Communications subcommittees/Trans

[edit] Overview

The translation subcommittee is a subcommittee of Communications committee, responsible for the translation of Wikimedia Foundation information, to make it available in multiple languages. It was originally founded as promotion & translation subcommittee in early 2006, and separated in August 2006.

The translation subcommitee also deals with translation-related inquiries in the OTRS translation queue.

[edit] Translation

There are over 200 languages supported by the Wikimedia Foundation in some way. The translation of key announcements must cover a core set of languages (see below) and should cover many of the other languages, according to some general scheme of prioritization. Translation of promotional material depends on cultural and other context, but is expected to follow broadly the same priorities.

[edit] Membership

Current Transcom members are:

• Aphaia - e-mail
• Az1568 - e-mail
• Cbrown1023 - e-mail
• Htchien - e-mail
• Yuyu - e-mail

All members can be reached in English.

[edit] Partners

• Translation coordinators per language
• Translation teams

The committee also seeks possible collaboration with third parties. See #Communications.

[edit] Daily work

• Translation subcommittee's todo list
• Translation requests all current requests related to the Wikimedia Foundation and it's sister projects.

[edit] Communications

You may contact Transcom by mail; our address is translationwikimedia.org.

Individual members are also contactable via email. (See #Membership).

[edit] Newsletters

• The Babylonian is a general newsletter from the translation subcommittee, available on translators-l and meta.

[edit] General discussion

For discussion in general, we offer a few ways of communication. In both ways, you can discuss issues with both translation subcommitee members and other interested people.

• mailing list - translators-l@lists.wikimedia.org is dedicated to general discussion on translation in Wikimedia projects. Not limited to matters that the translation subcommittee directly manages. You are invited, for example, to submit your translation request which you may want to send to several other Wikimedia mailing lists.
• Internet relay chat (IRC) - #wikimedia-translation provides you with online real time communication with other translators and your coordinators. You will find there translation subcommitee members and other interested people. This channel is where the Translation subcommitee hosts its meetings.
• Skype - Wikimedia Translations is the Skype channel were you can talk to other translators and coordinators. The benefit to Skype is that you get copies of the messages that were sent while you were offline (easier to stay up-to-date).
• Meta talk:Babylon a place dedicated to discussions about all the translations-related issues here on meta

[edit] Meetings

Transcom is planning to have a regular open meeting monthly. For further details, see the link below.

• Meetings

[edit] Suggestions/Ideas

Suggestions of tools and methodologies for translation, and pointers to existing projects to organize and coordinate translations, go here.

[edit] Core set of languages

Further information: Communications subcommittees/Trans/core langs for the first set; Licensing update/Translation/Languages (stats based on number of edits on the projects) for the second set

We are going to subdivide the languages in Transcom Priority Levels, this does not mean any discrimination of a language because it is more or less important - each language is important. The differentiation is made due to a combination of

1. likelihood that a current Wikimedia editor can read it
2. likelihood that speakers of that language can read languages in lower levels
3. population of potential/future Wikimedia editors who can read it
4. population of current Wikimedia project readers in that language who can read it

If you have suggestions on how to change this list and why, please use the discussion page. Please note that many languages are missing, since this is just a worklist to get things on the way, and our capacities are limited. Also, even if your favorite language is not on that list yet, you will be welcome to create Wikimedia related content in that language.

[edit] Organisation

You will need two kind of expertises: 1) translations and 2) people to find translators everywhere. -- Oscar

• Tree structure of translation staff: The organisation of all these languages would be pyramidical; no one can do all works necessary hence we would like to find a way helpful to work together. See also translation coordinators per language. We also need people who only care about comunicating what needs to be done and people who upload translations they maybe receive by e-mail. It is a kind of a pyramidal organisation; each translators can ask a help for coordinators who understand their own language, and coordinators and Transcom collaborate with each other.

• Set priorities: there need to be different levels of urgency and we should try to give deadlines - that makes it easier for people to decide to do a translation or not.
• Information of translators: Babel templates and language combinations (Transbabel). Babel and Transbabel templates provide information on who works in which language(s) with categories generated thanks to those templates. Organisation work is going, and it will be easier to find help.

[edit] Tools

• OmegaT (on Wikipedia) - using a CAT-Tool is valuable in particular when we have updates of articles and when people share translation memories.
• Implementation of read-from-wiki store-to-wiki functionality within OmegaT (we were already talking about that with Kim - for the translation of wikipedia articles - I'll try to get detailed info by Saturday 1st April)
• Using OmegaT we need a repository for translation memories so that other users can use them. Who works with OmegaT translating contents for the WMF that are under GFDL should accept to release the resulting translation memory under GFDL or in the Public Domain.
  • If you have a question about those tools, please put it to the talk page or mail it to translators-l.
• Translation teams – usually the teams' pages have list of people who can help you, as well as translations of common words.