I am quite proficient in a few languages and think that what would make freebase truly superb would be the ability to tag information (only relevant types – so strings but not numbers) with a language code. If you only speak english, then there might be the ability to autofill the tag with english, but for people who want to fill in data in other languages
For example, it would be nice to put both english and local names on famous international places... Japan vs. 日本 and so on. I know that the international forms are often listed as alternate names on topics but that doesn't (as far as I can see) provide a mechanism to tag a piece of information with its language.
This wouldn't be much use at first but might save freebase from growing pains later when foreign users start appearing and writing things in other languages, and feels like it should be relatively simple to add to the underlying database. I can go into more details about what I mean, if necessary.
Thanks again for the great product! I love it :)
Multilingual information
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Multilingual data is supported by our underlying data store and language flexibility is partly implemented—but right now, every user’s display language is forcibly set to English. This will change at some point, but keep the pressure on. (-:
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ooh that's awesome! the only thing that gets me more excited than well structured information is a piece of software that takes other languages into account :P
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crism, hello,
what about supporting a translation for all the Types as well.
not talking about translating the data only (like name in all language for a town for example) but to actually create a Type in language other then english, and have the system know its a translation of the same type, which is written in English.
thanks,
Doron.-
Doron, part of the point of our multilingual structure is that the same thing may exist in the system with different names in different languages, but that it remains the same thing . A person, une personne, ein Person, 사람, 人, are all the same concept. We definitely don’t want a different type for person-in-French, person-in-German, etc.
I think, rereading your comment, that it may not be clear that the types in our system are not substantially different from the instances; a particular type, such as Person , is just an instance of Type . Accordingly, the labels on Person (and all of its properties) can be changed just as easily as the labels on Japan can be.-
crism, i think i understand most of what you said, but i still dont know (from reading your reply and some of the Help documents) what the system can and cannot do right now, and how to actually do it. so here are some follow up questions.
1. lets say i want to create a new type in freebase, one that do not exist yet at all. can i give it a name in languages other then english?
2. can freebase have a single type (like Person) but display the translation of its name in other language?
3. lets say i want all the types i work with to be displayed in Japaneese - can i go to the screen which lets me edit an existing Type properties, and somehow there to declare that this Type is not only known as "Person" but also with the word in Japaneese that mean Person?
4. after i create this "Translation", will the system know to display (now, or in the future) the name of this Type in another language to everyone who wants it?
i believe that if freebase will support this translation, and if it is done right (according to specific rules - like using singular or plural ) will be a key to Semantic web. and i do wish you can (somehow) actually use not just auto-complete features to retain this consistency, but also some spellcheckers which will enforce the correct naming of Types and all other system parts.
thank you.
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Right now, using the user interface, you cannot create strings labeled as anything other than English. You can do this directly using the query editor or the API, but then no users will see the result.
In brief: the underlying data model is multilingual, but right now the UI only shows and manipulates the English data.
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so if there is only english, what about names of types. Does names have to be translated? For instance if the name of the sports facility is "Olympiastadion Berlin" (german) does this have to be "Olympic stadium Berlin" (english) or its realname?
as i know proper names are not translated? -
I think that in general, if there is no standard English name for something, the native language name should be used. Most people will know it by that name, if they know it at all.
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Any schedule on multi-language support for freebase.
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I can’t definitively answer the question about the schedule, but this seems like a good place to point to my more detailed blog post about internationalization in Freebase. We have support in the data model; it’s just not exposed in the Freebase.com Web client.
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Are there any articles in common/topic that aren't English?
For example (get the country named "Verenigd Koninkrijk" and it's ID so we can look up if this topic has articles or images):
{
"id" : [
{}
],
"name" : [
{
"lang" : "/lang/nl",
"value" : "Verenigd Koninkrijk"
}
],
"type" : "/location/country"
}
The only id available is /en/united_kingdom haven't seen anything else but /en/.. or guid for any found topic. Now to get the guid of the article associated with the topic:
{
"article" : [
{
"id" : null
}
],
"id" : "/en/united_kingdom",
"type" : "/common/topic"
}
This gives me a guid linking to the English article.
Is there something I need to change in the query or is there no article available in other languages? -
We don’t currently import articles from any source other than the English Wikipedia, so there aren’t yet any non-English articles. Importing other versions of Wikipedia is on the to-do list, but I still couldn’t tell you what the schedule is on this. Keep asking, though; more user demand will help move it up.
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Well, I just wanted to help demanding the easy "language" editing of topics.
For instance I entered a german film, before I realised the fact, that the freebase already IS multilingual, only the webclient is not.
One could for instance display an array of flags above the topic, to easily select which language one wants to edit. Also to add a new language to the topic. Of course, the linked objects in the topic should also deliver their translated versions if present.
I think as more and more user join freebase, the multilingual webfrontend becomes more and more important for:
1. gathering information in different languages from the users, although the bots aren't currently extracting other language wikipedia
2. avoid mistakes like mine of users, who at first not realise, the multilingualism is there but not shown.
+1 for updated web client
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