Wandering Adventure Party

@FediTips

JFC...

I have four tabs open, Firefox web browser on Ubuntu, to my home instance

/home

/public/local

my Lists

and my Profile home

I'm on my /home tab viewing posts

I am looking for and using the Translate tag at the lower left of a given post

Do you need a screenshot to understand what I'm saying?

Or do you think I don't know what I'm talking about?

@FediTips

I am attemting to translate using the Translate text at the bottom of given post

Again my instance uses LibreTranslate

Sometimes I'll click through to the post on the origin instance and try there

Sometimes (when I have a lot of time to waste and I'm in a better mood) I'll open up the instances

/public/local

and see

1) if they have any posts in anything other than their native language, and

2) do they seem to offer any translation at all

And here's the core point:

how much effort should I be expected to expand, to translate a foreign / European/ German post just to read something that ends up being extremely mundane

And how much finite screen space am I expected to give to posts / posters I'll never be able to translate and read?

I've already Muted and Blocked two in the last 15 minutes...

@FediTips

I understand this

My instance use LibreTranslate

My issue is remote instances that throw an httpd 404 or httpd 503 at any attempt to translate a post from one of their posters, even when I go to their profile feed and try to translate directly from their home instance, or where posts in my Home feed don't even offer Translate at all

It's really an inexcusable weak point

I remember on Github (where I follow Mastodon development) where quite some time ago Gargron himself blew off the entire auto-translate issue as too marginal to bother addressing programmatically in the distribution itself

His attitude was basically "Meh... they should all be able to read European (meaning German) anyway..."

So here we are: Mastodon as a Tower of Babel

cc @klu9

@klu9

I've been puzzled by the translation (or lack of it) issue also

Here the key may be "Public timelines"

As I understand, this will not translate anything in your Home feed

Which is where I want auto-translation the most

cc @FediTips

@Mastodon

"We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start."

And here is the core symptom of the core problem itself:

You're pointing the question and its solution right back at the Deathstar Mothership itself: @Mastodon dot Social

Sort of a recursive, self-fulfilling loop, no?

But not the least bit surprising

@homegrown

It's seriously about time

Way past time, as a matter of fact

I've been on Mastodon generally since November 2, 2022, and it was an issue back then

cc @Mastodon @MastodonEngineering

@randahl

"Now the deal is dead, as more parties outside the left are furious because of Trump's revenge tariffs towards countries protecting Greenland."

Yeah

Shocker

#European "adult" politicians are being forced to admit that #DonaldTrump is *not* an adult, but rather a petulant, acute narcissist *and* a serial, pathological liar

A poorly-raised three year old

And it's way, way, way past time these sober European "adults" begin to wake up and see #Trump for what he really is and has always been, and act accordingly

#MafiaState #imperialism #geopolitics #trade #economy #tariffs #sovereignty #Denmark #NATO #NewWorldOrder #law #InternationalLaw

@jameswarlock

"I'm feeling something nagging at my brain to check the feed, to get more engagement, to do better... is it all just inevitably damned?"

#FOMO

#DopamineHit

Yup

The #Forkiverse sounds like it was made with exactly you in mind

@EUCommission

"now offering a spicy mode"

"a spicy mode"

Is that what you're calling non-consensual adult and child pornography now?

"spicy"

Wow

Don't be too harsh now

Wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of any porn enjoyers, would you now?