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Are translation requests ok?

How much text can be asked to be translated at the same time? One sentence, one paragraph?

What kind of answers to these questions should be considered good?

While we are at that, I would also like to propose a translation tag.

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I think, translating complete sentences definitely has its merits. Learning from examples can be very good.

It can also be a good way to distinguish between different nuances of the same thing.

However, maybe we should discourage asking for translations requests of more than one (or a few) sentences, as long as they are not all examples to ask about a specific thing.

As for answers, I would consider an answer good that does not simply give a single translation, but go through the parts of the sentence and explain why and how it is used.

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    I agree with a lot of this. Short translation requests are helpful for learning. But to kind of play devil's advocate: with StackExchange questions serving largely as searchable references, do translation requests (even answered) have enough value as searchable references to justify allowing them? Or are they just too specific?
    – user12
    Jun 21, 2016 at 19:06
  • @dotVezz: Exactly, that is the main reason why I started this discussion. With these questions, there could be a fine line between "generally useful as a reference" and "too specific". But maybe we don't need to set rules in advance and just decide on a per-case basis.
    – 파울울
    Jun 21, 2016 at 19:10
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    Perhaps translations of phrases (as part or whole sentences) could be OK? I think phrases are more likely to be of general interest. For instance asking “What is a good translation of the phrase ‘xxx’, as used for instance in the sentence ‘Aaa bbb xxx, ccc.’”
    – Kess Vargavind
    Jun 21, 2016 at 19:16
  • @dotVezz I actually think that questions on many Stack Exchange sites have a life outside being searched. I think Stack Overflow is probably largely accessed via search, but on other SE sites, much of the activity is regular users checking out the latest questions - plus questions can be found through sidebar links and tags (which can be subscribed to).
    – Нет войне
    Jun 22, 2016 at 12:34
  • Would we expect translation requests to (usually) contain all text to be translated? That would help with search.
    – Нет войне
    Jun 22, 2016 at 12:36
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I think small translations are welcome as long as we bear in mind that this is at heart supposed to be a 'question and answer' site, rather than a more general 'request' site. As 파울울 says in his answer, a good answer here should involve some explanation, so a good question here should give some clue as to what needs to be explained.

Following that logic,

  • Single word translations should be fine as long as it is clear why an answer can't simply be found in a dictionary.
  • Single phrases and short sentences should also usually be fine, again as long as it's clear what the point of difficulty is. (This may be obvious from the structure of the phrase or sentence itself).
  • Longer sentences or multiple sentences may be fine as long as it is clear what specific language points the question focuses on.
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Here translation means Korean sentences into English sentences. If so, then I think that a size of text is not a big problem, when asker contains his try.

In this time, we can know the asker's problem point so that we can suggest update.

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