Steve Booth wrote:
recently that some questions are flagged as against site rules for containing more than one term, I was always under the impression that terms or phrases were acceptable just not full sentences I also think someone quoted a maximum of about 8 words.
There also doesn't seem to be any consistency in this for instance this morning i notice there is a five word phrase from Arabic to English that is flagged as against site rules, yet just below it is a six word phrase from English to Arabic that is not flagged against the rules.
I think we need to seek clarification from the kudos editors what is permissible and what is not and this needs to be made clearer in the site rules.
This is not a dig at the editors who i thnk do a very good job just a request fro clarification
Hi Steve,
The problem is a Kudoz-wide one, not restricted to the Arabic-English word pairs, and has always been a cause of controversy. The problem is that although Kudoz rules state that we should ask only "one term per question" (rule 2.3), at the same time they state that "Texts posted for translation via KudoZ should be limited to approximately ten (10) words" (2.2). This is further clarified in the FAQ:
A group of words (up to approximately 10) should be posted in a single question only when they constitute an unbreakable unit, such as an idiomatic expression (e.g. 'a jack of all trades and master of none') that may be several words long and where omitting any part would not formulate the question correctly.
which makes sense, in my opinion, but leaves the door wide open to interpretation as regards what constitutes an "unbreakable unit" and what could or could not have been omitted.
Also, it doesn't help that there's a clear contradiction between the "one term per question" rule and the fact that when asking a question, you're asked to provide the "term or phrase". Having read the FAQ quoted above you understand what that means of course, but it just means that Kudoz editors have a harder time convincing askers that they should stick to one term....