Tuesday, December 17, 2024 From rOpenSci (https://ropensci.org/blog/2024/12/17/localization-guide/). Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under the CC-BY license.
Since 2022, rOpenSci has been developing tools and processes to localize and translate our content. As a result of this effort, we created a set of guidelines to assist our community in translating and localizing our resources. What started as an internal challenge has evolved into a collaborative blueprint that we believe can help transform how scientific resources are shared in a multilingual research landscape.
Therefore, we’re excited to share the first version of the rOpenSci Localization and Translation Guidelines!
Chapter on General aspects of the stage 1 of the translation process in English and Spanish
These guidelines explain the rationale behind and the process for localizing and translating our resources. They are designed to support community members contributing to the multilingual publishing project. As a result, this is guide is also multilingual in itself, offering both general and specific guidelines for translating and localizing our resources across all active languages.
The guideline is more than a reference—it’s a living document of the collective expertise of our community and all volunteers contributing to this project.
Let’s introduce you to the guide with a walk through the six sections.
🔗 Preface: A collaborative invitation
A brief overview of the book’s purpose, intended audience, the goals of the guidelines, and instructions on how to contribute. We wanted to create something that would welcome contributors from all backgrounds—whether you’re a professional translator, a developer, or simply someone passionate about making scientific knowledge more accessible.
🔗 Motivation: Confronting language inequality
We’ve seen firsthand the challenges non-native English speakers face in scientific communication. This section explains the importance of localizing and translating our resources. It discusses the impact of language barriers, the principles of community-driven localization and translation, and how these activities contribute to community building. This chapter is our argument for change.
🔗 Overview: Our technical framework
This section introduces the concepts of localization and translation, explaining how they enhance accessibility. We introduce the tools and methods that make community-driven translation possible, outlining the technical infrastructure, work organization, and general aspects of our translation and localization process.
🔗 Translation and Review Guidelines: Our ideas in practice
This section offers a detailed guide on translating and reviewing our resources. It covers how to contribute to a new or existing language project and manage the localization and translation process. It also provides technical and general review guidelines to ensure translation quality: balancing the efficiency of machine translation with the qualified understanding that only human reviewers can provide.
🔗 Specific Language Guidelines: Embracing linguistic diversity
This chapter has specific content to each language version of the guide. This means that the instructions for English, Spanish and Portuguese may differ from each other, according to the agreements reached by the community and reflected in this chapter. It aims to offer guidance on handling everything from technical terms to cultural nuances, respecting the unique characteristics of each language and the community agreements on how to localize and translate content. This section also addresses the localization of citations, code, diagrams, and data. This chapter includes collaborative glossaries which are comprehensive terminology resources, useful as a reference and which help translators make consistent, informed choices.
🔗 NEWS
This section documents all changes made to the guidelines in each version, by whom, and shows the continuous improvement of the guide.
🔗 Next steps
This guide is designed for those interested in localizing rOpenSci materials or contributing to the maintenance of localized content, but we hope it is also useful for anyone tasked with localizing material beyond our community. We want our processes, agreements, and the lessons we’ve learned to benefit other communities as well.
This guide is a living document that will continue to improve with contributions from members of our community, refining and expanding our work. It is available in English and Spanish, with plans to translate it into other languages based on our active translation projects, like Portuguese.
We see it as a starting point for conversation, collaboration and meaningful change in the way we share scientific knowledge across language boundaries.
If you’d like to contribute to translation efforts or improve this guide, please check out the list of languages for which there are active translation projects and their statuses.
You can contact us at [email protected] or open an issue in the guidelines repository.
Now go forth and translate and localize!
