WiserEarth in Different Languages

Mike, I don't think the core reason for the existence of the group is about internationalizing so much as making WiserEarth accessible to people who don't speak English as their first language. In this regard, I think that since the web is 'international' already, WiserEarth simply has to be able to make itself 'multilingual'. As a result, I changed the title to WiserEarth in different languages. I think the key challenge is how to make all of this wonderful data available to others around the world in other languages:

- does the community automate the translation?

- does the community set up different sites for each country, or region?

- does the community look for volunteer translators and do this manually?

- or a mixture of all or some of these options.

Hey Camilla, I agree that this group currently serves more to make WiserEarth multilingual. Doing that takes care of the basic essentials for making WiserEarth a more international site.  But I think that since a site that is multilingual is not necessarily accessible to every 'international' user, there also needs to be discussions centered around possibly more technical, or culture-specific topics.  Perhaps this discussion can take place in another group?

For example, these are some questions we should explore in the future...

 - How does difference in culture affect the user-experience of WiserEarth users outside of the U.S?

 -  Is the Area of Focus taxonomy understandable or relevant?

 - Do we need to have multiple, but interconnected "versions" of WiserEarth for different countries? (Different home page, groups list, comments section)

 - How fast does it take to load WiserEarth in a developing or third-world country?

Camilla asked: does the community set up different sites for each country, or region?

For true connectivity and collaboration, I think it would be better if WE in different languages be hosted in a single www.wiserearth.org site. This would have the advantage of:

• minimizing technical development cost, simplifying the process, and maintaining consistency of the user interface and experience across different language versions of WE.
• some people are multilingual already and having content and people of all languages in a site would simplify the process of connecting content, and facilitating collaboration people/orgs/groups. WE of course need to determine English as the working language. Cross-language communication would be carried out via English (perhaps with the help of volunteer interpreters/translators).
• funding would I guess be concentrated and minimized, as there will only be one site to maintain. This does not mean that data center should only reside in one place (the US currently), mirror sites can be set up in Europe or Asia as Peggy hinted to make access from regions far from the US faster.
• not sure how the governance model will look like, but the need for country representatives forming the core governance body will be there. A more democratic and powerful General Assembly minus the Security Council (modeled after the UN) perhaps?

Other steps that seems necessary to accommodate diversity:

• Working groups for each language/country should be created to lead the effort in community building, outreach, content building, translation effort and other needed efforts. Identified leaders for each working group should be made of the core WiserEarth governance body.
  
• Customization should be made possible for the homepage and the hub pages (local, national and regional. Will this be implemented sometime in the future?)
• Don't think the areas of focus should be different between languages/countries, as they are conceptualized from the beginning as the common thread running through NGOs around the world. They need to be more comprehensive for sure and the translation need to be understandable to each language community.
  
• Specific issues relevant to each language/country can still be facilitated by the creation of groups.
• Powerful filters to show only content and people in each language should be developed (think Google's search in "the web" or "only from the [country name]).

These are only the pluses, are there minuses of this approach? Would love to hear them for further discussions.

Camilla asked:

- does the community automate the translation?

- does the community look for volunteer translators and do this manually?

Have done some serendipitous research in this regard, with the answer being both. The translation effort must start manually, but can be automated to a certain degree once sufficient "translation database between languages" is developed by the community.

Discovered that in the translator community they have softwares that aid their work in translating documents. The latest development of the software enables the translation know-how of a great number of translators be aggregated into one large software-assisted human-auto-translation engine. Much like google translation, but using the database of translations by real, professional translators!

WiserEarth can imagine setting up such translation software/databse and integrate it into WiserPlatform somehow. Or if technically too difficult / impossible, WE can enable the community of volunteer translators to access, add and extract out translations from the software/database to then easily copy paste into WiserEarth's wikipages/wikispaces for further editing/refinements.

Here's a breakdown of the concept, explained further below it:

1. Each translator can develop his/her own translation memory (TM).

2. A termbase (TB) for each area of focus can be developed together by all translators.

3. These TMs and TBs can then be integrated into the translation software/database.

4. Any new translation effort can benefit from this database, where the workload for each translation can be reduced significantly.

Now, a more detailed explanation of each:

1. Each translator can develop his/her own translation memory (TM).

From a leading software in Computer Aided Translation (CAT):

A translation memory is a linguistic database that continually captures your translations as your work for future use. All previous translations are accumulated within the translation memory (in source and target language pairs called translation units) and reused so that you never have to translate the same sentence twice. The more you build up your translation memory, the faster you can translate subsequent translations, enabling you to take on more projects and increase your revenue.

2. A termbase (TB) for each area of focus can be developed together by all translators.

Again from a leading software in Computer Aided Translation (CAT):

Terminology is the foundation of all communication. At its most basic level it is the study and ultimately usage of words or phrases that have a particular meaning, these words or phrases are referred to as terms. Terminology is growing in importance as terms are becoming increasingly adopted by organizations to describe a company, product, service or even a unique selling point.

A termbase is a central repository, similar to a database, which allows for the systematic management of approved terms. It provides definitions and indicates when a particular term should be used. Use of a termbase alongside your existing translation environment ensures that you produce more accurate and consistent translations.

4. Any new translation effort can benefit from this database, where the workload for each translation can be reduced significantly.

As a result of the above, and as the database of translation for sentences and terminology expands, each new translation effort takes less time to do and gains in accuracy.

Concluding this section, I'll restate my previous point:

WiserEarth can imagine setting up such translation software/databse and integrate it into WiserPlatform somehow. Or if technically too difficult / impossible, WE can enable the community of volunteer translators to access, add and extract out translations from the software/database to then easily copy paste into WiserEarth's wikipages/wikispaces for further editing/refinements.