Our objective is to build and document a streamlined process for content translation and start the development of localized content. We have already set up a simple translation pipeline [ 1 ] using Git, GitLocalize, and GitHub Actions.
Our initial objective is to get existing Project Catalyst Fund series content translated into their respective local language of the communities represented in Eastern Town Hall.
We will grow from there by translating various existing Cardano and Catalyst material into three to four languages of the current community in the Eastern Town Hall using a semi-automated system, and gaining experience and building community. Documenting what we do and how.
By semi-automated system, we do not mean machine translation. While machine translation is helpful as a starting point, it has difficulty with specialized terms and does not read naturally. Human translations will always have a slight advantage. A semi-automated system refers to an ability to queue a piece of work for translation, which may include feeding it through a machine translation service, having it worked on by someone, reviewed, and then published.
We will start to embrace and extend the excellent localization documentation processes established by the Kubernetes SIG Docs group [ 2 ] to help us. We are adapting the processes to accommodate the varying technical skills and future directions we want to take.
This recurring proposal is submitted to continue the widely accepted and anticipated prototype DAO program of the Eastern Town Hall (ETH), which is Compensated Community Translation. Through the usage of GitHub and GitLocalize, we have seen very enthusiastic participation by 2 (two) communities, Indonesian and Viet Nam. Through the data we have gained, we foresee the continuation of this system and perhaps the widespread use of it, either for social causes or business applications. Some metrics are as following and can be found on our GitLocalize [ 3 ] also :
In Indonesia, these are the following metrics;
- Duration of the time it took for the Indonesian community to translate all of Fund 7 Challenges are less than 6 (six) hours done by 5 (five) individuals with a variety of translations quality ranging from:
- Excellent: 0 to 3 errors – 4 occurrences
- Good: 4 to 7 errors – 18 occurrences
- Acceptable: 8 to 11 errors – 3 occurrences
- Duration of the time it took for the Indonesian community to translate all of Fund 8 Challenges are less than 7 (seven) hours done by 5 (five) individuals with a variety of translations quality ranging from:
- Excellent: 0 to 3 errors – 12 occurrences
- Good: 4 to 7 errors – 7 occurrences
- Acceptable: 8 to 11 errors – 3 occurrences
- Participants of this translation pipeline program from the Indonesian community
- 10 unique individuals
Across the majority of the Eastern Hemisphere, English is not routinely spoken on a daily basis. Instead, a web of regional languages is used throughout the social and business etiquettes.
These language barriers reduce participation in Catalyst. It limits the potential growth of Cardano adoption and utility in this region. We have experienced this first hand, and we hear this from our communities, and through the pipeline translation we have already developed, more and more individuals from those communities are starting to understand what drives Cardano and Project Catalyst. From this knowledge, they are able to formulate a proposal, though at times might not yet be acceptable by the community, it is an auspicious result.
This can easily be seen by the number of community development members from Indonesia and the number of proposals submitted from Viet Nam and Japan.
Seeing that this is very much a community-driven effort, creating a system that balances community engagement, high-quality translation and speed of translation will require numerous workshops/educational materials. It can be foreseen that numerous iterations and trial and error will be needed.
Another aspect that will pose a challenge is fine tuning the reward/compensation system that accommodates various economic standards throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. This also correlates towards the education level that differs from one nation to another. Some might have a grasp on English as a second language, therefore, rendering this translation pipeline not as alluring as other countries.
This might have an effect on creating a universal conclusion on the efforts of this proposal. The acceptance or disregard of this translation pipeline in itself is data from which we can gain knowledge.