TraduXio is a free (for ever), open source and collaborative digital environment meant to empower literary translators (and more)

1. TheTraduXio Project
Enhancing Linguistic Diversity through
Collaborative Translation
License: CC-by-nc-nd Attribution- Non Commercial - No Derivs 2.0 France
Cosi10
Brussels 6-7 November 2010
Philippe Lacour/ Any Freitas –Zanchin NGO

2. Pragmatic Idealism
• Rising E-diversity
• Multilingualism through Translation
• Two visions of Linguistic Diversity on the Web
– An obstacle to be suppressed
– A wealth to be stustained
• From new Norms to new Actions
• What can we do ?

3. Content

4. Content

5. General Description
A Digital Collaborative Environment :
• Freeware (for ever)
• Open source
• Web-based (not PC based) : a digital Workbench
• Collaborative
• Originally designed for Literary Translation
• An innovative Technology
• Supports every language
• TraduXio is NOT about machine translation

6. One project – different actors
• Project Management: Zanchin NGO ;
volunteers
• Scientific Direction : University of Technology
of Troyes – Tech-Cico Lab.
• Funding : UNESCO, Organisation
Internationale de la Francophonie
• Parterships with Research Institutions like the
Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin

7. Content

8. Originality
1.Beyond the language-pair system
(translation goes multilingual)
2. Relevant suggestions (precision)
3. The collaborative spirit

9. Originality
1. Beyond the language-pair system
Literature/Zulu
Version B
Version C
Version A
Récupération et encodageMoteur de recherche

10. Originality
2- Relevant suggestions
20th c.
Poetry
Africa
Traitement
Traitement

11. Originality
3- The collaborative spirit
• Revision History
• Managing Texts privileges
• Social tagging
• Discussions forums
• Wiki, social networks…

12. Content

13. Demonstration
« How does it work ? »
• Insert a new text and tag it with metadatas
• Segmentation
• Translation
• Concordance (exact/fuzzy matching)
• Harmonize your translations in different languages
• Look for relevant suggestions : genre/author/date

14. Translate what ?
• We started the project with literary text
BUT
Many other possible uses can be imagined
 We want to empower communities facing a
multilingual translation issue

15. Starting Page

16. Multiple Translation from the Qur’an

17. Hamlet translated into German

18. Possible Operations

19. Concordance

20. Relevant suggestions

21. Concordance : reverse

22. Privileges Management

23. Custom Privileges Management

24. Content

25. Issues at stake
Context : the rise of multilinguism on the Web
• Value the work of translators
• A « hub » for Digital Media
• Open Culture Movement (Open
Source/Access/Content/Language)
• Intercultural Dialogue
• Write in your own language
• Sustainable Development of (minority) languages
• A spirit of mutualization
• Constitution of cosmopolitan groups

26. Content

27. Audience
• « Literary » Translators
• Open Source Actors
• E-media (Presseurop, Cafebabel)
• Amateurs
• Artists
• ONG (diaspora / migrants)
• Etc.

28. Content

29. Challenges
Feeding the database
– An original project: a new way of building a Translation
Memory
– User Generated Content (the collaborative input)
– Comparative Use
• Compare one’s translation with others’
• Compare one’s own translation (cohesion, glossaries)
A user-friendly interface
Legal Aspects (Open Licences, CC type)
– Texts
– Sets of Texts

30. Content

31. Traduxio is looking for Partners
• Moral Agreement
• Users
–Beta-testers (now)
–Communities (feeding the database)
• Administrative Help
–Presentations, info dissemination
–Community Building

32. To sum it up
• ICT for « Literary » Translation ? It works!
• Collaborate ? Yes we can !
• You control how public you want it to be
• You control what legal license you want to use
• You control your datas, all the way
 TraduXio is here to seed power, not seize it 

33. Follow TraduXio
• An article in the Meta Journal for Translators,
December, 55 (4): « TIC, Collaboration et
Traduction: vers de nouveaux laboratoires de
translocalisation culturelle »
• BÉNEL Aurélien and LACOUR Philippe (2011)
”Towards a Collaborative Platform for Cultural
Texts Translators”. In Pierre MARET ed. Virtual
Community Building and the Information Society:
Current and Future Directions. Hershey
(Pennsylvania): IGI Global (forthcoming 2011).

34. Thank you
http://traduxio.hypertopic.org
(Private beta – ask for an invitation, we’ll send you one !)