is then compiled to WASM and used in that Firefox addon)

In the old days, HAL had a plugin that mirrored rooms into different languages

It used the Google Translate API (the one that never officially existed), and it eventually got served captchas

just a note but automatic translation sounds like tech solution to a social problem :)

That's why I was initially excited about the Firefox plugin, it's not a web service, it's running locally

not that I am saying that it shouldnt be used of course

It would be kind of cool if a MUC client could register language preferences with the room, and the room automatically translated group chat messages to that language (if registered) (for instance, using OpenAI)

And each participant could chat using their own language

Peter Waher, that's one possible application, doesn't even need new protocol because we already have `xml:lang=""` on stanzas. Could record the language of join presence and use that later.

(regardless what technology the client was built in/ease of access to translation APIs themselves)

yes, but asking for translations, is not the same as using a language (xml:lang)

Meaning, I chat in multiple languages; doesn’t mean I want everything translated, esp. if someone else chats in a language I also use.

But it would allow people to chat using languages they don’t understand

without each client having to do individual translations

fwiw I'd rather avoid feeding stuff to AIs

(Typically, translation APIs use API keys, which have costs associated with them; so you don’t like to check in such keys into project repositories. But having the server do the translations for you, solves this)

So yeah the firefox project is more interesting here

> fwiw I’d rather avoid feeding stuff to AIs Yes, it’s sensitive. Need to be done without disclosing participants identities of course.

Or not be done at all :)

> So yeah the firefox project is more interesting here Sounds platform/technology-specific

Well, it’s of course a simple choice not to register

https://github.com/browsermt

It’s a difference between not participating, and making sure others cannot participate…

Peter Waher, > After much digging I found some giant C++ project and some models doing the actual translations

C++ compiled to WASM, it shouldn't be tied to Firefox in any way

There are a lot of translators, and have been for ~20 years. But they are becoming better… and supports more and more languages. Non-English-languages typically have variable quality, to say the least…

yep. tech is very very english centered

so I wouldnt expect automatic translations to be any good

for conversations at a chat that is

> just a note but automatic translation sounds like tech solution to a social problem :) What's the social problem? Me not manually translating each of my messages into a bunch of languages I don't know? Otherwise what?

still, it would be voluntary…

Well and english is the international language anyway

Doesn't need to be perfect, just needs to be good enough that people can understand each other

Just like language itself

> Well and english is the international language anyway Perhaps where you live…

Peter Waher, you missed my xhtml-im marker :P

probably…

sorry

I'd be mega opposed to automatically sending data off to central services but I see no issues with users doing it locally

I'm not saying I want it to be

moparisthebest, yeah I'd be opposed to that too

Here, in Latin America, access to English resources is limited, mainly for language-reasons…

moparisthebest, what's that, it's all about control, again? :)

> Well and english is the international language anyway we shouldnt expect everybody to know english ↺

Peter Waher, right

Having the room ask a service to translate, would not technically be centralized, more than then room is also centralized, as it’s still up to the room to select translation service…

Still, typical westerners expect english to be spoken when they do tourism for example

But there would probably be fewer translations services, than rooms

No one is, but generally people need to understand each other's languages to communicate with each other, unless there are translators (programs or people), I don't think that's gonna change

> Still, typical westerners expect english to be spoken when they do tourism for example (Not if they want to survive here… 😆)

> Still, typical westerners expect english to be spoken when they do tourism for example true. also a problem ↺

https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/331 > A Vulnerability in Implementations of SHA-3, SHAKE, EdDSA, and Other NIST-Approved Algorithm

thanks for the reference

At least something: > The vulnerability described in this paper does not affect the SHA-3 standard (as specified in FIPS 202 ₁₂), and not all implementations of SHA-3 are vulnerable. Most notably, the implementation of SHA-3 in OpenSSL is not affected.

yeah its python, php and ruby

and they were all patched 6 moths ago afaik

> Still, typical westerners expect english to be spoken when they do tourism for example Depends where.. And also it is true for most of the countries you go as westener.

Also maybe they don't "expect" but just try it because a try it better then only gestures ✏

When I was living in Japan people came speaking to me in english because I look european. That was funny at the beginning, quickly became annoying

(Annoying also because I was speaking Japanese) ✏

Jeah, but what do you expect? They all learn Japanese?

They?

"people that talked to you"

Japanese people came speaking to me in english

Sounds normal

People who only speak English, or expect to speak English on their travels, would typically only go to places where they are able to speak English, at least barely… The world is bigger… It’s probably the same for chat rooms… It would be an interesting concept to be able to create chat rooms that are by default multi-lingual, as it translated input texts to preferred languages, if possible. Sounds at least sufficiently interesting to try.

My parents always tell japanese people were happy to try to practice English on them

That says something about english being the one accepted international language. I find it offensive otherwise, just talk to me in Japanese and then if I can't answer using the same language I'll look embarassed, then only try english?

Menel, yeah it's fine as a tourist when you're there two weeks

i would still like tagging on messaging and filtering client side instead of automatic translation

Peter Waher, the first XMPP room I was in, we spoke many languages in there (no matter the xml:lang :p). I really miss these days

i feel like automatic translation creates more problem than it solves

The first manual I had for the SNES platform (in the 90-ies) was a thick binder of machine-translated japanese technical reference documentation. It was difficult to process sometimes; you often had to try to figure out what the so called English was trying to say… but it was much easier than trying the japanese original…

What you say!

You have no chance to survive, make your time!

as an optional feature, sounds interesting

All your documentation are belong to us

all your base64

😆

those were the days

"[smiling face with open mouth and tightly-closed eyes]" I'm thinking this could be done better with an alt attribute :x

Only those needing it actually reading it