Linguistic Team International Forum

Hello again,

After recently introducing myself on this forum as a new member of the Dutch translator group, I apparently have to re-introduce myself again here with a slightly different focus to get access to the cool stuff (the DEV group stuff), so here we go...

I am a programmer. I have been for the past 25 years (starting at the age of 6). I specialise in all Mirosoft technologies (.NET, BI, Dynamics etc.), and I am considered to be in the 98th percentile doing it. I specialise in translating functional requirements into technical solutions, process automation, mission and business critical systems, and everything else that is fun and exciting.

I love to bring my expertise to this amazing organisation in any way that I can. I am new to all of this, but I have painted myself a very clear picture of how everything is organised at the moment. I have taken a look at the PMS, which seems like a great starting point for further development, and I am eager to 'get my hands dirty'.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions,

Looking forward to work together with all of you!

Cheers,

Kim

Quoted from "Ray"

How much, if any. of an inconvenience is it for you that we're running everything here on a non-MS platform? Our LAMP server (Apache/MySQL) is running CentOS 5.4, with primary support for PHP, Python and Perl. Pootle is a combination of Django/Python, the PMS is based on CodeIgniter/PHP and the upcoming LTI Member Portal is built on the Joomla CMS.

Thank you for the elaboration on the tools and platforms used at the moment. In the end, a tool is just that, a tool, a means to achieve a certain goal. Many tools use similar techniques, patterns and technologies. For example, Joomla uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern, which is identical to the one used in ASP.NET MVC. Experience in many of the patterns, practices and techniques proves helpful regardless of the chosen plaform. The true challenge lies in choosing the right solution for a specific problem.

Quoted from "Ray"

The intent here is to eventually integrate all possible functions with as much automation as possible and it is already well understood, at least by me, how deep that automation needs to be to seriously raise the bar on what we are all able to accomplish here together. For this, I suspect you will need a much deeper understanding of LTI's overall systems approach, but your background should make that relatively easy for you to absorb.

In no way did I mean to imply that I feel that the DEV group doesn't already understand that automation is vital to the continuation and growth of our great collective initiaves. I'm also fully aware that I'm jumping on a speeding train, since a lot of time and effort has already been put into organizing our tremendous task.

About understanding the LTI's overall systems approach, I have probably only seen a very small part of it as of yet, as I have only been involved in some translation activities, and for a very short time as well. So please allow me to share what I've seen so far.

- Work is commissioned to LTI from the RBE community, mainly from TVP and TZM
- Translation work consist mainly of video and text.
- Work is mainly originally in English
- Work is entered in PMS
- Forum topics are created
- Video sources are uploaded to dotSUB to a repository and working location
- Video sources are transcribed, and proofread twice, then finalized by the English team
- Text sources are prepared for translation (either Pootle or GDocs)
- Transcribed video sources and prepared text sources are made available to the language teams
- Language team coordinators create projects in their own tools (either PMS, GDocs, ...)
- Forum topics are created for the specific language (optional)
- Work is prioritised
- Work is assigned to/by translators, then proofread twice
- Finished work is made available by the language teams, then approved, then published

This seems to be the main flow, but like you mention, at this time I lack the deeper understanding that comes with being involved for a longer period of time. Still, and maybe it's just 'Déformation professionnelle', I immediately start thinking about ways to streamline the process, reduce the amount of manual work involved etc.

This said, I hope that even though I lack the experience with the specific technologies that are currently used, I can still be a part of taking it to the next level!

Quoted from "lizardman"

This is not really so, unless the team uses the forum for project management (i.e. one thread per project). But in the case of Pootle, GDocs and PMS (the PMS being open only to the English team at this point in its testing), creating the project once and then making it available to all language teams is fully automated. For Pootle, the procedure is to create a template for the project and then simply add all languages to that project. For the PMS, the action of releasing a project as completed by the English team also automatically adds it as a new project to all other language teams.

This was based on the way the Dutch language team that I am a part of works. As I understood, once a project becomes available for this language team, it is manually added to a GDocs spreadsheet. It is very good to learn that in other cases however, this step is already automated.