Crowdsourced Translations in the NEAR Ecosystem

David_NEAR · April 14, 2022, 11:09am

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a tonne of energy and enthusiasm from individuals and groups looking to translate the content on near.org into their local language - which is awesome to see!

The NEAR Community is global and will only continue to grow, so it’s logical to pursue localisation throughout all of the key documentation and websites.

Currently, the NEAR Foundation is working to establish a process to ensure localisation of near.org and other relevant pages. We agree, wholeheartedly, that information should be available and easily accessible to every member of the NEAR Community (and beyond!). And, to achieve that goal, we need to continue to translate our content.

However, until the process for localisation is established it’s clear that there are plenty of contributors who are looking to get started earlier.

So, I ask you, what’s the best way to facilitate this?

Here are a few thoughts from me:

Pick the Low Hanging Fruit

Let’s aim for the core information which can:

Help people understand NEAR
Help people onboard to NEAR
Highlight why NEAR is the number one choice for developers and end-users in the crypto ecosystem

A great place to start would be near.org, but we should be selective as to which pages we translate. For example, the Grants page might be more valuable to translate than the Brand page?

Praise the Existing Translators!

There is a tonne of Guilds and contributors in the ecosystem who, as part of their funding requests, have folded in the desire to translate articles that are published by NF and beyond.

I think it would be wise to leverage these groups, who are already receiving funding, and direct them toward the translation of the website and other core documentation.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal (CrowdIn)

Ethereum.org has an incredible translation program that has been ongoing for some time.

You can check out the details here.

TL;DR - Check out this video.

By leveraging Crowdin, a crowdsourced translation tool, Ethereum.org has been able to translate almost 3m words with 3k+ contributors.

Crowdin seems to do an excellent job at facilitating translations. If there are other preferred platforms already in use by community groups, feel free to propose them below.

Considerations

How do we prevent double work?
Is Crowdin the best platform to facilitate this?
How do we ensure the quality of the translations? IMO, this needs professional intervention
There’s an entire crypto-focused lexicon, will this prevent issues when translating into other languages?

Final Thoughts

Right now, we’re not looking to pay per submission. A crowdsourced translation platform is, IMO, the best avenue to pursue. Perhaps we can explore NFT distributions for contributors?

Right now, I, nor any other member of the NF, will be able to provide a tremendous amount of oversight for crowdsourcing translations. Though, this may change in the future.

Looking forward to hearing thoughts, suggestions, and everything else from you!

David_NEAR · April 14, 2022, 11:11am

cc @crypto_blckhntr , @Alecaseg, @jeph ,

jeph · April 14, 2022, 2:17pm

Hola, siempre es un gusto leer tus comentarios, pues siempre son bastante correctos.

Agradezco el que tengas pendiente las traducciones.

Tal como he comentado, coincido en que tener la información en varios idiomas ayudará al crecimiento de la comunidad de desarrolladores y de usuarios finales.

Pienso que ya comprobamos que CrowdIn solo ha funcionado en 1 idioma y la mitad del otro:

https://crowdin.com/translate/near-docs

Parece ser que es necesario el estar detrás de las personas para que traduzcan allí.

No quiero decir que estoy en contra de CrowdIn, sin embargo mi respuesta a esta pregunta sería no.

Me parece que es un tema que estamos dejando pasar y que es muy importante, a mi me hubiera gustado tener disponible la documentación en español, para mayor facilidad, y conozco varios desarrolladores que no han podido entrar a la comunidad porque su inglés no es lo bastante bueno.

Y ni hablar de las dApps, si bien es cierto que hay gente que pone dinero en donde sea sin leer, hay otras personas a las que les gusta leer antes de “arriesgar” su dinero.

Creo que la “facilidad” de darle clicks y siguiente puede llevar a traducciones mal hechas, como decimos en México:

“El flojo trabaja doble”

Debo admitir que es la primera vez que entro a esta página, y me dispuse a elegir un tema al azar y ver si me brincaba un error, lo cual sucedió en no más de 30 segundos.

No es transición, es transacción.

No es Bobs, es Bob, seguramente alguien lo tradujo dando clicks nada más.

Nuevamente, agradezco tu tiempo y esfuerzo en este tema, espero podamos encontrar un equilibrio, y que sea lo mejor para NEAR.

This is the first time that I write something in Spanish in the forum, I think it supports the idea of the importance of translations.

I will write this text in English in a few minutes.

Greetings.

crypto_blckhntr · April 14, 2022, 3:43pm

bro, waiting ur idea in English text.

you have created TRANSLATORS GUILD: Introduction Translators Guild

so can you add me to the that GUILD as a Turkish Translator?
I’m the person who translated the NEAR WALLET into turkish lang.

Kurenai · April 14, 2022, 3:58pm

This is great. I believe translating articles will break language barrier as some cannot fully understand some complicated words. Looking forward to this!

David_NEAR · April 14, 2022, 4:30pm

That is why they employ professional translators once a language is complete - we would 100% have to do the exact same thing.

What alternative would you have in mind? I don’t think a ‘free-for-all’ approach would be very efficient.

This is for docs and, AFAIK, not managed by NF but, rather, Pagoda. We would probably have to pursue a new one.

jeph · April 14, 2022, 5:09pm

Translation of my last comment:

Hello, it is always a pleasure to read your comments, because they are always quite correct.

I appreciate that you have the translations pending.

As I have said, I agree that having the information in multiple languages will help the growth of the community of developers and end users.

I think we already saw that CrowdIn has only worked in 1 language and half of other:

https://crowdin.com/translate/near-docs

It seems that it is necessary to be behind pushing the people so that they translate there.

I don’t want to say that I am against CrowdIn, however my answer to this question would be no.

It seems to me that it is an issue that we are letting go without a good solution and that it is very important. I would have liked to have the documentation available in Spanish, for greater ease, and I know several developers who have not been able to enter the community yet because their English is not pretty good enough to understand every concept.

And not to mention dApps, although it is true that there are people who put money anywhere without reading, there are other people who like to read before “risking” their money.

I think that CrowdIn’s “ease” of clicking and following can lead to poorly done translations, as we say in Mexico:

“The lazy works double”

I must admit this is my first time on this page, and I set out to pick a random topic and see if they had an error, which happened in no more than 30 seconds.

Is not transición, but transacción.

Is not Bobs, but Bob, surely someone translated it by clicking continue and nothing else.

Again, I appreciate your time and effort on this topic, and I hope we can find a balance that will be the best for NEAR.

NEW TEXT:

You’re telling me the page I visited wasn’t 100% complete and that’s why I found a mistake so easily? (It is a real question, I don’t know how they work, I don’t build there, so I never looked at their docs before).

Yeah, I don’t think a “The Hunger Games” of translations is the best approach, it needs someone dedicated to verify and mediate in case of doubts, problems, errors, typos, …

But yes, giving opportunity to everyone, double checking if their translations are good enough, if they are good, continue.

As I said in the other post, I would be that person, I can dedicate time to lead the translations team, I would collect every translation done in a “Google Doc”, and collect it in “google sheets”. (It’s just an idea).

And the true thing is that I can’t start with all the languages of the world, but I have a team of leaders that could lead 6 different languages starting next week.

With your approval we can try for a month, I have no doubt that we would succeed.

If you think someone else would do a better job with the lead position, I’m fine.
I just want to keep helping onboarding people to NEAR.

JEPH

jeph · April 14, 2022, 5:25pm

Yeah, sure.

I’ll message you later, thank you for your interest.

ame9986 · April 14, 2022, 6:05pm

Hi @jeph , I agree with you.

It is hard for Spanish speakers or other language speakers to get onboard to the whole NEAR ecosystem when everything is in English, and their English is not the best.

It is funny to see this error, but it is also so common that sometimes the hurry and not double-checking led to this.

Even though they say in the Ethereum translation program that they have a review process, this kind of thing happens, and it took only a sec checking. Imagine if you go further.

I have to agree with @jeph, some sentences are awkward, and you can find them on the main page of Ethereum.org in Spanish.

captura

I believe a translation team is the best way to approach this. A guild for this was working on the idea: “The translators guild.” and I think it should get the support.

Even though CrowdIn is a great way to collaborate, sometimes you don’t get the best results, and it does not have the scope in other languages.

The expertise of a professional is needed. Or at least people who have worked with a text translation.

Translating is not an easy thing to do. People can speak and understand a second language, yet, translation requires knowledge of that foreign language and an understanding of one’s own.

For example, Spanish has so many rules that it can be harsh even for a native speaker to follow them.

The Translation program of Ethereum is good, but we can be better.

So hopefully, the idea of @jeph will be something to consider.

Best regards

REK · April 14, 2022, 6:36pm

We are waiting to same thing on Near Ecosystem.

crypto_blckhntr · April 14, 2022, 8:22pm

Dear; Unfortunately, the translation that has been made for the Turkish language is not suitable, yet all of the errors have been confirmed. So I think the Crowdin is not the right place…

David_NEAR · April 15, 2022, 8:55am

What’s the alternative you propose?

David_NEAR · April 15, 2022, 8:56am

If we’re going to move forward with a Guild focused on this, which IMO is not the best route, then we need to be able to move forward from:

‘We trust this Guild to be competent enough at translation’

TO

‘This Guild is verifiably capable at translating, i.e - they’re professional translators’

jeph · April 15, 2022, 4:58pm

This is something that we already did with the NEAR Design Guild:
https://gov.near.org/tag/design-guild

We trust them, we support them, and they are a group of professionals that has proved their value.

From my side, here are some of my translations (there are even more at LNC):

Of the languages that I’m talking about that I want to start translating, I completely trust my team, their work is of high quality too, the translations are reviewed at least once by another person.

Of course, if you want to pay 3 times to a company (That 99% sure, they will not accept NEAR as a payment method) and, like any other human, it’s not free of errors, then you can, despite the fact that 90% of us think that it is not the correct option.

You are a very important member of NF and the community, your vote is the only one who counts in this, I think there is nothing left for me to say here, and we will wait for your solution.

Your friend:
JEPH

Fifiboss98 · April 15, 2022, 10:17pm

Hello to all.
I’m not sure the french translation could be called professional.

I am a French native speaker and I’ve worked on many translations in the Crypto space. I also sometimes write articles about Crypto terms.

The only thing I could say is what I have noticed based on my experience is that translating doc is very harder than writing articles.

To be brief, my proposal is to launch a translation ‘‘marathon’’ of translating a text of 1k words Near docs based and let the concerned community to vote on wich one is better understanding, only one.

Then go with collaboration with the most rated translator.

Thanks

Fidèle

jeph · April 15, 2022, 11:05pm

Hey, I just want to comment that limiting the job to one person centralize the possibility of error, and I think is against the idea of giving job opportunities to the community.

But this is your opinion and it is valid, respected and considered.

For the other side, if you want to join the team and make French translations (if the proposal is accepted) send a message to @Alecaseg please, you’re more than welcome to join the team.

NearNFT.io_SYKO · April 16, 2022, 1:13am

Hio !

I was one of the first contributors who has translated (English-German-Turkish) Ethereum Dapps/Products with Crowdin on Steemit.com via Utopian.

On early days everything was perfect, but it was easy to outwit the system too. So after the team got negative feedbacks they moved the whole contributions to Github. But with this move the contributions decreased more than 50%.

I really haven’t got a perfect suggestion for a platform, but I can share with you my experiences and tell you about the processes, which we performed out to get high success in a more professional way.

Hierarchical Structure:

1. Translators
2. Proofreaders
3. Admin

Example: Building a group for English-German translations. Employing three Translators, two Proofreaders and one Admin. Translators working together in batches or separate, sending their translations to the Proofreaders. Proofreaders checking up the translations and sending them for the final approvement to the Admin.

This is the safest way to get high success for translations.

P.S. '‘Language is the code of communication’'

crypto_blckhntr · April 16, 2022, 1:48pm

I agree with you that the task should be open to everyone, but! the translation should not be everyone’s business.
You should work with a team that has already proven itself on NEAR or Blockchain translations because the blockchain contains technical and some new expressions, so it requires further research, technical analysis, and revision as well.

In a team;

Translators - Proofreaders.
A Supervisor !

crypto_blckhntr · April 16, 2022, 5:43pm

This is our consensus.

and “near.org” is not an ordinary-common article, so it should definitely be translated into very clear terms.

derymars · April 17, 2022, 10:05am

I think language is a serious thing to accelerate adoption and education about the NEAR ecosystem

My advice regarding this, anyone can register to become a translator/proofreader, by stating their proven work related to translation (of course they must have a strong foundation related to the crypto ecosystem, especially the NEAR protocol!)

we can entrust to the Region Guild by asking for feedback/recommended people

so that there is a responsible party to assess the results and make a decision to continue / not (DAO council)

Steps to do:

Create Translator DAO
Open for Sub-DAO which represent several regions or languages
Determine what kind of council can be “responsible” and anyone who wants to become a “member” must provide evidence and the results of their work
Distribute the job, evaluate whether they are good or not at all