052C/052D Class Destroyers

[jobjed]

Any update on the 11th type 052d(ddg131) ? Its been about 2.5 years since it was launched.. Has it been commissioned yet?.

Joined the Sovs' flotilla recently, bringing it back up to full strength since 136 was taken out of active duty for the past 4 years.

 

[Bhurki]

Joined the Sovs' flotilla recently, bringing it back up to full strength since 136 was taken out of active duty for the past 4 years.

So it is commissioned in active duty? Or still just assigned and undergoing trials? Also what about the 12th,13th? Are they still under trial..?

 

[vesicles]

I would like to share some of my own views on this issue of English vs Chinese on this forum.

Firstly, I myself prefer to read English than Chinese. Although I’m Chinese, English has been my primary language for the past 27 years. As such, I am more comfortable with English.

With that being said, this forum is a Chinese military forum. Interestingly, most of the contributing members are non-Chinese or Chinese who have been living abroad for a long time. So a few of us actually has a deep understanding of the current Chinese culture. As such, if relying on a bunch of people like us, there will be much misinterpretation, misunderstanding and confusion. To make an analogy, we would be like a whole bunch of blinds and half-blinds trying to feel an elephant.

Thus, we need to increase the presence of native Chinese who are extremely well- versed with the modern Chinese culture and might be willing to share some inside info with us. And more likely than not, these Chinese experts would be more comfortable communicating in Chinese. And inevitably, many of them are not familiar with English. And when they accidentally or intentionally stumble upon our forum, they might be less likely to linger, or hesitant to contribute because of our emphasis on English. As such, we could be losing valuable contributors who might help us better appreciate the modern Chinese perspective.

So my suggestion is that we should relax our rules a little and make exemption for the members who are more comfortable using Chinese. I believe this will encourage more native Chinese experts to enjoin us, which will make our forum even stronger.

 

[Blitzo]

I think the actual numbers matter very much.

I agree -- the number of pieces that are posted provided with adequate translations and those provided without adequate translations is an important relationship.

The question is who decided that is the right way to look at it. How about this: by not posting a relevant article (without a summary etc.), and assuming nobody else posted it (which is a reasonable assumption), everyone who might have liked to read it and learn of its contents (and who primarily sources their reading from here) will be unable to do so.

I do feel like I have a case to make for my position which I share with by78, however I'm fine with whatever side the moderating team chooses to decide on.

For me, this understanding bit is totally meaningless. I really don't feel like I ever have to care about the mental state of a person who posts a link to an article on a forum. If you're talking about me, my understanding is just fine.

I'm not talking about mental state here.
I'm talking about whether someone understands the article that they're posting -- i.e.: that they are able to read the words and comprehend the main points.
What follows is that I believe if someone is able to understand the main points, then when posting an article they should be able to provide a summary of those points.

Also, for the record, I did note the author and briefly describe the contents of what I posted, which in my opinion gives adequate context for a person to decide if they're interested in reading it.

You wrote "yankeesama writes about the current status and the variants of this class" -- I suppose it technically is a brief description, but maybe we have different standards.

I'll provide my own brief summary of yankeesama's piece if I had wanted to post his link here:
"Yankeesama writes about 052D in relation to past classes. 052Ds in service has reached double digits, with a photo of DDG 131 confirming it is now in service with the ETN. He also writes about how the Dalian 052Ds have indeed yet to be delivered, and about the different subvariants of the 052D class overall. He summarizes the 052D subvariants in numbers as: 8 ships with 730 CIWS+calibration antennae; 2 ships with 730 CIWS+no calibration antennae; 3 ships with 1130+no calibration antennae; 6 ships with longer helipad+anchor difference (2 launched), for a total of 19 052Ds overall currently identified. Overall, the proliferation of modern DDGs in the Chinese Navy is increasing."

Now, that summary isn't perfect, but I think I provided a respectable capture of the main salient points of the article that people might be interested in. If someone then wants to read the whole article to get bits that I didn't translate then they are free to.

At the end of the day I think everyone is fairly reasonable -- demonstrate that an effort was made, and that will more than satisfy the issue.

If you can't be bothered -- that is fine as well.

You're wrong about the quality of machine translation. Everything I read that is originally in Chinese is via machine translation and every Chinese-to-English translation that I've ever posted on SDF was done the same way and in the vast majority of cases, there is demonstrably nothing wrong with them. Also, putting a link into a translator takes negligible effort.

This is probably the sticking point -- I disagree.

I don't think there is anything wrong with using machine translators to help to try to untangle the meaning of a piece. But the quality of machine translators are not at a level where one is able to read an article and understand it without work.
Sometimes I use machine translators as well to understand an article, but when I then post it I always try to make an effort to share how I interpreted the imperfect work of the translators so others have an easier time.

Or the poster simply doesn't think they're obligated to do everything for the readers and thinks they should sometimes make the effort of reading a whole article themselves.

Ultimately, my view of the situation is this. By posting that article, even without a summary or translation, I made a contribution to the forum. The contribution may not be as good as it would have been had I provided a detailed summary or a full human translation, but it's a contribution nonetheless. It should also be judged against the reality of what goes on in this forum, which is that very few people post this kind of material. Were the situation different, where people regularly posted such articles with the summary or translation and my post took away someone's opportunity to do so and lowered the average level of posting, I would have refrained from posting in this manner. Anyone can easily check the record over the past year and note how many (and how often for each person) people have posted content from the likes of yankeesama, fzgfzy, POP3, pb19980515 and so on.

Yes, and we are also able to judge which of those people are able to provide a summary of the links and articles as well.

You're not the only one who posts articles here, but there's a reason why this kind of complaint has virtually never come up for the likes of Jobjed, Higgle or Sinosoldier. I wonder why.

Additionaly, as I've always mantained, anyone is free to provide their own contribution in the form of a summary, full translation or anything else (see here, here and here). That has worked just fine plenty of times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), although I note that it was generally not done by the people who like to make helpful suggestions about how I should post.

Probably because they feel like the manner in which you post those articles should require you to do some of the work yourself?

I've explained why I disagree with these objections. Ultimately, it just seems like choosing to be offended that someone posted only a link.

Ultimately, you've got to give the people what they want (and follow the rules), so going forward I won't be posting any links without a translation, with a machine translation or any links at all. Now that I've adjusted my standpoint, I see the wisdom in latenlazy's proposal on the previous page. If anything, I think it's too lenient on these would-be posters, so I suggest adding a requirement for a submission statement. I think 200 words should do.

I look forward to the golden age of high quality posting on SDF.

I know you're being sardonic, but if the moderators do decide in favour of this then I think such an outcome would indeed improve the quality of the discussion.

Or at the least it will mean that we won't have any future threads debating over the merits of posting links without summaries, because that simply wouldn't occur anymore.

 

[Blitzo]

As a compromise, I volunteer to provide a brief translated summary of the links you post. I haven't been doing so much lately because of thesis but things are starting to wind down and I should be able to manage. Just tag me every time you post a link and I'll provide a translation ASAP.

This should be an okay compromise satisfying everyone's preferences.

That would be very kind of you and further elevates your status here on the forum in my eyes.

However, I think before you take that extra effort it is appropriate to see how the moderating team decides. I've messaged Deino to ask him to look into this, and I think it's long overdue for this issue to be settled in one favour or another.
In a way this matter is pretty juvenile, but it's also a question of etiquette and community. The question being "should the person who posts a Chinese language article/link be responsible for making an effort to summarize its content to justify its relevance to the thread".

If the moderators say no, then there is no reason to feel obliged to translate anything that you didn't post, because ultimately the task of actually reading the article itself is within most people's grasp, it just means it'll take some time to grapple with a machine translator. The practicality of understanding and reading those articles and links IMO were never the big reason for its controversy. The matter of etiquette and community, however, has been.

 

[latenlazy]

You're wrong about the quality of machine translation. Everything I read that is originally in Chinese is via machine translation and every Chinese-to-English translation that I've ever posted on SDF was done the same way and in the vast majority of cases, there is demonstrably nothing wrong with them. Also, putting a link into a translator takes negligible effort.

As someone who has had to participate in several discussions in the last year or two trying to clear up confusions that came straight out of machine translations, I can with confidence say that it is not true that in a vast majority of cases there is nothing demonstrably wrong with them. Just about every time someone posts a machine translation of a Chinese source people have had questions about what certain sections of the translation mean or how it should be interpreted and understood. Recall that this issue of machine translation first came up *precisely* through one of these episodes. Perhaps it is “good enough” for you, but that doesn’t make the actual translations results themselves good. If the machine translation obscures important details, as it often does, that’s *not* good by any objective standards of information quality, and information quality is the entire point here. That said I understand the appeal of using a machine translation instead of waiting for other people to take the time to do a proper translation, so (though it is not my decision to make) I’m personally not opposed to them *so long as the original Chinese text is also posted as a reference*.

 

[Klon]

As a compromise, I volunteer to provide a brief translated summary of the links you post. I haven't been doing so much lately because of thesis but things are starting to wind down and I should be able to manage. Just tag me every time you post a link and I'll provide a translation ASAP.

This should be an okay compromise satisfying everyone's preferences.

Thank you for the offer, but I'll pass.

My participation (posting frequency) here was declining anyway. I have no problem with no longer posting articles. Plus, as we can see, your proposal would actually not satisfy many.

 

[Gustaf Adolf]

When/if the type 052e comes out will it be in this thread or would it be in a new thread?

 

[by78]

When/if the type 052e comes out will it be in this thread or would it be in a new thread?

It'll likely be this thread, but with a change to threat title.

 

[Biscuits]

When/if the type 052e comes out will it be in this thread or would it be in a new thread?

IDK if such a ship would ever be built. Type 055 IS the Type 052e