The problem with Translation
Oct. 6th, 2012 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agnieszkasYou would not believe how many hours it took me to draft this post. Mostly it's due to the fact that I have major FEELINGS about Translation and the translation process.
Let me give you some introduction:
You see, the problem with translation is that it doesn't have shiny ticky boxes, it doesn't have simple solutions and it can't, for the most part, be automated. Anyone who tried to translate bigger texts in Google Translator knows how bad of an idea that is.
That means that we have to relay on the volunteers to translate any content. Unfortunately translating is not a very glamorous process and most of the time it's a solitary task.
Because we have a very strict beta rule (no text goes live without a second pair of eyes checking it over, meaning every translation needs to be betad) and very small number of volunteers per language, it can take weeks if not months in some cases to see the finished translation going online.
If you look at the main tw.org website you can see how much material there is to translate. We can pretty much keep our translators busy all year long and still have stuff that needs translating, translations that need to be updated because the English version changed etc.
On to the problem:
Translating website content (or content of any kind) is very much like writing a fic, translating a fic or recording a podfic. The process itself is slow and unglamorous and something you need to do youself if you want to see results. So translators, as they translate or beta content, are very much on their own. Often their only point of contact is a liaison with the committee.
The workload and the lack of community means that our translators are either not as active as we'd like or they burn out quickly and we lose them forever. Or they just lose the interest.
As a committee, we try to keep the volunteers engaged as liaisons, using the tools we are given like the mailing list and office hours in campfire (although, I do have to admit that 2012 was a very bad year with a lot of staff changes and we are only now getting back into the swing) but those just don't seem to be working. The internal forum didn't really catch on with the translators and for a while we were also using Basecamp, but that didn't work out either.
So building a community that would help make translators feel like a part of a bigger group and help engage them and support them is one of the problems right now.
Another problem is a simple numbers game.
We simply don't have enough people in enough language teams to provide timely translations and support ad hoc translations for other committees. And to be perfectly honest if VolCom opened recruitment tomorrow and we got a huge influx on new people, we probably (as a committee) wouldn't be able to support them.
OTW grew a lot these past years and the needs for translations/translators are different (and there are much more of them) than they were when our processes were being set up. So before we can advertise and ask people to come translate stuff, we need to modify the processes.
Which means we arrive to the next problem.
For most part, translators aren't very tech savvy, at least that's been my experience so far. There is a lot of resistance from our translators when it comes to using the tools that we use (the translation priority chart and translation tools on the website, GQueues to keep track of what is being translated and what stage it's at and even GDocs) so maybe we need to find an easier, more straightforward solutions that our volunteers would be more comfortable with.
All the problems that I listed have solutions of course, but it will take time and effort to find the best ones and implement them. It's a slow process. And as a committee we are heading in the diretion of getting things done.
So, why am I writing about all this?
Ever since I joined the org as a member and a staffer, there has been a lot of conversation about how internationalization and outreach is important. And the policies and changes in the way the decisions are made is a huge and important part of making the org more inclusive and welcoming to non-English fans. I&O committee is doing great and amazing things and I feel like the org is going in the right direction.
But I have to wornder, how many people actually realize that policies and decision making and inclusive thinking can only take us so far. At some point we will have to start doing the nitty gritty work of actually translating the content and trying to reach out in native languages to fans who don't feel comfortable using English as lingua franca.
Right now we have 35 translator volunteers. Some of them inactive, some of them on hiatus and some of them unable to get their language version going because they don't have a beta.
So the processes are flawed. Translating itself isn't glamorous and in some language cases it's not even easy. Translators dont' get much feedback on their work and they don't get kudos. There is too much to do and not enough people willing to do it.
I'm not saying volunteer as a translator. I realize it's not for everybody and many fans just like working on the shiny things. But if you speak a language other than English and it so happens that language is live on the main OTW website, go check out the translations and maybe send our translators a note saying they are doing a good job. They need all the love.
I will go now. I feel strangely exposed and vulnerable and protective of my committee and my volunteers after writing all this.
Let me give you some introduction:
You see, the problem with translation is that it doesn't have shiny ticky boxes, it doesn't have simple solutions and it can't, for the most part, be automated. Anyone who tried to translate bigger texts in Google Translator knows how bad of an idea that is.
That means that we have to relay on the volunteers to translate any content. Unfortunately translating is not a very glamorous process and most of the time it's a solitary task.
Because we have a very strict beta rule (no text goes live without a second pair of eyes checking it over, meaning every translation needs to be betad) and very small number of volunteers per language, it can take weeks if not months in some cases to see the finished translation going online.
If you look at the main tw.org website you can see how much material there is to translate. We can pretty much keep our translators busy all year long and still have stuff that needs translating, translations that need to be updated because the English version changed etc.
On to the problem:
Translating website content (or content of any kind) is very much like writing a fic, translating a fic or recording a podfic. The process itself is slow and unglamorous and something you need to do youself if you want to see results. So translators, as they translate or beta content, are very much on their own. Often their only point of contact is a liaison with the committee.
The workload and the lack of community means that our translators are either not as active as we'd like or they burn out quickly and we lose them forever. Or they just lose the interest.
As a committee, we try to keep the volunteers engaged as liaisons, using the tools we are given like the mailing list and office hours in campfire (although, I do have to admit that 2012 was a very bad year with a lot of staff changes and we are only now getting back into the swing) but those just don't seem to be working. The internal forum didn't really catch on with the translators and for a while we were also using Basecamp, but that didn't work out either.
So building a community that would help make translators feel like a part of a bigger group and help engage them and support them is one of the problems right now.
Another problem is a simple numbers game.
We simply don't have enough people in enough language teams to provide timely translations and support ad hoc translations for other committees. And to be perfectly honest if VolCom opened recruitment tomorrow and we got a huge influx on new people, we probably (as a committee) wouldn't be able to support them.
OTW grew a lot these past years and the needs for translations/translators are different (and there are much more of them) than they were when our processes were being set up. So before we can advertise and ask people to come translate stuff, we need to modify the processes.
Which means we arrive to the next problem.
For most part, translators aren't very tech savvy, at least that's been my experience so far. There is a lot of resistance from our translators when it comes to using the tools that we use (the translation priority chart and translation tools on the website, GQueues to keep track of what is being translated and what stage it's at and even GDocs) so maybe we need to find an easier, more straightforward solutions that our volunteers would be more comfortable with.
All the problems that I listed have solutions of course, but it will take time and effort to find the best ones and implement them. It's a slow process. And as a committee we are heading in the diretion of getting things done.
So, why am I writing about all this?
Ever since I joined the org as a member and a staffer, there has been a lot of conversation about how internationalization and outreach is important. And the policies and changes in the way the decisions are made is a huge and important part of making the org more inclusive and welcoming to non-English fans. I&O committee is doing great and amazing things and I feel like the org is going in the right direction.
But I have to wornder, how many people actually realize that policies and decision making and inclusive thinking can only take us so far. At some point we will have to start doing the nitty gritty work of actually translating the content and trying to reach out in native languages to fans who don't feel comfortable using English as lingua franca.
Right now we have 35 translator volunteers. Some of them inactive, some of them on hiatus and some of them unable to get their language version going because they don't have a beta.
So the processes are flawed. Translating itself isn't glamorous and in some language cases it's not even easy. Translators dont' get much feedback on their work and they don't get kudos. There is too much to do and not enough people willing to do it.
I'm not saying volunteer as a translator. I realize it's not for everybody and many fans just like working on the shiny things. But if you speak a language other than English and it so happens that language is live on the main OTW website, go check out the translations and maybe send our translators a note saying they are doing a good job. They need all the love.
I will go now. I feel strangely exposed and vulnerable and protective of my committee and my volunteers after writing all this.
