From My Wiki

KEY POINTS

• Translators need an understanding of the domain and technology
• Importance of the translators having a deep understand the language
• Evolution and development of translation communities and resources are important
• Development of consistent terminology and iteration increases quality
• Important to have an iteration methods
• Important to have guiding principles for translation

CONVERSATION NOTES

In traditional work you have an editor in this sector you rely of volunteers.

One approach is a combination of editor and comments.

Version control can be a core part of quality control. There are versions control systems to deal with the version control system in software development but less used in translation.

Blogging and translation on Global Voices: They have stipend editors who speak the language and make sure that translation is appropriate. When there are errors the editor makes the changes. Content getting posted is the most important and translators is generally of passable quality. The people they work with are already multi lingual and educated so the quality is less of a challenge. Content is not technical so quality is not a high priority compared to manuals. In one group when a translation is ready content can be posted to a wiki and peer reviewed. It slows the process but keeps a higher quality.

For serbian translation software was written for term translation and comments. Rules were created for terms to build a glossary. Once translation happens there is a review.

One group created a checklist and guidelines for the process. They encouraged translators to use the software that they were translating so that they knew the software they were translating. Wanted to make sure that the interface was available to translators and not just terms. Translators would need to look at diff files in svn, to see the changes that need to be made for translations appropriately.

Important that the translator is technology aware.

When doing creative commons translation the translators sat with the legal representative and explained the terminology to the translators. For languages where there is not terminology they developed terminology as they go and let the feedback loop help develop the terminology. This terminology is also taken to the language boards.

Requirement that the translator is a mother tongue speaker of the language of what they are translating into. It is more important to get quality translator and say no to volunteers that are not high quality.

When translations are bad you can encourage translators to improve their quality. This becomes an issue when you want to protect the reputation of the content and organization.

One process is to tag content on how much content has been used and if new version of a translation has been used it will rank higher in a search.

If you are not going to iterate you should make sure that they are of high quality. Iteration allows for the development of translators skills and higher quality content over a long term.

Important to have good content to start with so the bad content is not translated.

Quality can be best assessed by the end users.

There is strong link between quality control and doubts of the translators. Important to have resources and community for translators to express their doubts and get instant feedback from other translators. Use glossaries and if there doubts then use community websites and email lists.

Need for an aggregated public sphere like WordReference where there can be public threads and conversations about how translations can be done.

Not everything needs to be translated. There is a hierarchy of what should be done and how much time should be spent on different content to direct quality.

Helpful to find a reference article in native language to find context for technical terms. Looking at wikipedia article on technology article to find context on a technology.

Having a community that maps out the domain experts for specific technical needs is important for volunteer translators.

Tools for content reviewing are lacking and require re review which can make content better. Tools for quality review should be about process and in community based translation it is important to be delicate. The ideal way for communication when there are quality problems are to write to the translator first, but timing is an issue. In systems with live posts quick review is important and it may not be possible to content translator. Important to develop relationship and trust between editor.

Iterative content encourages peer review, while news and stale content is less likely to under go peer review. In software translation the svn commit process allows for structured quality review.