Difference between revisions of "Welcome to New Translators"
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Revision as of 21:01, 18 July 2012
If you are reading this page it is because you have just agreed to join Global Voices Lingua Project as a volunteer translator. Thank you!
This document will explain our community and goals. For a technical explanation of how to post translations please read the Lingua Translators Guide carefully.
Related posts: Translators Guide | Community Building Guidelines
Contents
Hello New Translator!
These are some of the things you should know before you get started. We don't have an office, so we operate virtually. With more than 500 contributors, it can be a little hard to figure out what's going on.
Most of the activity revolves around Global Voices in English, but we are increasingly seeing our Lingua Project grow: we have more than 30 translation websites that have their own editorial teams and translators. Some of these sites have also started producing multilingual content too.
In addition to them, Global Voices Advocacy and Rising Voices function as independent projects, the first to fight for free speech online, the second to promote citizen media tools and bring more voices online.
Getting started
This is the basic information you need to understand what Global Voices is.
What translators do
Your role as a translator is to make the interesting conversations taking place in the blogosphere and citizen media worldwide and that are covered by Global Voices available in your language.
For advice and tips to help your translation comply with GV standard style and format, see the GV style guide.
We have some distinct groups of translators:
English into Lingua translators
You will be mainly translating from English into your mother tongue, choosing one of the posts daily available at the Global Voices in English website, and publishing your translation on one of the many Lingua websites
Lingua into English translators
You will be mainly translating posts from one of the many Lingua websites into English, and will be working in close collaboration with the regional and language editors to find out which posts are available for translation. Your translations will be posted at the Global Voices in English website.
Lingua into Lingua translators
You are able to translate from one of the Lingua sites into your mother tongue, without the need to use English as a bridge language. You will be concentrating on the posts written originally in a lingua site and your translations will be published in another Lingua website.
Logging in
Your editor will send you a username/password for Global Voices.
The first thing you should do, is edit your profile, add a photo, and change your password to something you can remember.
Lingua Translators Guide
We use a software called WordPress to publish both posts and translations. It's fairly intuitive and you should be able to get the hang of it pretty fast.
For a detailed explanation of how to add posts and what to watch out for, please read the Lingua Translators Guide.
Mailing lists
Once your first post has been published, you will usually be added to two Google groups email mailing lists.
The main group is called the "GV-Authors" email group. Everyone at Global Voices is included in the conversations on the GV-Authors group, and we discuss both editorial and organizational issues here.
Volunteer translators are members of the Lingua-all list, as well as site editors, the tech team, GV Core and others in the GV community who are interested in Lingua.
There are also the regional email group with other bloggers from your own region; language specific groups for the Lingua project and some lists used only to request translations.
As you can see from the diagram there are numerous conversations going on at once. Together, we are Global Voices.
Being a part of a community
As a Global Voices community member you help decide what happens to the website, what our priorities should be, and what the future of our project is. You should always feel free to suggest ideas or raise concerns. We also try to connect to each other through Social Networking sites. Global Voices Board of Directors also has two elected members, one for volunteers, and one for the staff.
Welcome to the family!
What to expect
Being a Global Voices translator can be very rewarding and often leads to many new friends, and even professional opportunities as you will build an impressive profile while helping a worthwhile cause.
Everything on Global Voices is published under a Creative Commons license, so be prepared to see your best translations appear on other news websites and blogs too.
Global Voices meetings
Every year and a half or so, Global Voices holds a Summit (so far in London, Delhi, Budapest, and Santiago) where we try to bring as many Global Voices contributors together as possible. In the past, we've been able to invite some our most active volunteers to travel to these Summits at no cost. We will always strive to bring as many people as possible.
At other times, Global Voices authors and editors who live in the same cities or continents have managed to organize their own, smaller meetings. Feel free to reach out to people in your own region. You may also be invited to blogger events or conferences where you meet other Global Voices contributors.
