Volunteer Translators Research Articles

Motivation to collaboration in TED Open Translation Project

The distributed nature of online volunteers enabled global organisations to mobilise talents from around the world. The past decade has witnessed an expansion of virtual collaborative efforts within the crowdsourced audiovisual translation communities. The aim of this work is to characterise motivational factors driving volunteer translators to engage in these endeavours. I will focus on TED, a global community which hosts video recordings of experts TED Talks and where people interact with each within a virtual community. Linked to TED, the Open Translation Project aims to make its full video library accessible to the non-English speaking world, by providing access to translated subtitles on every single TED Talk video. Circa. 12,000 volunteers translate audiovisual content of TED talks into more than 100 languages. I asked a group of its participants who range across 35 different languages and are geographically distributed over four continents, to pinpoint key motivation factors for becoming volunteer translators.

La motivación del crowdsourcing multilingüe en los medios sociales globales. Un estudio de caso: TED OTP

Crowdsourcing has emerged in recent year as a new form of volunteering activity. The distributed nature of online volunteers enabled global organizations to mobilize talents from around the world. In this spirit, the past decade has witnessed a vibrant expansion of intercultural virtual collaborative efforts within the crowdsourced audiovisual translation communities. The aim of our work is to characterise key motivational factors driving volunteer translators to engage in these intercultural collaboration endeavours within one of those virtual communities. As a case in point, I will study TED [1] , a global communication platform where people from all over the world interact with each other creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting on content within a virtual community and several networks. At TED unpaid volunteers translate audiovisual content into 100 languages, within the framework of an online translation project: the Open Translation Project, hereinafter referred to as OTP. I asked a group of 177 OTP participants who range across 35 different languages and are geographically distributed over four continents, to pinpoint key motivation factors for becoming volunteer translators. [1] TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design

Multilingual Crowdsourcing Motivation on Global Social Media. Case Study: TED OTP

Crowdsourcing has emerged in recent year as a new form of volunteering activity. The distributed nature of online volunteers enabled global organizations to mobilize talents from around the world. In this spirit, the past decade has witnessed a vibrant expansion of intercultural virtual collaborative efforts within the crowdsourced audiovisual translation communities. The aim of our work is to characterise key motivational factors driving volunteer translators to engage in these intercultural collaboration endeavours within one of those virtual communities. As a case in point, I will study TED[1], a global communication platform where people from all over the world interact with each other creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting on content within a virtual community and several networks. At TED unpaid volunteers translate audiovisual content into 100 languages, within the framework of an online translation project: the Open Translation Project, hereinafter referred to as OTP. I asked a group of 177 OTP participants who range across 35 different languages and are geographically distributed over four continents, to pinpoint key motivation factors for becoming volunteer translators. [1] TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design

Translator associations—from gatekeepers to communities

Analysis of 217 associations for translators and/or interpreters shows that, after the heroic age of the generalist national and international groupings in the 1950s and 1960s, there has been a progressive specialization of associations. In rough chronological order, separate institutions have been created for literary translators, sworn/authorized translators and interpreters, conference interpreters, public-service interpreters and audiovisual translators. This process might be seen as a division of labor, a normal result of increasing memberships. Analysis of the communication strategies employed by the associations nevertheless suggests that there has been a profound shift in their very nature: from a model where the association ideally vouches for the professional trustworthiness of several thousands of members, thus implicitly speaking to clients and other professions, we find a tendency toward communication patterns where the association becomes a place for social, pedagogical and political action between its members. The greater density and plexity of the interactions means that the newer associations involve smaller groups of people, selected on the basis of either professional specialization or geographical proximity. Similar interactive models are found in online marketplaces for translations and in communities of volunteer translators, which prove to be innovative not only in promoting interactive communication but also in inventing new ways of signaling translators’ trustworthiness. A way forward for the traditional associations might be to adapt some of the communication strategies operative in the electronic marketplaces and among volunteers.

Why do you translate? Motivation to volunteer and TED translation

Many organizations today mobilize vast volunteer translation efforts, but there is little research into how the volunteering of translation may be understood in sociological and psychological terms. This paper introduces translation scholars to some of the complexities of investigating volunteering and motivation, informed by research from sociology, behavioural economics and social psychology. It then makes a methodological contribution to the study of volunteer translation motivation by assessing the potential of qualitative analysis of translators' discourse to derive conceptually sound categories of motivation. This methodology is tested on a small set of statements from volunteer translators for TED. The test case prepares the ground for much-needed, larger-scale studies into volunteer translation motivations. The paper concludes by advocating a mixed-methods approach which can accommodate multidimensional perspectives and contexts of volunteering.

Volunteer Translation and Altruism in the Context of a Nineteenth-Century Scientific Journal

This paper constitutes a first attempt to theorize volunteer translation using behavioural economic models of altruism. It applies the notions of pure and impure altruism to the study of a nineteenth-century journal of scientific translations, Scientific Memoirs. Volunteer translating and editing activities were instrumental in ensuring the commercial survival of that periodical over a 15-year period. A range of motivations may be posited for the volunteer work carried out, from the purely altruistic wish to expand scientific knowledge to motivations which could be linked to a sense of satisfaction (warm glow) or enhancement of personal, professional or social standing. Differences can be observed in the utility likely to have been derived from their volunteer activities by men of science and women translators, and an insight is offered into how volunteer contributions were encouraged and managed by the journal’s editor, Richard Taylor. By drawing on research on altruism and volunteering undertaken by disciplines other than translation studies, the paper offers a fruitful starting point for further research on volunteer translation and interpreting in both present-day and historical settings.

Fansub Dreaming on ViKi

Fan subtitling, or ‘fansubbing’, is a heterogeneous and rapidly growing field of amateur translation exhibiting a number of traits that have so far been overlooked by scholars of audiovisual translation. Current research on fansubbing is broadened by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone, drawing on the counter example of Internet start-up company ViKi and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that fansubbing both exposes and fills. The team of volunteer translators working for ViKi re-animates notions of global diversity by capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies and collective intelligence to break down the national and linguistic hierarchies that dominate contemporary media and professional audiovisual translation. Despite a largely conservative ‘look and feel’ and signs of increasing commercialization, ViKi’s fansubbing model makes an important contribution to the internationalization of audiovisual translation practices, bringing programs from small-language communities to diverse audiences across the globe. The paper further considers the extent to which the legalization of ViKi’s fansubbing activity empowers fans to bring about real change in the media marketplace.

Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Model and Its Impact on Public Perceptions of Translation

This paper draws on the results of an online survey of Wikipedia volunteer translators to explore, from a sociological perspective, how participants in crowdsourced translation initiatives perceive translation. This perception is examined from a number of perspectives, including the participants’ profiles, motivations and idiosyncrasies vis-à-vis those of individuals involved in other collaborative social phenomena. Firstly, respondents are grouped on the basis of their training background, their current professional status and their former occupation to compare how translation is perceived by volunteers who do and those who do not work in the translation industry. To further understand the range of respondents ’ perceptions of translation, the crowdsourced translation initiatives they participate in are divided into three types: product-driven (localization/translation of free/open-source software projects), cause-driven (not-for-profit initiatives with an activist focus), and outsourcing-driven (initiatives launched by for-profit companies). A comparison between the results of this survey and two others focusing on the motivations and profiles of free/open-source software developers seeks to identify distinctive features of participatory translation practices. The final part of this article discusses how participants in a crowdsourced translation initiative view translation and how the latter is depicted by the organizations behind such collaborative projects.

Translation/Interpreting Politics and Praxis

Focusing on Babels, an international network of volunteer translators and interpreters, this article provides an in-depth examination of the politics of organizing interpreting in the context of the Social Forum and the Alter-Globalization Movement, and discusses the extent to which interpreting is constitutive of the complex political process sparked by such initiatives. Babels’ specifically activist, critical and self-reflective project of volunteer interpreting is examined as emerging and evolving out of a series of internal and external pressures. These pressures involve implementing the principles of horizontality, deliberation, participation and prefiguration that Babels calls for in the organizational process of the Social Forum, and delivering interpreting efficiently on the day of the event, while not undermining the professional market of conference interpreting. The article recommends approaching translation and interpreting from both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective – from principles to practice and from practice to principles – in order to better account for the ways in which translation and interpreting shape and are shaped by the geo-political and socio-economic contexts in which they are embedded.

Amateur translation in Arabic-speaking cyberspace

With technological advances and the resulting explosion in communication, translation activity has expanded beyond its traditional scope and settings. It has engaged new players, who are neither professional translators nor the parties who are traditionally part of translation projects. Amateur translation in the Arabic context is mainly carried out in cyberspace, using email and the Internet. This paper investigates localization and audiovisual translation carried out by volunteer translators. Issues such as types of materials translated, dynamics of the translation process, source languages, translator's intervention, quality, and competition with professional translators are discussed. Amateur translation in Arabic varies in subject and format. Many factors play a role in shaping this translation activity, such as individual passion and political or religious agendas. Generally speaking, the quality of translations is rather poor. Translators tend to modify the source text to a large extent.

A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy

This paper focuses on the work of Babels, an international network of volunteer translators and interpreters, and examines a specific controversy surrounding its positioning in relation to volunteer and activist practices of interpreting in the context of the World Social Forum. Adopting a narrative perspective, it first examines some of the stories elaborated by Babels – of itself as a group and of its stance on activist interpreting in the Social Forum. It then offers an analysis of a letter that is highly critical of Babels, written by Peter Naumann, a professional interpreter, and published in AIIC’s online journal Communicate!. The study reported here is part of a larger project (Boéri, in progress). Rather than outlining binary and discrete positions, the picture that emerges out of the analysis offered here, and particularly in Boéri (in progress), is one of an open-ended, network-like constellation of positionings that are available to and taken up by members of the conference interpreting community, including members of Babels and AIIC. The paper ultimately argues for further critical reflection on the narratives that circulate among members of the conference interpreting community, especially those relating to issues of volunteering, activism and professionalism.

Reflections on communicating with non-English-speaking patients.

Nursing patients who speak no English has ethical, legal and professional implications for patients, relatives and healthcare staff. Appropriate communication between a patient and members of the healthcare team demonstrates respect, and empowers the patient to make healthcare decisions. Without appropriate translation, the patient who speaks no English is extremely vulnerable. Healthcare professionals have a duty to provide appropriate care for all patients, irrespective of nationality and ability to speak English. Issues such as empowerment, advocacy and confidentiality need to be considered in relation to caring for non-English-speaking patients. The author of this article reflects on her lecturer exchange at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and how her limited ability to speak Spanish gave rise to considering the needs of non-English-speaking patients in the medical directorate at the Royal London Hospital. This reflection gave rise to working with clinical and university colleagues in an attempt to improve communication with non-English-speaking patients, thus combining the author's role as a nurse, ethics lecturer and link lecturer. Working with clinical and university colleagues gave rise to the development of an advocacy/translation box file for use in clinical practice, and the formation of a staff-student liaison committee working party to review the possibility of student nurses becoming volunteer translators for non-English-speaking patients.