Translation

Translation - Translation guide - Missing languages - Multilingual

CouchSurfing is an international network, it started out in English, but that's not the whole world yet! We are working on including people who don't understand the English text. CouchSurfing.com is ongoingly translated by volunteers into an increasing number of languages.

Structure of the team

The current structure is quite recent (June 2008) and constructive comments are very welcome. We've been working hard to allow a decentralized structure with a focus on the Language Teams and encouraging cooperation between them.

Translators

Translators have access to the Translation Tool for the languages they are expert in. They are expected to be active within their team, volunteering at least 5 hours per month in translating/reviewing/participating in the group.

Translations must take in account regional variations of the language, and be of high quality. Therefore, translating the website is a team work. Translators are invited to share their ideas/concerns with their team. The team is a friendly area where fun is not only allowed, but encouraged.

You don't need to be an Ambassador nor verified to become a translator. However, we ask you to have a minimum of experience in CouchSurfing, and some community interaction. Volunteering with our team should lead you to a better knowledge of the website and might lead to other volunteering opportunities.

In November 2008, there are over 180 volunteers in the Translation Team, covering 46 languages. Not all languages have team leaders, and therefore they are not all active.

Language Team Leaders

Each active team has one or two Language Team Leaders. They can be found easily as they are moderators of their language sub-group. Their tasks are roughly:

• Receive new volunteer applications for their team and add them to the groups when admitted
• Recruit, coordinate, train & manage team members
• Communicate with other Translation Teams and Translation Coordinators in regards to problems/concerns/ideas their team have.
• Report technical bugs
• Motivate other team members, set an example and stay open to different opinions
• Ease decision-making within the team to ensure a higher quality of output

Language Team Leaders are gathered together in a separate group where they co-build the team with the Co-Coordinators. Their participation is ESSENTIAL; they are in position to identify the problems their team encounters, ask and answers to questions, request training, support each other and relay information to their team. They are expected to be more "leaders" & "helpers" than translators. It's a challenging but rewarding position.

You can have a look at our discussions here, as they are public : Language Team Leaders group.

Language Teams

All Language Teams can be found as sub-groups of the General Translation Group. The structure adopted for translation teams aims at increasing volunteer satisfaction as well as quality and rapidity of our response. It is acheive that by decentralizing the work, empowering volunteer by supporting and trainning them and providing more autonomy for the language teams.

Some language teams have their own CS Wiki page as a place to gather achieved consent of the different language teams for future reference and further development. Some teams have 2 separate pages: a Team page with general information and a whiteboard where decisions are made/recorded.

• Chinese_team
• Esperanto_team
• French_team
• German_Team & Whiteboard
• Swedish_team
• Catalan_team

Translations Co-Coordinators

Eli	Anick-Marie

Their tasks consist in (but not limited to):

• Provide support to volunteers in terms of training, tools & procedures
• Have an ear for any Couchsurfer's language related issues
• Assess needs for translation and for the team
• Ensure efficient communication with other CS volunteer teams
• Facilitate communication within the team
• Ensure a consistent work is done towards our common translation goal
• Get inactive teams to become active, if there is a strong need for a translated version of the website in that language
• Moderating the General and the Language Team Leaders Translation groups
• Organize technical support and gathering/providing information on the "how-to"'s through groups and the wiki Translations_guide
• Adding choice of spoken languages on demand

Volunteering with the team

Becoming a Translator for CS

1. Visit the Translation Group to learn more. There you will see a number of language sub-groups.

2. If you see your language there, get into the sub-group. If there is a moderator to the language sub-group, it means the team has a team leader to whom you should introduce yourself and request permission to get into the team.

3. If there is no sub-group for your language, or your sub-group doesn't have a moderator, it means there is no active team working at the moment. Do you have what it takes to be a team leader ? Would you like to stay in the inactive team for when it becomes active ? Please contact Anick-Marie or Eli regarding that.

Technical Help

If you are a programmer with experience in php and interested in helping with the translation tools (debugging and development), committing to a few hours weekly, please get in contact with Anick-Marie or Eli.

Your involvement can trigger the combined input of dozens of other volunteers who have been bogged down for a long time, and they will help open CouchSurfing to many new CSers who can not join us now, because they simply don't understand the English pages.

By listening and responding to the issues of the Translation team, you will kill three birds with stone:

1) help a three-digit number of volunteers to get active (facilitate participation, eliminate frustration, multiply your own impact) 2) help really improve the website (the translators, too, are developers. They write in funny languages just like you, and their goal is to make CS barrier-free) 3) gain coding experience within the CS structure (maybe you'll get other opportunities from there?)

We have now two "Techies" working with us !

Vadim & Pierre are new to the team and we have big expectations for them to help us acheive quality and accessibility.

Helping us out

Missing Languages

Do you speak a language that is still missing on our database? Let us know! The Missing languages page on the wiki contains a list of languages to be added to the database (these are the 'spoken languages' and dialects which appear on a member's profile) and to be added to the list of languages in the translation menu.

Wiki Pages

If you want to translate wiki pages only, please look at Wiki_Translation_Teams.

Links

• Translation_Team_Wishlist
• Missing_languages to be added to the database and/or the translation groups and/or the available content languages of the CouchSurfing website
• Dictionaries and translation tips