Hello everyone, after receiving numerous bogus rejections (gyms, sport clubs and mosques rejected as private residential property, gyms rejected as adult-only places) I took my time to go through the criteria translation from English to German.
Two important notes: I’m not here to discuss the rejections, but I’m here to discuss the translation. Also German is my only other language I speak natively, so I can’t comment on other translations.
After going through translations, I was able to see that many translations are inaccurate or misleading for reviewers. I will go through each criteria page on the wayfarer website and highlight issues. For added context, I will provide information about what the german translation would translate back to in English.
Eligibility Criteria:
At “A great place to be social with others”:
- “Free little libraries on public spaces” translates to “free public libraries” (kostenlose öffentliche Bibliotheken).
- I have never submitted such free little libraries, so I don’t know if submitters actually have issues submitting those in Germany - but if this was clearer and mentioned “Bücherschrank” (commonly used german name for such little libraries), this could help.
Rejection Criteria:
At “Ineligible location, place or object”:
- “private residential property” translates to “private property” (Privatgrundstück).
- This means that the important nuance “residential” is lost and it causes other places that clearly aren’t residential to routinely be denied for private residential property. To me this is a very severe oversight.
- Additionally I want to highlight, that this also is an issue that affects the review workflow.
Content Guidelines:
At “General Guidelines > Indoor vs Outdoor”:
- “publicly accessible to some capacity” translates to “publicly accessible” (öffentlich zugänglich).
- This also loses the nuance, that it doesn’t have to be publicly accessible at all times and also causes false rejections. Even though readers could get the “to some capacity” implied by reading the entire paragraph, the sentence as it stands can be contradicting in itself to some people.
- Also this paragraph has the same private residential property/private property issue as mentioned above.
At “Photo Guidelines”:
- “vandalized photos” translates to “damaged photos” (beschädigte Fotos)
- I’ll be honest, I have no idea what is meant by vandalized photos. If this means, that the object can’t be heavily vandalized, then this is the wrong wording for it in German.
Additional note:
I personally think that the Forum Criteria Discussions Library/Criteria Clarification Collection should be clearly placed in the Criteria section. At the moment, it is relatively hidden for the average user and not very accessible due to only being in English. I am very convinced that only a small part of Wayfarers actually comes to the forums here or go through the helpcenter, so they miss out on valuable help with criteria. Also since the content isn’t officially and faithfully translated, the AI translation or other translation tools may mislead Wayfarers. In my opinion, this content should be more clearly placed on the Main Wayfarer website with curated translations.
I genuinely hope this can make an impact to improve the translations and the general Wayfarer experience, especially here in Germany with the bogus private property rejections. Maybe this also motivates some other people to look through the translations of their native languages and they can help improve those by sharing issues aswell.