I recently attended a workshop on crowdsourcing solutions for translation at the Middlebury Institute of Intl. Studies at Monterey. During the course of this workshop, we discussed two main issues with crowdsourcing that come up in translation: quantity and quality. This blog will deal with the latter, and is a follow-up to my blog on quantity.

Many organizations may be wary of crowdsourcing translations because they do not want sensitive or public facing documents to be poorly translated. While these fears are not completely unfounded, I believe that a high-quality translation can indeed come from crowdsourcing or community translation if some measures are put in place to ensure quality. Here is my list of the15 best general practices for controlling quality when crowdsourcing translation.

1. Develop a heavy screening/vetting process.

• Demand at least 2-5 years of experience.

• Ask for proof of any accreditations.

2. Consider a fast track to streamline this process. For example, persons holding an MA in translation or ATA certifications would receive immediate approval.
3. Do not allow volunteers to translate into their ‘B’ language.
4. Advertise yourself as a place where the translator’s skills matter.
5. Create a list of banned words for each language, and use content filtering.
6. Create a simple style guide.
7. Ensure both editing and review is done.
8. If human review is impossible, use an automated review tool to check for simple typos.
9. Ban use of MT.
10. Limit volunteers to only one language pair i.e. no ‘C’ languages.
11. Provide terminology.
12. Train and educate volunteers on how to use the organization’s tools.
13. Invest in volunteers; ensure they are growing.
14. Publicly recognize your translators so they are incentivized to produce high-quality work.
15. TRUST your community of translators.

Please also see the infographic I created on the 5 best practices for both quantity and quality, which combines the most important aspects from each blog on quantity and quality:

5 Best Practices for Both Quality and Quantity in Translation Crowdsourcing

I recently attended a workshop on crowdsourcing solutions for translation. During the course of this workshop, we discussed two main issues with crowdsourcing that come up in translation: quantity and quality. This blog will deal with quantity, and a follow-up blog on quality will be posted. 

Many organizations have such large volumes of content that paying for it is simply not feasible. Lots of organizations are paying for only a small portion of their content to be translated, and some organizations have started making progress towards fitting the translation of ALL of their content into the budget, and not just some, by using crowdsourcing. This is just one scenario where “quantity” may be one of the main goals of the crowdsourcing since other translations that need to be high quality are done by paid professionals. I have come up with a list of the 15 best practices that any organization could use for achieving maximum quantity when crowdsourcing translation:

1. Develop a leaderboard.
2. Use gamification techniques.
3. Use MT and TM. (Prepopulate MT or show as a suggestion)
4. Make the organization easy to join.
5. Open your doors to more non- professionals needing experience.
6. Allow translation into B language.
7. Allow multiple language pairs.
8. Provide field-specific terminology (which also helps encourage novices to try to volunteer).
9. Use a content filter for banned words.
10. Skip review for translation done into A language.
11. Skip review for “approved” translators.
12. Send notification reminder to translators.
13. Hold a remote Translatathon after recruiting, before translators lose interest.
14. Use gift card incentives.
15. Prioritize translations using a CVI (content value index).

Please also see the infographic I created on the 5 best practices for both quantity and quality, which combines the most important aspects from each blog on quantity and quality:

5 Best Practices for Both Quality and Quantity in Translation Crowdsourcing