As part of Open Translation Tools 2009, Aspiration co-hosted the first ever Open Translation Book Sprint. The Sprint generated two separate books: a 283-page volume entitled Open Translation Tools, describing the landscape of open translation tools, and a second 124-page book entitled Video Subtitling and focused solely on that topic as a specific case of translation and localization.
The sprint was organized in partnership with FLOSSManuals, and use of the FLOSSManuals.net platform made it straightforward to remix and reuse content from the main book to create the second, and then to add and manage additional content in the second book.
An additional and compelling dimension of utilizing the FLOSSManuals.net platform involves ongoing maintenance of the content. The two books will be managed in an open, “wiki-like” environment where anyone who wishes to can contribute additional material, and maintainers of the book can vet contributions for appropriateness and accuracy.
The Book Sprint concept was devised by Tomas Krag. Tomas conceived of book production as a collaborative activity involving substantial donations of volunteer time. FLOSS Manuals has evolved the original concept into a highly efficient, high-impact process that has generated over a dozen books over the past two years.
The Open Translation Tools book is online at http://en.flossmanuals.net/opentranslationtools. Contents of the book include:
- An overview of the Open Translation field, including the current state of tool coverage.
- Definition of basic concepts, including translation, localization, interpreting, dictionaries, translation memory, machine translation, standards and technical concepts
- Explanation of translation topics and processes, including translation, workflow, and the translation “industry”
- Community processes, including a survey of the different roles in open translation
- Quality control, including reputation metrics
- Open Translation case studies including Global Voices, Wikipedia, FLOSS Manuals, OLPC & Sugar, and YeeYan
- A guide to translating text, including web translation systems, preparing content, and translation tips, as well as documentation on the use of content management systems and wikis
- A guide to translating video, including subtitles, file formats, finding, creating, and playing video, as well as distribution
- A guide to translating images, including a formats overview, tools, and translating SVG graphics
- Exploration of legal considerations including intellectual property, licensing, free software, and machine translation copyright issues.
- An overview of open source tools for Open Translation, including Anaphraseus, Apertium, Gaupol, Glossmaster, Moses, OKAPI Framework, OmegaT, Open Office, Pootle, Translate Toolkit, Virtaal and World Wide Lexicon
- Explanation of advanced technical issues including transliteration, machine translation, translation memory, character encoding, web fonts, and and scoring.
The Video Subtitling book is online at http://en.flossmanuals.net/videotranslation. Contents of that book include:
- Explanation of subtitling, file formats, and how to find, create, and distribute subtitles
- How-to for using the Jubler tool, including configuration, audio set up, saving and exporting, and creating subtitles
- How-to for playing subtitles with VLC
- How-to for using Avidemux to “burn in” subtitles
- Coverage of other tools, including Gnome Subtitles, Gaupol, and Subtitle Editor
- Discussion of distribution on the web and via content management systems