A Linguistic Experience: Meet the Translation Projects!
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Art by Cretacerus.
Introduction — Salut / Hola / Olá / Ciao / Hallo
Smogon Forums is arguably the most defining and important forum in the Pokémon community, having a handful of users from many different countries and high levels of activity. Our forums also have plenty of projects you can be part of, ranging from small projects in competitive subforums to bigger projects such as Smogon's Flying Press. Today, we will direct the spotlight towards one project that is directly related to the aforementioned, The Translations Project!
History
With the desire of making Smogon's content enjoyable for those users in the French community that do not speak English, and with great help from tennisace and Toast++, Reisen (who was a PS! Driver in those days) submitted the idea of translating Smogon's Flying Press articles into French. Over the span of a year, Reisen and Toast++ analyzed the stats and then realized that the translations were very popular between the overall community and French users really enjoyed having a designed content in their own language. Due to how successful it was, after one year, Reisen decided to take it to the next level and expand the project to other communities, which brought about the creation of the Italian, German, Spanish, and finally Portuguese projects. However, it was a rough beginning due to the lack of users that were interested, capable, or aware of the project.
Sadly, some time after, Reisen had some external problems that made her unable to continue. This caused a lot of problems, leaving the project stuck for a while until anto, Hikari, and Haund decided to step into the breach, helped out by some contributors (mostly staff from Pokémon Showdown's language rooms), who have since been working hard to get even more new contributors. Happily, after getting rid of all these problems, the project finally got success and became what it is now.
Last year, we have finally managed to get the translation of Smogdex analyses up and running, which was planned since the very beginning but wasn't possible initially due to some organizational issues.
How can I contribute to the Project?
Having new contributors is always a pleasure and everyone is very important during the whole process! This is a project where being able to work with other people is necessary since we complement each other. Below, I've listed some ways you can contribute, and if you contribute consistent, high-quality work, you will earn a pretty Ladybug that might become an amazing Smogon Media Contributor badge or Smogon Contributor badge, depending on which subforum you have been working on!
Become a translator
This is the main way of contributing. If you are a native speaker of the project you want to take part of, or your knowledge is deep enough to be able to help, don't doubt it and join us! However, being a translator is not as easy as it might sound; they don't just translate articles or analyses sentence by sentence, but they also try to make it readable and fluent while keeping its original essence and the writer's ideas intact at the same time.
Be part of the GP team
If you think you have strong grammar capabilities, then this is your place! The Grammar-Prose team acts as a quality control for every translation and helps to polish minor details and fix errors (grammatically speaking).
Help out with HTML
If you are familiar with HTML elements, then this step of the process might be ideal for you. It doesn't involve creating the HTML from scratch, but rather replacing the respective paragraphs and titles with the translated workas well as adapting it to the destination language's tags.
Day to day management
Under normal conditions, the project's management runs rather smoothly. It all begins by checking every subforum and making sure the reservations are up to date, verifying that the tags on each thread match the current translation's status, keeping a constant eye on those who do GP checks and HTMLs to ensure that they are working actively, and finally, publishing all the respective content on its appropriate date.
Whether you help out by translating articles, proofreading them, or helping out in some other way, your contributions are of high value and will be taken into account when rewarding you!
Purpose
As we stated at the very beginning, the main purpose of this project is translating Smogon's Flying Press articles and Smogdex analyses into other languages, transforming Smogon's Flying Press and Smogdex into multilingual platforms that can reach a higher amount of users outside of Smogon and PS!, a possibility thanks to social media advertising such as Facebook and Twitter. It opens up a brand new world of competitively useful advice, entertainment, and informative content that they are now able to enjoy and appreciate as much as we do.
Interviews
Click on the avatars to view the interviews!
Iyarito
Iyarito! You're mostly known for being the Spanish Translations Project Leader, but we surely want to know more about you so how would you introduce yourself?
Well, I'm a graphic designer from Mexico. I really love drawing and I spend a lot of time on PS! I have been a Room Owner in the Spanish room since 2013 and moderator in the Portuguese one since 2016, and I was promoted to Global Driver last year. I'm not the kind of person who usually starts a conversation, but if the other person starts it, I'll definitely keep the conversation going. I really like birds and parrots, I enjoy reading manga, and sometimes I watch anime. Oh yes, and something really important, I love Gengar. Gengar is important.
Why did you join Smogon exactly?
During 2014 it was needed that all PS! Room Owners had a Smogon account; by that moment I was already Room Owner in the Spanish Room, which was pretty much the reason. Just protocol stuff, really.
What is the reason you decided to be part of this project?
Overall, our community has always had problems understanding English so I thought it was the perfect opportunity for our users to get more involved with Smogon. Also, I've always liked everything related to drafting and grammar so I was in love with this idea.
You were recently promoted to Translations Leader. Did you expect to be promoted at some point?
Yes and no. This project has been important to me and I like to make things work, and since I became leader of the Spanish translations project this has been quite constant, so a part of me felt that sooner or later I could be offered the position of Translations Head. However, I was not really sure if that was going to happen.
For you, what is the good, the bad, and the interesting part of this project?
The good part is that this project gives an opportunity to those people who don't speak English to read Smogon Flying Press articles, which are undoubtedly interesting. This way, they won't feel "excluded" from Smogon's work, and it also gives the article writers the chance of having their work be available in many more languages than they ever thought. I want to think that this is something very satisfying for everyone in general. About the "bad" part itself, I don't think there's anything bad, there are only things to gain. Regarding the interesting part of the project is that, without a doubt, this can become the pathway for more translations projects in the site. For example, the translations of PS! and Smogon's rules have been implemented, as well as the privacy policy, which seemed like something very unlikely to happen in the past. I'm really excited about what could be the results of this in the future.
We have to go but first, do you have any last word for our readers?
Thank you very much to all the people who have helped to keep this project alive, either by being part of the translations team, or as readers. This is all thanks to you! <3
Reisen
Reisen, you are one of the most important people for this project and sadly, we did not really have time to get to know you well! Let's kick this off with something basic: how would you introduce yourself?
Salut! I'm Reisen and I'm originally from Paris in France. I'm a former moderator translation leader, and was also known as Awu on Smogon and Pokémon Showdown! because it was my old username. I've built this project with the amazing and constant help of Toast++ over the span of a year.
Why did you join Smogon, exactly?
I joined Smogon when I saw that the Flying Press team was looking for HTMLers. At that moment, in my school we had a school subject called Web Programming where we were doing an introduction to HTML / CSS. I have to admit that I was really bad at any kind of programming stuff (even if HTML is not an actual programming language), so I thought it would be nice to practice this web language before starting it at school. That's why I ended up HTMLing articles for The Flying Press.
We can undoubtedly say this is one of the most successful and biggest projects in Smogon. Did you expect all this success?
It is, and I'm so proud of it! Even if some people don't really pay attention to this project, we actually provide content in different languages on the official Smogon Facebook Page. Isn't it crazy?
Well, at the beginning I wasn't expecting anything, as I was just focused on providing content in French to my community because they were enjoying the translations. After doing it for a year and checking the statistics of the different article pages with Toast++, we've seen that it was actually successful! The French community was really into it so I knew at that point that it could work with other communities.
What was on your mind when you started this project?
Well, I remember when I was a global driver I used to stay in some community rooms because of the lack of room moderators in my timezone, and in the French room, a lot of regular users were complaining about not having access to The Flying Press articles.
We have to realize that Smogon and especially Pokémon Showdown are platforms related to Pokémon. This means that the community isn't that old. We need to understand that we cannot all speak, write, or understand English. Some young Italian, Spanish, German, French, etc. speakers can't understand English at all.
This is what motivated me to build this project, as I knew it would be really hard, but I knew we could help a lot of people and that it doesn't only concern Smogon and PS! but also our community on social media and the people that follow our official pages.
We know it was a rough beginning, what was the motivation to keep it up?
The motivation was to provide content outside PS! and Smogon. Though we have these two big platforms that can be considered as two big communities, we also have another that is outside these two; the people on social media. Indeed, on the official Smogon Facebook, we currently have more than 305,000 people following it.
This is huge. Do you think all these 305,000 understand English well? I don't think so. The fact that the Smogon Facebook became a real multilingual platform for The Flying Press article releases just shows how Smogon is serious and concerned about all its communities.
For you, what is the good, the bad, and the interesting part of this project?
Well, this is a translation project that is based on The Flying Press articles, so the processes are kind of the same; first, we need to translate, then we need to GP the translation, and finally we need to HTML it. In my opinion, it joins the good and bad parts of The Flying Press as a whole, except the fact that we don't create content, we just modify it. I would add that the bad part of this project is the translation of massive articles, or the translators that just keep translating over and over again, as I will be honest, this can be really annoying. Just take it easy, don't push yourself too much into it.
The interesting part is that you're in a team and you're part of a huge structured process. It's nice to take part in such a project like this one or even The Flying Press as a whole because I feel that it helps you to be more organized. This is definitely useful in real life!
What do you expect for this project in two years? What are the differences between the project on its first days and today?
Well, you know at the beginning I just wanted to do it for my community, and then after a year it was expanded into the other biggest communities of PS!; Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Deutsche. The beginning of the project was way more active, of course, because it was fresh and new and also because the structure was solid and had already been tested for more than a year, so there was no reason to actually not try it with other communities.
I have to be honest now that i'm active in the professional world, I can't really lead the project, but it is still alive and people are still resigning and being promoted to translation leader so I guess the project is still fluid as well :)
Any last words to say for our sweet readers?
Well, a big thanks to YOU, for taking the time to read this :) I really want to invite you to get involved in this project if you want to be part of a project on Smogon, if you feel like helping people and you want to provide multilingual content for them, and even if you want to learn HTML / CSS, as it's still possible to be part of The Flying Press or the Translation Project for that reason.
Thank you for contacting me for this interview, Lou, and peace out everyone :))
Conclusion — Au Revoir / Adiós / Tchau / Addio / Tschüss
So, that's it! This amazing project will be happy to get some new contributors, so if you are interested in joining us, contact the leader of the project you want to be part of (check out this thread to know who they are) and help us in our goal to eliminate the language barrier that limits us!
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