Quality Control Process For Translating

CameronTofer

It's wonderful to see so many volunteers offering translation help. It's clear that we all want to see the best possible version of Baldur's Gate.

Our next step is to create a procedure to ensure quality control. Previously, I reviewed many websites offering collaborative translation tools and none of them seemed up to the task or prohibitively expensive due to the amount of words and languages we will tackle. If anyone has suggestions on a great collaborative translation website, mention it to me I may have missed it. Otherwise we will continue to use the Google Spreadsheets.

To organize I would like to form teams of translators for each language. Each team should have the following:

Title				Role
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team Leaders	Communicate with me and the rest of the group.  Answer questions for the team, assign people to roles.
		Maintains an up to date version of the credits list for the team that I can add to the game.

Translators	The best people to translate strings from English to the native language.  Translate new strings, as
		well update strings to match the English updates.

Proofreaders	People to read the translated string looking for any grammar, spelling, or suggestions for improvement.
		Proofreaders should be native language speakers with good writing skills.

Rules Police	These people enure all consistency with the game, D&D rules, and Forgotten Realms lore.
		Ensure that item descriptions match their actions, place names are properly translated, names and terms
		are properly carried through the game.

There will be a column for each role in the spreadsheet where each team member can sign off when they are happy. Then the teams can go from string to string until everyone is satisfied.

Comments welcome!

-cam

cherrycoke2l

I hope it's okay if one person has more than one role? Oh, and those lists should be somehow modifiable by Team Leaders. We'd also like to know where/when we should send them.

kangaxx

@CameronTofer: Please find my private message in your inbox. Thanks.

TheInapproPirate

"Wordfast Anywhere" is awesome for working in smaller groups, but the limit for the amount of documents could be a problem.

http://www.wordfast.net/

http://www.freetm.com/

kangaxx

Thanks @TheInapproPirate.
@CameronTofer: I'm wondering if there's a point of no return?

CameronTofer

TheInapproPirate said:

"Wordfast Anywhere" is awesome for working in smaller groups, but the limit for the amount of documents could be a problem.

http://www.wordfast.net/

http://www.freetm.com/

Looks interesting, can anyone evaluate it?

TheInapproPirate

It's practically a Translation Memory Tool like Trados - but for free. The translation document is divided into sections and you translate them. The TM memorises previously translated sections and when a similar section occurs the previous translation is shown (this is good for consistency). You can use it, change it partially or completely - so the workflow is very fast.

Several people can work on one document - even though minor problems might occur (for example if somebody changes something you cannot see the change until it is saved). Additionally the glossary can be saved and exchanged.

The major weakness of this tool is the limit for the amount of documents that can be translated with one account at the same time. That's why professional translators buy Trados - but the price of Trados is a pain in the a...

Manuel

Why not use a self-made translation tool? Right now I'm creating one, it's a website based on PHP and MySQL where you edit one string entry at a time instead of a big spreadsheet. It's small, ugly and has no features at the moment, but that could be changed.

kangaxx

@CameronTofer I like Manuel's tool as we could shape it to meet our specific requirements.
He could make it available to your servers. All you need is latest PHP and MySQL.

Kyon

But (I am a Webmaster since 2005) some solutions like this make another problems . Security holes , different shape or etc.