translation software

[jj]

Does anyone know of any open-source projects to create group-based translation software? Not machine translation, but a way to coordinate the work of translators.

sorry if this is in the wrong topic, didn't know where to post it.

[roddy]

I'm not sure what the right topic is either, so it can just stay here

The best place to look for open source stuff would be Source Forge. I just did a quick search there for 'translation' and there are a few possibly useful results.

Another potentially useful place to look would be the forums at Translator's Cafe - I'd imagine if there was anything suitable the folks over there would have heard of it.

Roddy

[msittig]

A long time ago (in Internet Time) there was a website based in Japan where people would sign up indicating their native language and other languages to do volunteer translation. You could also submit short phrases, sentences, or passages that you needed translated. I'm supposing somebody behind the scenes kept a list of the people who signed up and forwarded along the translation requests, along with the e-mail of the person requesting it, which made it reasonably anonymous. I know I got a couple of small translation requests through this.

I thought, and still think, that this was a neat idea.

One suggestion is to ask anime fan-sub groups. I know they do a lot of coordinated translating. Also, Microsoft Word has (though I have no experience with this) revision control features that allow you to see what another author has changed. This could be the basis for such translation coordination software. (edit: oops, I missed the open-source part. Well, Roddy's ideas are good ones)

[roddy]

This looks like the most promising of the Source Forge stuff. What kind of functionality are you looking for beyond a standard Wiki (which you use currently, if I remember correctly)

Roddy

[jj]

Roddy,

Thanks for the sites. Yes, I've been trawling sourceforge for some time this software, but haven't yet found what I'm looking for. All the 'groupware' out there that I've seen (like eGroupWare) is too big, clunky, and oriented towards software projects.

(btw there's a great site that reviews and lets you play with open source cms and groupware at: http://www.opensourcecms.com/)

Foreign desk is a client-side program unfortunately. I'm looking for a server-side program.

Yes, we use a wiki. Wikis have a lot of great strengths: saved versions, very open, etc., but also lots of weaknesses as a translation tool: no way to quickly add words, searching for vocab is hit or miss, you can't view the source and target text at the same time, etc. So something with the strengths of a wiki but a little more structured would be great.

msittig,

Wow, that sounds great! Is the site still online? Do you know where I should start looking for the groups that do coordinated translation?

Thanks all,

JJ