So, I’m a long time lurker here on Somalispot. I decided to make an account so you guys don’t get scammed by afsomali.co like I did.
A few days ago a friend showed me a tweet by a guy that goes by @apjama on twitter, announcing that he made a new website to learn Somali called afsomali.co. As a young guy from the UK who struggles with Somali I became excited and signed up right way for £6.50 per month.
I signed into the site and clicked on a post titled ‘Dadka Somalia and Their Culture’. In the part of the article talking about Somali nomads the English translation says “they are homeless people”. That seemed odd and like something straight from google translate since nomads aren’t “homeless”. So I copied and pasted the Somali text into google translate and I found that the English translation on afsomali.co was entirely from google translate, word for word. I’ve added the screenshots to this post. I couldn’t believe it.
I then did some more googling and found that the entire “Dadka Somalia and Their Culture” post was stolen from a Somali article posted on Somalitalk.com. I then went through the rest of the posts on afsomali.co and found that almost all of them were stolen from various Somali books and websites with no credit to the original authors, and that most of the English translations were copied straight from google translate. I found all of this shocking because @apjama is claiming on twitter and on his website that he’s been working for over a year with at least 14 linguists and teachers to produce this content.
Anyone can check this out for themself without signing up by clicking on one of the free posts like ‘Reporting Live from Magaalada Nairobi’.
I could’ve just used the same Somali sources myself and threw them into google translate and not pay anything. So, it’s pretty crazy they’re charging Somalis a monthly subscription for it.
A few days ago a friend showed me a tweet by a guy that goes by @apjama on twitter, announcing that he made a new website to learn Somali called afsomali.co. As a young guy from the UK who struggles with Somali I became excited and signed up right way for £6.50 per month.
I signed into the site and clicked on a post titled ‘Dadka Somalia and Their Culture’. In the part of the article talking about Somali nomads the English translation says “they are homeless people”. That seemed odd and like something straight from google translate since nomads aren’t “homeless”. So I copied and pasted the Somali text into google translate and I found that the English translation on afsomali.co was entirely from google translate, word for word. I’ve added the screenshots to this post. I couldn’t believe it.
I then did some more googling and found that the entire “Dadka Somalia and Their Culture” post was stolen from a Somali article posted on Somalitalk.com. I then went through the rest of the posts on afsomali.co and found that almost all of them were stolen from various Somali books and websites with no credit to the original authors, and that most of the English translations were copied straight from google translate. I found all of this shocking because @apjama is claiming on twitter and on his website that he’s been working for over a year with at least 14 linguists and teachers to produce this content.
Anyone can check this out for themself without signing up by clicking on one of the free posts like ‘Reporting Live from Magaalada Nairobi’.
I could’ve just used the same Somali sources myself and threw them into google translate and not pay anything. So, it’s pretty crazy they’re charging Somalis a monthly subscription for it.
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