I'm not a fan of Google but they have the right idea: find a problem and develop a solution, rather than develop a product and then try to turn it into a fix for an issue.
The Problem
Many will agree that the use of Google Translate to translate interesting, well-written posts in other languages makes for awful gibberish in English. Recipes are incomprehensible, photo diaries of mushrooming read like someone ingested those mushrooms, and basically everything reads like a five year old wrote it. Should this really be the norm in a community that values quality content?
Additionally, Steemit participation 'rules' and 'etiquette' suggested in comments are misunderstood unless the poster translates them themselves. Messages left by Steemcleaners and related entities are misunderstood. I know this because as a friend of a non-English-speaking poster, I've had to explain these comments several times.
Now I know we have a wonderful Steemit 'Operation Translation' initiative to translate user content. Most taking advantage of it, as far as I noticed, are those who wish to translate their stuff from English to other languages.
The Solution
What I suggest is this: Adding a drop-down to every page to run the content through Google Translate at the READER'S initiative. Meaning, I as a reader will select what I wish to translate for myself to read while authors would just post in their native languages. There will be no need for authors who may or may not have studied English in school 25 years ago to translate their work and ruin their post with nonsense.
It's just a simple bit of code that requires a little button to be put up, probably somewhere near the top of the post or comment. I could probably even code that much myself.
Image Credits
The translate button image is my creative mock-up done in PowerPoint by me with no one else even present in the room.
The suggestion box graphic is from the Clemson Downs website and is a stock image.
Why not use humans to translate and reward them with a share of steem from the upvotes on the translated page?
Mix of both, crap automated translator with rewards for correcting the automated translator and helping it get better at translating because of the input and corrections?
That could work bout would require a custom translator with language libraries and so forth, which is a bigger project than I originally envisioned.
universal translator would rule!
There are far fewer humans willing and able to translate posts than there are posts to be translated. Think of it this way, if I wanted to read this post in Arabic, would it be better for me to press a button or wait for an Arabic speaker to translate it? Obviously the level of quality between an automatic Google Translator type thing and a person is different. For this reason the Operation Translation initiative would not be hampered by this feature.
Any ideas how to utilize (and how to reward) the social capital of skilled human translators that gather at steemit?
That's for the Operation Translation folks to answer, not me.