DocsWP — WordPress Help

Translation Collaboration & Team Building Tips

As with any open source project, collaboration is key to a successful translation community. Here are some tips for building a strong collaborative team.

Team Building

Recruit contributors

  • Try to find at least one more person to work with you – even at the very beginning
  • Make it easy to find the first & next steps for new contributors
  • Make sure that you link to these instructions in various relevant places, such as:
    • The top comment on “Locale glossary” (GTE’s have a link “edit” in the top banner)
    • In messages to new contributors (you can @mention a contributor in a post in your /team site. Find new contributors by sorting translation projects with pending strings in reverse date order for contributions.
    • In replies to relevant topics in the support forums. (You can find relevant topics by adding the name of your language as a watched keyword in https://profiles.wordpress.org/me/profile/notifications/)

Build relationship/trust

  • Have a translation specific channel on local Slack and answer questions. Check that one can join the channel using an email in the domain @chat.wordpress.org, then any contributor can join your local channel by first joining the global Slack team via chat.wordpress.org. If your local Slack team is not listed in the Local Slack Teams list, please provide the details to the global mentor team)
  • Hold regular meetings
  • Try to have face-to-face interaction (even virtually on a video calling tool) when possible
  • Suggest that existing contributors to be mentors to new contributors, enabling both to grow

Expand/strengthen the team

Working as a Team

Task delegation

  • Clearly show open calls for help (e.g. meta projects, top plugins/themes, HelpHub, handbook) or prioritization of projects to translate (i.e. what to focus on first for new contributors)
  • Avoid the gatekeeper model and give proper permissions to members (e.g. PTE/Rosetta site blog contributor/forum moderator) to spread the load
  • Establish a style guide and glossary so you can communicate translation guidelines through them

Task management

  • Use a publicly shared spreadsheet, Trello, or any other task management tool to organize who’s doing what & the progress/status
  • Example: HelpHub status sheet template

Documentation

  • Create a WordPress translation overview page on team/handbook. Examples can be found on the Glossaries and Style Guides per locale page
  • For teams that have certain processes in how they work, try to incorporate those into your documentation or Slack welcome messages (i.e. the Italian team describes a mentoring phase)

Tools for Collaboration

Don’t forget to announce contributor events when they are scheduled. 

  • Rosetta site &  /team P2 for documentation and event/project announcement
  • Meetup.com for local translation day announcement

You may want to try these collaboration tools for long-form text translation and maintenance:

  • Google Docs
  • OmegaT
    • OmegaT is a free translation memory application. Combined with a git repository, it may be helpful for a team of translators to collaborate on continuously updated long-form contents.
  • GitHub/GitLab
    • May be used if many of your translators are comfortable with git command or GUI, or can learn how to use it (e.g. the Japanese team use it for the Community Handbook translation)

Leadership Best Practices

Growing a translation team can be a great leadership experience. Here are some ideas and resources for you to get started.

Resources