Translation process

Underneath you can see how we treat our jobs.

First, the programmer sends information about the program he wants translated and eventually the distribution archive (preferably an address of where to FTP it) to one of the language administrators.

Then, the respective language administrator mails the information about the program to ATO's announcement mailing list which all members subscribe to, and the program archive or an FTP-address is mailed to all language administrators who might be involved in the project.

We find a project coordinator.

Every translator/proofreader who is interested in doing the translation/proofreading and has time to do it tell their language administrator so.

Each language administrator can then find a team (in most cases consisting of one translator and one proofreader). When this is done, the project coordinator is informed and the programmer is told exactly which languages ATO has resources for doing.

The translator does the translation, and the resulting translation is sent to the proofreader who proofreads it. The proofread translation is sent to the project coordinator who collects all the translations and sends them to the programmer.

If any problems arise, the project coordinator is contacted. The project coordinator is also the gateway between the programmer and the translators/proofreaders: If the programmer has a last-minute comment or the like, he sends this to the project coordinator who will then forward it to the translators/proofreaders.

This model will work on both large and small projects. For really small projects, it is possible that no proofreading is needed. For normal-sized projects, one translator and one proofreader should be enough. For big projects that can be split up, more translators and more proofreaders can get involved.

Thanks a lot to Yann-Erick Proy (yeproy@imaginet.fr) for ideas to the above!

If you have any comments, please mail them to me (ole_f@post3.tele.dk).