Language Access Working Group

Lang Access Updates

• There are translators ready to go, but not nearly enough. Please continue to help us recruit more folks for text translation pre-forum as well as folks who would be down to help at the event. They can be directed to my email - Roberto@ussf2010.org

• Assessing both capacity and the data we have received so far, at this time translation will be between English and Spanish. At the OC mtg next week, I will lay out our plan for the providing interpretation at the forum.

• The Language Access group is going to focus on translating generated content. We leave to the individual working groups to tackle prioritizing what gets submitted to the pipeline asap and what can wait (tho at this point, barring the upcoming program and workshop description, there’s probably little that can wait).

• What does that look like in practice? The website is a good place to start. At this point the entire things needs to be translated. I’m not sure if there is a body who oversees the overall website for content or if different workgroups are posting their own, but someone needs to start submitting specific webpages to be fed into the pipeline (process explained below). These will be translated and returned for use or posting online.

• The above process will work well for static pages. At Detroit I would like to figure out how to keep up with pages that are frequently changed or updated.

Translation Pipeline: Making a Translation Request

If you have a document that needs to be translated:

• Please submit everything as a doc. The pipeline is set up to up/download and forward documents. These can be either .doc or .rtf. Please do not send links to websites. This will require copy/pasting webpages into document form.

• Send all requests to Roberto@ussf2010.org. I will introduce them into the marvelous mechanism set up by our tech friends. From there the bad-ass translators will do their thing.

• Please make sure that to include the following information in your email:

Word Count (in MS Word this can be found in the Tools drop-down menu).

Due date. This is especially important for time-sensitive documents (plz remember that everything is dependant on capacity). For now, we will work under the assumption that the website submissions all need to be done asap. Still, if a certain webpage needs special priority (registration, donations) please make sure to indicate that

Title – please make these as obvious as possible (Credit Card Form, Childcare request, etc). For webpages, I suggest using the title that is found on the site map. That will make it easier to verify and/or cross-reference.

Who to return it to. I would suggest that docs be returned to the person submitting. That person can then post on the website themselves or forward if necessary. If however, the document should be returned to someone other than the submitter, please let us know (include complete email address). All returned docs will be returned with the suffix – SP. For example, if you submit at doc names Housing Request Form, the one you get back will be names Housing Request FormSP. The suffix will help us keep track of the source and translated docs and will let you know that has been translated.

• Please, please make sure that you are sending us the final copy of documents. This should be less of a challenge with long-standing static docs and webpages. For works in progress however, please make to have all your wordsmithing, edits, etc, done before sending for translation. It disrupts the workflow to get things set back for editorial changes. Also, there is no guarantee that you will get a quick turnaround on edits.

Meeting Notes

6/3/09 Language Access WG Conf Call

Notes from 2007

"One Movement, Many Languages: Building Multi-lingual Capacity at the U.S. Social Forum" Hilary Klein, Language Access Coordinator, USSF draft of USSF Atlanta experience, by Hilary Klein