Your users want to help and contribute translations, but how do you make sure that translations are of qualify?
As of today, you can run Software Localization projects and mix between volunteer translators and professional translators.
This way, all your translators will use the same translation tool, have access to the same glossary and work on the exact same source. Your private translators will work on the system for free. When you use our professional translators, you only pay for the translation work.
Adding Your Volunteer Translators
You can create accounts for your volunteer translators in ICanLocalize. These will be special translators who can only work on your projects. Unlike normal translators in ICanLocalize, your own translators don’t have any account setup. They don’t need to prove their translation qualifications and we are not responsible for their work.
- Click on My Account->Private translators->Add.
- Enter your translator’s name and email and send the invitation.
- Once your translator accepts the invitation, the translator needs to go to Projects and apply for the project.
- You will see this application just like you’re used to see applications by ICanLocalize’s professional translators. Accept it and you can begin.
We Can Review Your Translators’ Work
Very often, we see that volunteer translators are very passionate, but lack the qualifications to work as professional translators. You probably still want top-notch translation but want to reduce costs by using your volunteer translators.
To polish the translation, we recommend enabling review. Professional translators, from ICanLocalize, will review your volunteers’ translations. Your translators and the professional translators from ICanLocalize will work together to ensure that translation is grammatically correct, accurate and consistent. That’s what professional translators do every day, so you can be sure they can help with your crowdsourced translations too.
To do this, click on the Enable Review button for each translation language. Review costs 50% of the normal translation rate, so you’re still saving a lot of money when translating with your volunteer translators. You’re also getting perfect results when combining with professional review.
Tell Us How It’s Working for You
Combining private translators with professional translation is very new to our Software Localization. We’re eager to hear how it’s working for you. Like many other features, we added this due to user demand.
Keep making suggestions and we’ll keep improving ICanLocalize!
I certainly hope this is a joke. If not, the joke may certainly be on those following such a path. Perfect results? That really depends on the inputs. Some sows’ ears simply cannot be made into silk purses, and amateur efforts often require more effort to repair (i.e. “review”) than to re-do. This ofte means *higher costs* through the use of unqualified translators.
It depends. For example, some folks have offered to help translate our own multilingual WordPress plugin to certain languages. It’s going fine. We’re translating with ICanLocalize translators to Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese and volunteer translators are helping with Indonesian and Dutch. Since we know these volunteers and trust their language skills, it’s going fine.
There are big projects who rely solely on volunteer translators. The two problems people get is uneven level of translation and unknown schedule. So, we’re trying to help this by offering paid review in case people insist on using their own volunteer translators. If the reviewer sees there’s too much work and review means re-translation he/she can always report it and leave the project.
“If the reviewer sees there’s too much work and review means re-translation he/she can always report it and leave the project.”
Really? Of course the reviewer can dump the project. But as responsible project managers, wouldn’t you suggest a change of approach to the client at this point? I suppose not if you’ve already promised “perfect results”, though I think it may be hard to deliver on that promise.
Of course volunteers can work well in a number of situations, and the efforts I have see in some Open Source projects can certainly stand up to many “professional” translations. But I think such projects need a more individual approach with careful analysis, not breezy promises and commitments based on too little information.