Linguistic Team International Forum

Hi everyone!
We are extremely happy to present the start of the "The Best That Money Can't Buy" (TBTMCB) Translate-a-thon!
And note that we're now up to the 8th Edition arty:

Volunteers from the English Department have completed their full proofreading (2 rounds, plus Di Anna's final review), so we're ready to rock on the translations. The project will be handled in GoogleDocs using multiple spreadsheets, very similar to how we handled "Zeitgeist: Moving forward" and "Paradise or Oblivion". Please note that this project includes a non-disclosure agreement and all completed translations will be handed over to TVP for inclusion in the TVP Store. These store offerings will then help to financially support the research center in Florida as well as the development of new public materials.

To join in on the phun, simply fill in and submit the NDA form, and then follow the instructions for confirming your desire to participate (which protects you from someone else submitting your name to the project ). If you have any questions, please post them directly to this announcement thread or hit me up in Skype.

No deadline on this one, but we're still approaching it similar to previous major translate-a-thons that included deadlines. So, I would imagine that most teams will want to take advantage of having the help of the extra volunteers who show up now. Perhaps some of them will choose to stick around and help with other projects after this one is completed.

Also, as teams form now, they are going to require someone coordinating the sharing of spreadsheets with the translators & proofreaders. It's best if the language coordinators (or perhaps a veteran team member) handle this part.

No sir. This NDA applies to any/all aspects of this specific project.

Hey Knut,

GREAT question!
I, perhaps with help, will play the role of project coordinator for any language teams that form without an official language coordinator. In most cases, I suspect that will be mostly languages that are still not yet represented within LTI, but it will also apply to existing teams where their coordinator is unable to participate for some reason. I certainly do not possess the multi-lingual skills necessary to help with proofreading, so the hope is that no project team ends up with only one translator. Any that do end up in such a situation will be strongly encouraged to seek out more people from their social circles to help them. This project is certainly not limited to just LTI volunteers.

As of this writing, the teams are still being formed. Once the NDA requests settle down, we will be able to get the party started.
If you want to help but haven't yet sent in the NDA request, the instructions are in the top post.

Hi Marlyse,
Some of the teams are coming together slower than anticipated, so we're still focusing on promoting the project to help build them up more before starting it. I am now anticipating the start to be in about 2-3 weeks, hopefully closer to 2, but nothing is set in stone.

The TVP website is not involved in any part of the project flow. The entire project will be handled within Google Docs (spreadsheets, to be more exact), the same way previous translate-a-thons were handled.

To focus on the log in issue you are reporting here, TVP is aware that there are issues with the main site's log in function. The current site is going to be replaced very soon, so they have decided to focus on getting that ready, rather than try to figure out and fix the log in issue on the current site.

In prep for the eventual start of the project, I've created and shared the two most important 'collaborative' info sheets we use for these translate-a-thons.
The second one will become extremely important to everyone's accuracy once the project begins, while the first one is very important right now.


This first public sheet shows how the teams are slowly shaping up. Only languages that have at least one volunteer are shown here. If your language is not represented, it means that no one has volunteered to help translate/proofread into that language yet.
TBTMCB Team Formation Progress

Proofreading:
The entire book was proofread for English multiple times before it reached us. We then followed all of that with our own careful proofreading of it and found a significant amount of corrections that still needed to be made. Of course, this is not unusual, since there is no such thing as a perfect transcript. If you helped with either of our previous translate-a-thons (Zeitgeist: Moving Forward or Paradise or Oblivion), you may be aware that all of the teams collaborated on developing a shared 'Prooofreading/Glossary' sheet to minimize proofreading and understanding issues for everyone across all language teams. Although this project has received much more proofreading than the previous projects, it is still important for us to work together to ensure that we catch any remaining issues and provide all teams with detailed information about any terms or phrases that may be difficult to understand or translate in their current form. In other words, if anyone comes across something that they feel requires proofreading care (fixing), or if you find a term or phrase that is not understandable enough to translate without help, please add that sample to the following spreadsheet so it can be corrected or more fully explained for everyone. As we progress, you are likely to find that some of your questions have already answered in the sheet (just one example of the power of collaboration), so please refer to it often throughout the project to make sure your teams are fully informed of such issues & corrections. If you find a reference to a sheet/string that your team has already completed, please also go back and double-check that it has been handled correctly in your language.

TBTMCB Proofreading/Glossary sheet


It is very important to the capabilities of the teams that news of this project reach all corners of the overall RBE Community. If you frequent RBE Community locations that are not aware of the project, please, please, please help to spread awareness. After all, that's what we are here for.

I appreciate both Jagi's concerns as well as the replies that have come in related to them. Thank you all for bringing this topic to the forefront here in the forum (it was addressed in Facebook a few weeks ago).
In the replies I am about to attempt to provide below, I intend to focus only on the facts, rather than any personal idealism or preferences that I might have for anything surrounding this or any other project we tackle. However, I will also provide our specific reasoning for tackling this one.

Quoted from "Jagi"

I have one question. Is this book going to be available for $ in the store or people will be able to choose if they want to download payed or free version? I'm curious because sentence "These store offerings will then help to financially support the research center in Florida as well as the development of new public materials." for me means financing someone's life.

All of our completed translation efforts will be sent to TVP so they can offer them, for money, in the TVP store and likely beyond (Amazon, etc.). As far as I know, there are no plans to also make them available for free download anywhere and we are dedicated to respecting that, as I will explain later in this reply.

Quoted from "Jagi"

I know that Jacque and Roxanne maybe are doing many lectures but I think that PJ is doing much more to increase people awareness (i.e. Zeitgeist Media Festival) and he offers a choose, you can download something for free or just buy it if you want to support his work. Lately I see J&R's work like talking a lot and doing a little.

There are many factors that affect what TVP is able to do and how they decide on best courses of action to satisfy what they feel is most important at any given time. The most pressing, of course, is how much money they have available to them. Without money, very little can be done that the public will see as 'getting stuff done', assuming that the public is only concerned with public appearances and 'external' projects conducted directly with the public. Over the course of its 38+year history based in Florida (it was not called TVP before that), TVP has never had the means to do much in that area of localized public festivals, heavy lecturing tours or many of the other things that Peter is much better at both handling and affording. They don't have Peter's budget and they don't have the luxury of Peter's much more resilient, younger body and healing abilities. Jacque recently turned 97 and recently suffered a broken hip (please think HARD about both of those things) and Roxanne is also not as young as she was back when they created all that we are trying to share with the rest of the planet.

So, instead of fancy festivals, they must focus on recording and releasing (within their very limited budget) as much info & understanding as possible from Jacque before he leaves us, while also focusing hard on completing the script for the movie. In addition, they are also trying their best to help the people who have graciously volunteered their time and purpose to helping with the awareness campaign that we're all involved in. The money that was (and continues to be) donated toward the making of the motion picture has not been touched (by law, they are permitted to use it for a variety of things directly associated with TVP, but they haven't). J&R are fully committed to using it only toward the making of the movie and, from all that I have seen so far, they will not stop until that becomes reality for the world. In addition, they have resisted using some of it in ways that would not have given the donators a worthwhile return on their investment. For example, they chose to interview prospective screenwriters instead of just directly hiring one. That turned out to be a very smart decision, since none of the screenwriters who applied for the task could handle the complexities of the RBE concept well enough to handle this incredibly important script. As a result, Roxanne has had to put off many of the other things that she normally handles in order to focus her time and energies to the task of script expansion. Thankfully, she had found a couple of people who are helping for free, which then preserves the donations for even more important things they have yet to face with this huge movie project. I could go on, but I'm hopeful that you can clearly see that there is much more to everything than just what we are able to see from our naturally limited perspectives.

Quoted from "Jagi"

This complaint is directed towards TVP not you Ray . You're doing great work .

I seriously appreciate this sentiment, Jagi. But I also understand very well that we're ALL in this together. If TVP goes bankrupt, I can almost guarantee you that TZM will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain itself for very long. The negative reverberations will echo massively across the entire RBE network and a lot of the current support will simply give up hope.

Bottom line:
TBTMCB is the life's work of the man who put all of this together in ways that provide for the systems approach that we are all here to support, regardless of connection to TVP, TZM, Occupy, Anonymous or any other 'group'. I often jokingly refer to this book as the RBE Bible and nothing else comes even remotely close to such a claim, jokingly or otherwise.
TVP needs money to sustain itself.
This book has always been a TVP store item, starting long before TZM existed or any of us got involved. It is not only unreasonable to ask (or worse, demand) that they change that for anyone's ideals, it is anti-productive to their (and our) need to keep the research center from going bankrupt.
LTI is here to fully support the public transcription, proofreading & translation needs of both TVP & TZM.
Making this book available in many more languages than English opens up the most comprehensive collection of RBE material to the rest of the planet. To not do this, or to put personal ideals ahead of need for massive global awareness, would be unsane.


Much love & respect to you Jagi, regardless of what you choose to do here.