Volunteer Search: Translation Volunteer

[otw-recruit.livejournal.com]

Job: Translation Volunteer

Works With: Community Relations committee.

Description: Community Relations is looking for people to help us with international outreach. We want to collect information (via chat or email) about your experiences in non-English fandoms/fannish forums, translate the OTW's mission statement and values, and recruit people to help us hold discussion posts in multiple languages.

Currently, we are considering German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Italian as possible alternate languages, but this is subject to change based on the information we collect. If you are fluent in languages other than these, please let us know!

Experience in translation would be great, but is not necessary. If you think you can help us, send us your information.

We have German, Dutch and Italian volunteers hard at work but we need more volunteers in other languages, especially those who can translate English into Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian, to get those particular projects off the ground.

Estimated Time Involved: We anticipate several hours a week for the next month or so.

How to Volunteer: Send an email to volunteers@transformativeworks.org or post a comment here. All comments on this post are screened in order to protect the privacy of volunteers providing personal information.

Please include the following information:

Your name (you may provide your real name or your fannish name--please consider what you feel comfortable using both inside and outside the organization):

Your email address:

Fluent language(s):

Please put "Translation Volunteer" in the subject line of your email or LJ comment. Please do not include attachments or embedded links.

Anyone can contact the Volunteers & Recruiting committee at any time by commenting on this post (all comments are screened) or sending an email to volunteers@transformativeworks.org

ETA: If you simply have comments or questions about the translation process, but do not wish to volunteer, please comment on the Community Relations announcement. Due to the screened comments setting, comments on this post are accessible only to the Volunteers committee, which is not in charge of the translation process, only collecting information on potential translators. Thank you!

Upcoming events: International Outreach

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

Last week's anti-fanfic bingo voting had a fantastic turn out. If you didn't have the chance last week, please swing by to check out the questions and answers and tell us which ones are your favourites.

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There has been a great deal of discussion during and after our "Why OTW?" week, not only about OTW, but also about what it is to identify as a fan, what fandom means to different people and how individual fans and groups shape their own fannish experiences.

It's evident from what we've read that there have been some misconceptions about what our org is and what we hope to do. We apologise if we have been unclear about some of the concepts and policies, and we hope you will understand that we are still in the process of setting up policies and honing language. We don't have all the final, polished answers yet and we need time, hard work and your help to do that. In fact, our content policy will be up for discussion and feedback in a fandom-wide setting before we set our policies in stone.

This week, we have been discussing and working on plain language FAQs which address some of the concerns and rumours making the rounds. For example, the rumour that we will ban men from using the archive and other org services -- not only is that rumour completely untrue (and on the internet, how would we even know if you're a man?), we'd like to remind everyone that we have men among the staffers at OTW. We welcome all fans, regardless of gender, race and age, who wish to use the archive and wiki or need advice. (Plus, we don't eat babies, no matter how much ketchup there is and how tasty they look.)

Keep a look out for those FAQs as well as some interviews with some of the board members in the next few weeks!

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Finally, we need your help. We're kicking off our outreach campaign this March. One of our outreach goals is to make the archive and website accessible to a wide population. The archive is being built so that fanfiction in any language can be uploaded and read.

We know that there are a huge number of fandoms across the world: German fandoms, Spanish fandoms, Japanese fandoms, Korean fandoms etc... all kinds of different language fandoms. If you are currently in fandoms that are conducted in a language other than English or have been in these fandoms, we would appreciate your advice and your experience! We want to know about archiving, we want to know about legal situations in different countries, we want to know about how large the fandoms are, and what kind of fandoms there are.

Currently, we would like to start off by translating the OTW website into different languages so that people who speak various native languages can find out about us. We've also realised that organising chats in different time zones can be tricky. We're planning to open some discussion posts conducted in different languages where various native speakers of those languages can ask questions more easily.

We need volunteers who can give us a hand with international outreach. If you are interested, please read the Volunteers post following this post for more info.

ETA: changed "this spring" to "this March". My gravest apologies, Southern Hemisphere.