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Some translations are changing, and becoming incorrect

That is odd - and whoever edited it had not left a comment, which makes it hard to track. I have edited it back. In the new wiki infrastructure this sort of thing will not be able to happen so easily, so this should only be a short term issue. In the meantime if you can leave a comment on any word that has become incorrect I will get it fixed.

Thanks

Ben

Please check wordreference PLUS one other dictionary to make sure they match, I've noticed a lot of mistakes on the English-Spanish Spanish-English word reference, though the Spanish definition page is always right, of course it is of no use to beginners unfortunately.

In defence of Word Reference, which is excellent, every bilingual dictionary I've used so far has had some mistakes!

Yes, good suggestion RabbitWho. I usually check two to three sources (spanishdict.com/wordref/oxford spanish). However, I would argue that dictionaries tend to be more accurate than people. If I could get a nickle, or even a penny, for every person who improperly uses the word good and well or should and could, I would be the richest person in the world.

English Dictionaries, unlike the RAE, just record usage. They do not prescribe usage. If you understood what the person meant then to me they weren't using the word improperly. :)

My english teachers would disagree. :) I would have preferred you as my teacher.

Hee hee, context is key. Teachers usually have to teach exams, not languages.

But seriously, speaking as someone who is a "first generation", it's important to understand a word and how to use it properly. Some people can be @#$! to immigrants when they don't know how to use/pronounce a word properly. It's also important when you try to read great or not so great Spanish literature. Besides, I hate looking like an idiot because I made a stupid mistake.

Back to the topic for this thread - I was hoping to raise some form of consensus concerning changes to the definitions. Would it be possible for curators who make changes to leave notes discussing the reason/source for the change if they are unprompted by a Memrise user? That way, if there is a change, we, the users, understand the rationale for the change and if not, it creates an open line of communication/discussion.

@jenniferhunter - at the moment we do ask all moderators to leave comments when making changes, and I think that most people do. My guess is that the cause of the changes that are not commented on is the merging process. This is not ideal. It is a fiddly and time consuming process and there are literally tens of thousands of merges to be done; commenting on each one is just not possible. It should be done so that the most used definition (in terms of the main lists which have had most editing etc done to them) are the ones that are kept as the main definition. All of the other definitions will be kept as alternatives, so they will still be marked as correct.

However there will still be errors in merging when the main definition will be changed. I'm really sorry about this, but the bright side is that will be a one-off merging event that is going on now, and it won't have to be done again, and that there will also be a consolidation of lots of audio content, mems etc that has been added to duplicate items and will now all appear on the same items in the database.

Thank you very much for all of your help and apologies for this annoyance,

best wishes

Ben

Can I ask about merging?

What exactly does it involve, I thought that alternative definitions were to be added as separate words. Sorry if you've explained this before somewhere and I just haven seen it.

@Ben - I'm just surprised at some of the changes - example "el vaso", where the definition was changed to "vase" which was wrong. Or "pardo" which was originally "brown", but was changed to "dun". In this case - wouldn't the more recognizable answer "brown" or "greyish brown" be a better choice as a main definition as opposed to "dun"? I'm assuming that curators/moderators can select the main definition in the merging process. If so, why choose a esoteric word over a commonly recognized word?

@jenniferhunter - I'm afraid that the answer is probably that they are merging hundreds of items on an interface that sometimes updates while you are about to click. So sometimes things can jump around just at the wrong moment. When you are doing lots and lots of these you sometimes get caught out and click on the wrong one. So these might be genuine fat-finger errors. APologies for that, but hopefully they will be very limited.

Best wishes

BEn