HTML Translation:Project Overview

Vision To allow anyone to translate existing web content into other languages, allowing non-technical people to deliver multilingual content and thus increasing the amount of non-English content on the Internet. Mission Create a tool to convert HTML content to a translation format that can be used in a web-based translation tool that would allow the content to be translated. Take various pieces of translatable content and expose this to various communities and with varying levels of intervention observe how much translation is achieved.

The internet is dominated by English content in many ways because more content is produced in English then other language. People who want to create multilingual content discover that the task is simply too daunting.

This project looked at two aspects of online content translation: the technical side, making existing monolingual content localisable, and the human side, monitoring what happens when content in made available, do people translate it.

Background

Providing web content allows a measure of access through technologies provided by the first mile component of the FMFI project. But once the content is displayed on a device we are confronted by the first inch problems.

English content delivered to users who do not speak English is of no use. Thus in order for the delivery of content in the FMFI context to be relevant we should be able to deliver multilingual content.

Partners

Three boundary partners where identified each of which allowed a slightly different configuration around the translations:

Creative Commons

Creative Commons uses its own web-based translation system to translate their licenses. However, its system does not actively help translators. This boundary partner was chosen as if the translation was successful it would result in a high profile success that would allow wider adoption of the concept of translation through good tools. It would be one in which Translate.org.za would manage the complete flow of data and allow us to limit outside issues.

Pootle User's Guide

Pootle is used as a Translation Management System (TMS) by a number of established localisation teams. Thus in this their would be an element of Translate.org.za being in control of the management of the results but no control over the translators. The translators are volunteers and they could simply be encouraged and know that their work would be integrated into the product.

FMFI participants

The last group was the highest risk. In this we were translating raw HTML content from the FMFI website. This made use of people who would not normally translate content. This in the long term would probably be the typical translation contributor. Being closely aligned to FMFI and also being a non-English group it was hoped that this group would rise to the challenge in that they could translate English content into other languages such as Portuguese.