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otw_news2008-03-27 07:53 am
mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com) wrote in otw_news2008-03-27 07:53 am
Entry tags:
Spotlight #1
مرحبا 你好! Salut! Namaste! Ciao! 안녕하세요! Ya'at'eeh! ¡Hola! Hej! Hello!
What is Spotlight on . . .?
A monthly opportunity to highlight some of the more arcane goings-on at the OTW. There are a lot of people doing a lot of work, most of it not readily discernible. Over thirty people are writing the code for the new archive; others are working on the content policy of the archive; others are starting the first membership drive (which went live Monday, 24 March, 2008); some are writing the first Annual Report of the organization, including the financial overview; and many more people are involved in many more projects. The OTW currently has almost ninety staff members (including the Board) plus volunteers all putting in many hours each week on these projects. We'd like to share some of them with you.
If you're interested in a particular person, committee, or project, please email Community Relations at comrel@transformativeworks.org!
Why start with the translation subcommittee?
Because it's new and shiny? Because it's near and dear to my heart? Because it began as a small project coordinated by ComRel that kept growing and growing? Mostly because it's such important work if the OTW is to achieve its vision of a safe place for any fan or fandom looking for "unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures."
Spotlight on Translation
We value the unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures while seeking to avoid the homogenization or centralization of fandom
--from the values statement of the OTW
As promised in volume 5 of the OTW Newsletter, the Community Relations subcommittee is beginning a series of "spotlights on" different people and activities in the OTW. We begin with a look at the translation volunteers and their ComRel liaison![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ciderpress.
Everyone in the OTW is terrifically excited by the translation effort. One of the primary goals of the OTW is to explore "ways to make fanworks as accessible as possible," and a key mechanism to achieve this goal is the translation effort. Community Relations committee member ciderpress has taken the lead on the project because the other committee members bullied her into it -- in fact, ciderpress has considerable experience; she speaks a number of languages and has a decade of translation and interpreting experience under her belt. As she explained to me, "I remember suggesting it to the committee while we were brainstorming outreach projects for this year -- it was, I think, my only suggestion -- and hey presto! I used to do quite a bit of freelance translating and interpreting so I have some experience and insight to offer should anyone need it." The OTW Board has just okayed the creation of a translation committee (it had been a subcommittee of ComRel), withciderpress as the interim chair until they get on their feet.
We're especially delighted that the OTW archive, An Archive of Our Own, will support most languages, including those written with something other than the Roman alphabet (e.g., Arabic script, simplified and traditional Chinese, Hiragana/Katakana, Urdu, etc.).
So what, exactly, is being translated? Thus far, the committee has translated nearly all of the OTW website and the membership drive announcement. The nine subcommittees (one per language) chat weekly with ciderpress, and email each other regularly, doing the work collaboratively. The translators are also visiting archives and discussion sites in the various languages to see how language is used and how fandoms congregate, as well as contributing their own experiences in these fandoms. They are an integral part of our fannish outreach that will be starting up in the next few months. Eventually, ciderpress would like to see multi-language discussions on the OTW-News and forums.
At the moment, ciderpress is coordinating the efforts of twenty-seven translators in nine languages: Czech, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish, and is always on the lookout for more: more translators and more languages. (If you can help, please email volunteers@transformativeworks.org and let them know.) Of these translators, six were kind enough to answer a few questions about what they're doing and why they're volunteering.
How do you define "success" for the translation effort?
Everyone who's studied another language quickly learns that Babelfish will not do for serious translation. Babelfish turns even a commonplace phrase like plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose into the clumsy the more that changes, the more it is the same thing. There is an Italian proverb tradurre e tradire which I'm told translates to "translation is treason." Simon Lewis explicates the proverb as "exact translation is never possible and that any translation therefore implies some 'betrayal' of the original" (from here). I asked the OTW translation volunteers how they define success of this project and most of them returned to this idea.
For example, Doro wrote, "A translation is successful, in my opinion at least, if it's an interpretation rather than a literal translation. That's because it's more than just words that have to be translated; it's the general tone of the original text, and sometimes you have to explain and change quite a bit to make the text fit into the context of documents the intended readers are used to. And of course, last but not least, the translated version has to transport the message of the original." And morganlefae said, "a translation is successful when it gets hard to tell which language the text was originally written in."
Thus, a successful translation would lead to an even greater success: that of reaching more fans in more fandoms than the initial OTW outreach was able to do. As morganlefae said, "the OTW website will be considered a success when it is accessible to as many people as possible, and nobody feels left out."
Why did you volunteer?
Translation takes a lot of time (anyone remember high school Spanish?), so why are these people spending so much time and energy on something they're not getting paid to do? What do they get out of it? Doro explained, "That's due to me being active in both English and German language fandoms. Even though my priorities differ (I read in English and write in German), I participate in discussions in both languages, and to me it is very important to make fandom less fragmented by language than it is at the moment. For the most part, it's like I am a part of two different worlds, and I long to build bridges between them. And I think the OTW wants to do that too." Lian explained that, "The idea of OTW appeals to me, and I think volunteering is a great opportunity to be *both* constructive and critical. (Yeah, I thought it'd be a better idea to try and help get it right than to haughtily sneer at someone else's efforts.)."
(ciderpress claims that, "i was offered booze! and candy! someone said there would be ladies and gentlemen of negotiable affections!" but I don't remember that. Or maybe they just forgot to offer me ladies and gentlemen of negotiable affections . . .)
Why bother?
I also asked a potentially offensive question -- one, I'm happy to add, I haven't heard anyone else ask -- but I thought it was important: Why translate when so many people read English? After all, according to Wikipedia, "over a billion people speak English at least at a basic level."
The volunteers' answers were wonderful and varied. rheasilvia explained, "Because it's a common misconception of fans in English-speaking fandom that the part of fandom visible to them is all there is. It's not - not by a long shot. Fandom is far bigger; there are huge fandoms in other languages that hardly overlap with English-speaking fandom, or have no point of connection at all.
"Many of the fans in these fandoms *don't* speak English well enough to participate in any fannish activity in English. And whether they do or not, why should fans in non-English-fandoms be interested in a fannish organization that speaks only English? It clearly isn't meant for them.
"Fandom is much bigger than just the English-speaking part of it. I'm very glad that the OTW wants to reach out not just to a certain part of fandom, but to fandom in general. It would be a truly great and wonderful thing if the OTW managed to connect fandoms that were only vaguely aware of each others' existence before."
OTW's own ciderpress wrote, "HAH! That isn't true at all. I think that limiting the org to English is shutting out a huge percentage of fans out in the world who don't use and don't wish to use English to communicate with each other.
"The thing is, in English language fandom -- which has UK, US, Australian, New Zealand, French, Italian, Russian etc people who speak English as a first or second language -- a lot of our origin stories are similar, no matter where we come from. It's generally something like: when I was young, I used to make up stories about book characters/tv characters/pop stars/actors and I grew up and then found more people like me! There are even more people out there like us, telling stories, doing fascinating things. And by limiting ourselves with a language barrier that can be easily overcome with awesome people who donate their time generously, we *lose* that diversity, we lose a chance to look at and talk with and learn from and enjoy fanworks from a huge group of people by excluding them by saying, no, we don't speak your language. At the end of it, the motive is, really, quite selfish. I don't want to miss out on good stuff just because people don't know we're here and because they don't feel comfortable communicating in English. It's all about *my* enjoyment!
"And seriously, it's factually not true. If you want to talk about it in pure population terms, we definitely need to consider moving everything to simplified Chinese because, hey, do you know how many Chinese character based languages/dialects there are in the world? Mandarin alone has the greatest number of native language speakers. And hey, even with all dialects factored in both English and Chinese *and* factoring in the number of people who speak each language as a first or second language, Chinese is actually the most widely spoken language in the world, not English. Wikipedia can shove it.
"And hey, how about Russian? That's still going strong in central Asia. And we can't forget that Spanish dominates a very large continent -- Spanish is the second most spoken first language on the planet. Portuguese is used in many pockets of the world and French is a lingua franca in Africa. And hey, what about Arabic? If you can read Standard Arabic, you're good to go in most of the Middle East and parts of central and south Asia. Persian? Middle East, India and Pakistan.
"I could go on and on. And on. Seriously. English is a lingua franca but I think we should be aware that fandom doesn't belong to one group, one country, one culture, one continent."
Lian explained that, "It's a form of showing respect, an effort to make fellow fans feel welcome and at home. On the other hand, to prevent misunderstandings and misrepresentation from outside parties." And rheasilvia agreed, saying "I hope that every OTW service that is launched will be available in all major languages -- and that non-English-fandoms will also find their way to the archive, the blog and other OTW endeavors."
What are your hopes for the project?
I concluded by asking our translation volunteers what their hopes were for the OTW's translation effort. Doro expressed her hope that, "in the end, the OTW and its projects become truly international. And I hope that non-English languages and fans won't be treated like second class, like it is the case with other fansites." Lian said that she hoped "we'll be able to generate a response from non-English fandoms and get a dialogue going. At the moment, genuinely open outreach might just be the OTW's biggest challenge."
But let's end this first Spotlight on . . . with the spotlight on ciderpress, who answered:
I hope that we'll see Arabic fanfiction on the archive, fanart stylings from South Africa, French language contributions to the wiki, fans from Bei Jing discussing meta about gen and het and slash with fans from Idaho in the journal, OTW being able to help fans get legal advice on every continent, should they need it.
Ta! Merci! Danke! Grazie! ありがとう! Obrigado! спасибо! Thank you, translators all, not only for volunteering so generously but for finding time to participate in this first Spotlight on . . ..
--written bymirabile_dictu with significant assistance from ciderpress
--femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee
ETA: If you can help with translations, please comment here or drop the Volunteers committee a note at volunteers@transformativeworks.org. And thank you!
What is Spotlight on . . .?
A monthly opportunity to highlight some of the more arcane goings-on at the OTW. There are a lot of people doing a lot of work, most of it not readily discernible. Over thirty people are writing the code for the new archive; others are working on the content policy of the archive; others are starting the first membership drive (which went live Monday, 24 March, 2008); some are writing the first Annual Report of the organization, including the financial overview; and many more people are involved in many more projects. The OTW currently has almost ninety staff members (including the Board) plus volunteers all putting in many hours each week on these projects. We'd like to share some of them with you.
If you're interested in a particular person, committee, or project, please email Community Relations at comrel@transformativeworks.org!
Why start with the translation subcommittee?
Because it's new and shiny? Because it's near and dear to my heart? Because it began as a small project coordinated by ComRel that kept growing and growing? Mostly because it's such important work if the OTW is to achieve its vision of a safe place for any fan or fandom looking for "unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures."
We value the unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures while seeking to avoid the homogenization or centralization of fandom
--from the values statement of the OTW
As promised in volume 5 of the OTW Newsletter, the Community Relations subcommittee is beginning a series of "spotlights on" different people and activities in the OTW. We begin with a look at the translation volunteers and their ComRel liaison
ciderpress.Everyone in the OTW is terrifically excited by the translation effort. One of the primary goals of the OTW is to explore "ways to make fanworks as accessible as possible," and a key mechanism to achieve this goal is the translation effort. Community Relations committee member ciderpress has taken the lead on the project because the other committee members bullied her into it -- in fact, ciderpress has considerable experience; she speaks a number of languages and has a decade of translation and interpreting experience under her belt. As she explained to me, "I remember suggesting it to the committee while we were brainstorming outreach projects for this year -- it was, I think, my only suggestion -- and hey presto! I used to do quite a bit of freelance translating and interpreting so I have some experience and insight to offer should anyone need it." The OTW Board has just okayed the creation of a translation committee (it had been a subcommittee of ComRel), with
ciderpress as the interim chair until they get on their feet.We're especially delighted that the OTW archive, An Archive of Our Own, will support most languages, including those written with something other than the Roman alphabet (e.g., Arabic script, simplified and traditional Chinese, Hiragana/Katakana, Urdu, etc.).
So what, exactly, is being translated? Thus far, the committee has translated nearly all of the OTW website and the membership drive announcement. The nine subcommittees (one per language) chat weekly with ciderpress, and email each other regularly, doing the work collaboratively. The translators are also visiting archives and discussion sites in the various languages to see how language is used and how fandoms congregate, as well as contributing their own experiences in these fandoms. They are an integral part of our fannish outreach that will be starting up in the next few months. Eventually, ciderpress would like to see multi-language discussions on the OTW-News and forums.
At the moment, ciderpress is coordinating the efforts of twenty-seven translators in nine languages: Czech, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish, and is always on the lookout for more: more translators and more languages. (If you can help, please email volunteers@transformativeworks.org and let them know.) Of these translators, six were kind enough to answer a few questions about what they're doing and why they're volunteering.
How do you define "success" for the translation effort?
Everyone who's studied another language quickly learns that Babelfish will not do for serious translation. Babelfish turns even a commonplace phrase like plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose into the clumsy the more that changes, the more it is the same thing. There is an Italian proverb tradurre e tradire which I'm told translates to "translation is treason." Simon Lewis explicates the proverb as "exact translation is never possible and that any translation therefore implies some 'betrayal' of the original" (from here). I asked the OTW translation volunteers how they define success of this project and most of them returned to this idea.
For example, Doro wrote, "A translation is successful, in my opinion at least, if it's an interpretation rather than a literal translation. That's because it's more than just words that have to be translated; it's the general tone of the original text, and sometimes you have to explain and change quite a bit to make the text fit into the context of documents the intended readers are used to. And of course, last but not least, the translated version has to transport the message of the original." And morganlefae said, "a translation is successful when it gets hard to tell which language the text was originally written in."
Thus, a successful translation would lead to an even greater success: that of reaching more fans in more fandoms than the initial OTW outreach was able to do. As morganlefae said, "the OTW website will be considered a success when it is accessible to as many people as possible, and nobody feels left out."
Why did you volunteer?
Translation takes a lot of time (anyone remember high school Spanish?), so why are these people spending so much time and energy on something they're not getting paid to do? What do they get out of it? Doro explained, "That's due to me being active in both English and German language fandoms. Even though my priorities differ (I read in English and write in German), I participate in discussions in both languages, and to me it is very important to make fandom less fragmented by language than it is at the moment. For the most part, it's like I am a part of two different worlds, and I long to build bridges between them. And I think the OTW wants to do that too." Lian explained that, "The idea of OTW appeals to me, and I think volunteering is a great opportunity to be *both* constructive and critical. (Yeah, I thought it'd be a better idea to try and help get it right than to haughtily sneer at someone else's efforts.)."
(ciderpress claims that, "i was offered booze! and candy! someone said there would be ladies and gentlemen of negotiable affections!" but I don't remember that. Or maybe they just forgot to offer me ladies and gentlemen of negotiable affections . . .)
Why bother?
I also asked a potentially offensive question -- one, I'm happy to add, I haven't heard anyone else ask -- but I thought it was important: Why translate when so many people read English? After all, according to Wikipedia, "over a billion people speak English at least at a basic level."
The volunteers' answers were wonderful and varied. rheasilvia explained, "Because it's a common misconception of fans in English-speaking fandom that the part of fandom visible to them is all there is. It's not - not by a long shot. Fandom is far bigger; there are huge fandoms in other languages that hardly overlap with English-speaking fandom, or have no point of connection at all.
"Many of the fans in these fandoms *don't* speak English well enough to participate in any fannish activity in English. And whether they do or not, why should fans in non-English-fandoms be interested in a fannish organization that speaks only English? It clearly isn't meant for them.
"Fandom is much bigger than just the English-speaking part of it. I'm very glad that the OTW wants to reach out not just to a certain part of fandom, but to fandom in general. It would be a truly great and wonderful thing if the OTW managed to connect fandoms that were only vaguely aware of each others' existence before."
OTW's own ciderpress wrote, "HAH! That isn't true at all. I think that limiting the org to English is shutting out a huge percentage of fans out in the world who don't use and don't wish to use English to communicate with each other.
"The thing is, in English language fandom -- which has UK, US, Australian, New Zealand, French, Italian, Russian etc people who speak English as a first or second language -- a lot of our origin stories are similar, no matter where we come from. It's generally something like: when I was young, I used to make up stories about book characters/tv characters/pop stars/actors and I grew up and then found more people like me! There are even more people out there like us, telling stories, doing fascinating things. And by limiting ourselves with a language barrier that can be easily overcome with awesome people who donate their time generously, we *lose* that diversity, we lose a chance to look at and talk with and learn from and enjoy fanworks from a huge group of people by excluding them by saying, no, we don't speak your language. At the end of it, the motive is, really, quite selfish. I don't want to miss out on good stuff just because people don't know we're here and because they don't feel comfortable communicating in English. It's all about *my* enjoyment!
"And seriously, it's factually not true. If you want to talk about it in pure population terms, we definitely need to consider moving everything to simplified Chinese because, hey, do you know how many Chinese character based languages/dialects there are in the world? Mandarin alone has the greatest number of native language speakers. And hey, even with all dialects factored in both English and Chinese *and* factoring in the number of people who speak each language as a first or second language, Chinese is actually the most widely spoken language in the world, not English. Wikipedia can shove it.
"And hey, how about Russian? That's still going strong in central Asia. And we can't forget that Spanish dominates a very large continent -- Spanish is the second most spoken first language on the planet. Portuguese is used in many pockets of the world and French is a lingua franca in Africa. And hey, what about Arabic? If you can read Standard Arabic, you're good to go in most of the Middle East and parts of central and south Asia. Persian? Middle East, India and Pakistan.
"I could go on and on. And on. Seriously. English is a lingua franca but I think we should be aware that fandom doesn't belong to one group, one country, one culture, one continent."
Lian explained that, "It's a form of showing respect, an effort to make fellow fans feel welcome and at home. On the other hand, to prevent misunderstandings and misrepresentation from outside parties." And rheasilvia agreed, saying "I hope that every OTW service that is launched will be available in all major languages -- and that non-English-fandoms will also find their way to the archive, the blog and other OTW endeavors."
What are your hopes for the project?
I concluded by asking our translation volunteers what their hopes were for the OTW's translation effort. Doro expressed her hope that, "in the end, the OTW and its projects become truly international. And I hope that non-English languages and fans won't be treated like second class, like it is the case with other fansites." Lian said that she hoped "we'll be able to generate a response from non-English fandoms and get a dialogue going. At the moment, genuinely open outreach might just be the OTW's biggest challenge."
But let's end this first Spotlight on . . . with the spotlight on ciderpress, who answered:
I hope that we'll see Arabic fanfiction on the archive, fanart stylings from South Africa, French language contributions to the wiki, fans from Bei Jing discussing meta about gen and het and slash with fans from Idaho in the journal, OTW being able to help fans get legal advice on every continent, should they need it.
Ta! Merci! Danke! Grazie! ありがとう! Obrigado! спасибо! Thank you, translators all, not only for volunteering so generously but for finding time to participate in this first Spotlight on . . ..
--written by
mirabile_dictu with significant assistance from ciderpress--
femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelynCommunity Relations Committee
ETA: If you can help with translations, please comment here or drop the Volunteers committee a note at volunteers@transformativeworks.org. And thank you!
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If you would like to know more specifics and would like to have a chat about it, please put your contact details down here: http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/24322.html
and we can arrange to chat or email in more detail.
Thanks!