Feature request for product/service
Describe the request
Hi folks,
This feature request is also a prayer, a pledge towards defending proper translations, and a bit of a rant.
- Automated translationstechnically work and it’s tempting to use them everywhere.
- But they only technically work: they are just still bad even at the era of LLMs
To put it in a nutshell this is the proper way of handling translations, from Datadog’s documentation. Datadog will automatically translate most content, pick a relevant default language, but then let you switch back to English. See the language selector on the left.
Automated translations are a big step towards inclusiveness and that’s AWESOME but don’t be mistaken: most users will find the English version more readable.
Special mention to OpenAI with this regards: Codex French translation is full of mistakes and totally impossible to read. It’s an almost an offense.
If you are a native speaker, you may not understanding this feeling, but we’ve been reading documentation in English for years now. I think that in years as an innovation consultant, I haven’t seen any sentence produced by a French engineer that doesn’t include at least one English word.
If you are from Quebec, you will despise me, but sorry, that’s how our language is evolving here.
Automated French translations have a strong “uncanny valley” feeling and are unsettling most of the time. We just want an easy switch to English, please let us pick our poison.
Ok I think everybody got the point: please include a visible language selector somewhere in the documentation site.
