As part of the work on the MinT for Wikipedia Readers MVP (T359072), machine translated versions of a wiki page are shown at the Translation view (T359801). There, the lead section is shown initially and the translation for the different sections are requested as the user expands them.
Translating the contents of a whole section can be a time-intensive task and it may take a few seconds for the translated section to show to the user. This is not an ideal experience.
This ticket proposes to explore ways to reduce the waiting time for the user. Some initial ideas:
- Show contents as they become available. Instead of waiting for the translation of a whole section before showing it, we can show the translation of each paragraph as they are obtained. We may need to show a placeholder to communicate that additional contents are loading (see video below)
- Pre-load contents. Some contents can be requested in advance, before the user tries to expand a given section (even at the Confirm step). We can consider loading the first 2-3 paragraphs of the next 1-2 sections to have contents ready to show immediately as the user expands the section.
Additional ideas can be explored considering the balance between reducing the waiting time and avoiding too much waisted computing capacity (i.e., obtaining translations that users won't read)