History: WS08Paper:Introduction

Source of version: 44

Massively collaborative sites like Wikipedia are revolutionizing the way in which content is created worldwide. This is also having profound impacts on the way in which content is ''translated'' as well (Desilets 2007a).

__NOTE FROM AD: In these next few paragraphs, I think it's important to talk mostly about the MOTIVATIONS for wanting to do collaborative translation. We should not talk too much about the CHALLENGES with collaborative, because we will have ample time to talk about those in the rest of the paper. This is our one chance to really catch the reader's attention by talking about why organizations would want to do collaborative translation in the first place __ 

In particular, this raises the question of how  to  collaboratively author and translate content in several languages concurrently, in an organic, continuous fashion. This is a new model of translation which is very attractive for many community-built sites. For example, SUMO the Mozilla Support community, recently switched to a wiki approach to allow communities of volunteers to author the documentation for the Firefox browser. Since they require the content to be translated in at least 8 major languages, they are now faced with the challenge of supporting collaborative translation as well. Other examples of not for profit communities that employ a collaborative translation paradigm can be found in ( __TODO: Find the paper from Multilingual Computing that talks about collaborative volunteer translation__ ).

Collaborative authoring and translation is also becoming increasingly attractive for corporations. For example, this approach may allow corporations to crowd-source non core translation work to communities of volunteers who care deeply about having a particular content translated in a particular language (minority languages for example). Examples of corporations that use this approach include: __TODO: See if we can find some by googling for crowdsourcing translation__. Even in completely traditional corporate translation contexts, some teams of professional translators are also finding that this sort of collaborative, organic and agile approach to authoring and translation has definite advantages and may boost productivity (_TODO: Find the Multilingual Computing paper that talks about agile, collaborative translation in traditional settings__).

__NOTES FROM AD: Wondering if this next paragraph is redundant with the one that immediatly follows__

In a collaborative context, allowing authors to create original content is crucial. However, when it comes to translation, it causes serious synchronization problems. Moreover, through the crowd sourcing effects offered by wikis, the foundation may be able to propose the documentation in languages that would not have been thinkable in the past. To do so, reliable translation tracking tools are required.

__TODO: LPH wrote some excellent introductory French material in his project report. Use some of it here__

Translating content in these kinds of collaborative environments presents a number of unique challenges, compared to more traditional environments (Desilets et al., 2005). The primary difference is that in a collaborative environment, the process is much less controlled and more "chaotic". Traditional translation processes and tools operate under a number of assumptions which simply do not hold in a collaborative environment. Below is a list of those.

* __Assumption 1 - Master language:__ In a traditional context, original content is typically created in a master language, usually English. This is not realistic in a collaborative context, because not all volunteer authors will be fluent enough in English to write high quality content in that language. 
* __Assumption 2 - Edit freeze:__ In a traditional context, there is a strong tendancy to limit changes to the master language version while translation is still in progress. In a collaborative context, content is often in a permanent state of flux, and it is therefore not realistic to freeze it for a period of time to allow for its translation.
* __Assumption 3 - Enforceable timely translation__: In a traditional context, one can assume that timely translation of content can be enforced through contractual or employer-employee obligations. In a collaborative context, this is not possible since translators are often unpaid volunteers working on their own free time.
* __Assumption 4 - Controlled language pairs:__ In a traditional context, there is a tendancy to limit the number of supported languages to a small list of "core" languages, and to also limit the set of languages pairs for translation (usually to English <-> X where is is any other language in the core list). In a collaborative contetxt, members of the community are usually allowed to create content in whatever language, including minority languages, and translation may occur between any pair of languages.
* __Assumption 5 - Strong coordination__: In a traditional context, the community of authors and translators is a "closed" world, where mostly everyone knows each other, and there is some central authority that coordinates everything. In a collaborative context, authors and translators are not coordinated by any central authority and often do not know each other.
*__Assumption 6 - Trained translators:__ In a traditional context, translators are usually professionallly trained, and can be "enculturated" into the organisation's tools, processes and linguistic norms. In a collaborative context, translators are often amateurs, and the amount of tool, process and linguistic training that can be imposed on them is limited.
*__Assumption 7 - Separation of Authoring and Translation:__ In a traditional environment, authoring and translation are clearly segregated, and there are very little chances for the two to interfere with each other. Authors do not have to know about translation processes and translators do not have to know about the authoring processes. In a collaborative environment, it is difficult to separate those two processes, and the people doing the two are often the same one. As a consequence, there is a risk that introducing a translation process into a wiki community will complexify the basic authoring operations that have made the success of many wiki communities. 


__TODO: Eliminate or merge sentences which are redundant in the argumentation below.__

Thus the main technological challenge of collaborative translation is to come up with tools and processes that do not depend on those assumptions. By lifting those assumptions, even partially, we can move away from trying to control change, and move towards embracing it instead. 

While lifting assumptions and constraints is a good idea, one must also make sure that the tools offer sufficient structure to allow volunteer translators to be effective in their work, without having to do everything manually. 

Thus, tools that strike the right balance between removing assumptions and constraints, and providing sufficient structure to support work efficiently, are essential to allow community-built sites and for-profit organizations to achieve the full benefits of collaborative authoring and translation. Benefits in terms of wider diffusion of content in different linguistic communities, as well as cost savings through crowd-sourcing and increased productivity.

In this paper, we describe such a tool, called the Cross Lingual Wiki Engine (CLWE). This system is based on a fully-featured content management system (TikiWiki) and is ready to be deployed. It allows efficient collaborative authoring and translation, by lifting all of the above assumptions, at least partially.

To our knowledge, CLWE is the first one to go this far in supporting collaborative authoring and translation of content, and to be usable in actual production settings.

__TODO : Overview of the sections to come. Do it at the end when the sections are stable__

History

Enable pagination rows per page

Information	Version
Sat 12 of Apr, 2008 16:54 GMT alain_desilets	53	Actions View Source
Sat 12 of Apr, 2008 16:08 GMT lphuberdeau	52	Actions View Source
Sat 12 of Apr, 2008 15:21 GMT alain_desilets	51	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:40 GMT alain_desilets	50	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:39 GMT alain_desilets	49	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:37 GMT alain_desilets	48	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:36 GMT alain_desilets	47	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:30 GMT alain_desilets	46	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:18 GMT alain_desilets	45	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:17 GMT alain_desilets	44	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:17 GMT alain_desilets	43	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:16 GMT alain_desilets	42	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:15 GMT alain_desilets	41	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:14 GMT alain_desilets	40	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:13 GMT alain_desilets	39	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:12 GMT alain_desilets	38	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:11 GMT alain_desilets	37	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:11 GMT alain_desilets	36	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 01:02 GMT alain_desilets	35	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 00:50 GMT alain_desilets	34	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 00:42 GMT alain_desilets	33	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 00:18 GMT alain_desilets	32	Actions View Source
Fri 11 of Apr, 2008 00:10 GMT alain_desilets	31	Actions View Source
Thu 10 of Apr, 2008 15:45 GMT lphuberdeau	30	Actions View Source
Wed 09 of Apr, 2008 11:33 GMT alain_desilets	29	Actions View Source
Wed 09 of Apr, 2008 00:14 GMT alain_desilets	27	Actions View Source
Wed 09 of Apr, 2008 00:13 GMT alain_desilets	26	Actions View Source
Wed 09 of Apr, 2008 00:11 GMT alain_desilets	25	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 23:40 GMT alain_desilets	24	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 23:39 GMT alain_desilets	23	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 23:35 GMT alain_desilets	22	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:42 GMT alain_desilets	21	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:42 GMT alain_desilets	20	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:41 GMT alain_desilets	19	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:38 GMT alain_desilets	18	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:35 GMT alain_desilets	17	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 22:10 GMT alain_desilets	16	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 19:35 GMT alain_desilets	15	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 19:33 GMT alain_desilets	14	Actions View Source
Tue 08 of Apr, 2008 18:18 GMT alain_desilets	13	Actions View Source