This year the Localization Lab community made its annual appearance at the Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) with a series of interactive events that included a Qubes OS Spanish-Language Localization Sprint, a localization session, the 3rd annual Localization Summit, and a session of "Speed Dating" Localization Demos. These events focused on three primary goals: improving localization processes, relationship building between developers and translators, and finishing up as much translations as a group, taking advantage of working with developers and trainers directly.
THANK YOU to all of the translators, users, partner organizations and developers who attended these events, armed with a diversity of experiences and skills. Your contributions made the Localization Lab experience at IFF worthwhile and will help inform how we prioritize work over the year to come.
If you were not able to attend Localization Lab events at IFF this year or if you would like to follow up on the week’s activities, take a look at the following summary of events to learn what we discussed and worked on during the festival. We would love to keep the conversations started at the events going, so let us know your thoughts and if you would like to contribute to any of the discussions or "next steps" listed below!
Read the full Localization Summit and Sprint Report
The Localization Summit*
The 3rd annual Localization Summit brought together a group of about 25 individuals to share experiences and brainstorm how to improve the localization experience for all stakeholders in the Localization Lab community. Participants represented the linguistic, geographic and professional diversity of our translator and user community and included several developers of Localization Lab supported tools as well as developers of the translation platform Pootle.
In the morning, participants brainstormed and decided on 8 different working sessions for the day:
Localization Workflow: What current challenges faced by developers and translators are limiting the effectiveness and efficiency of localization workflows and how can these challenges be addressed?
Continued Wiki Development: Which Localization Lab stakeholders will a Localization Lab wiki serve and how can we move forward with development of the project?
Community Development: How can we strengthen our existing community and increase the engagement of translators, developers and organizational partners in the localization process and related discussions?
Glossary: What would an ideal multi-lingual Internet Freedom glossary look like? Who would manage it and where would it be housed?
Communication: How can we improve the communication experience within the Localization Lab community so that all stakeholders are connected and well-informed?
Incentives: How can we provide incentives for volunteer contributors to help keep them motivated and show appreciation for their hard work?
Community Outreach: Once tools are localized, how can we market them and educate within the communities that would benefit from them?
Hacking a Localization Sprint Guide: What key components should be included in an open-source guide to support community-lead Localization Sprints?
*Complete summaries of the discussions based on contributor notes are available in the full Localization Summit and Sprint Report.
Next Steps
As a result of the various discussions that took place at the Summit, the following were identified as concrete steps to address community needs:
Create a unified glossary
Focus effort on regularly published style guides and glossaries
Publish the Localization Lab wiki
Create language-specific communication channels
Continue to pursue communication platform alternatives
Publish a Localization Sprint Guide
Investigate incentive opportunities for translators
Improve documentation of hub projects and development cycles
The Localization Sprint**
Due to popular request, Localization Lab brought the “speed-dating” demo and localization sprint format that was so successful with participants last year.
The “speed-dating” demos and sprint sought to bring together a diverse group of translator contributors and Localization Lab Hub project owners to demo and discuss new and familiar Internet Freedom tools. The “speed-dating” format allows for small groups of translators (1 - 3 people) to receive personalized demos catering to their regional, linguistic and technical needs. The 15-minute time limit on each demo also allows participants to connect with a large number of people and tools in a relatively short period of time, allowing them to follow up on any unfinished conversations afterward.
This year’s event involved roughly 20 translator contributors representing 16 different languages: Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Telegu, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Finnish, Russian, Norwegian (Bokmål), French, Luganda, Shona, Azeri. Three more projects than at last year’s event were invited to demo and included: GlobaLeaks, M-Lab Chrome App, Peerio, Pootle, Psiphon, Tails, Tor Project, Umbrella App. Representatives from LEAP, OpenKeychain, Qubes and ooniprobe were also available after the demo rounds to chat with translators and answer questions.
**The complete Sprint and participating project summaries are available in the full Localization Summit and Sprint Report.