My parents have a hell of a time explaining to their friends just what it is I do at work.

And who can blame them, since it's a bit jack-of-all-trades-y.

And so, for their edification, I present a summary of a recent project.

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Wikispaces is looking for translators - interested in helping out?  Wikispaces wants to offer the wiki platform in additional languages and needs the help of others who have strong written fluency in English and the additional language of choice.  This is not a paid-for opportunity, but one that will greatly impact the community of Wikispaces users.

Desired languages include:

Do you speak a language that isn't English?  Do you have a passion for multi-lingual social justice?  If so (or even if not) this is the opportunity for you.

Wiser Earth is a nonprofit and social justice community that includes members from around the world.  However, they are now seeking to expand their resources to support the huge number of non-English speakers who use to WiserEarth so they can become a more effective global resource.  They hope to encourage their members to use WiserEarth in their own language.  How to make this happen?  Well, the good news is, you can help!

Aspiration, a nonprofit focused on connecting nonprofit organizations with the best software available, just released Open Translation Tools: Disruptive Potential to Broaden Access to Knowledge—a paper documenting learnings and outcomes from the first-ever Open Translation Tools Convergence.

You can learn more and download the paper from Aspiration's website here.

I have been reposting several posts from my weblog here. As my blog is in Dutch, this might have been of limited use for most readers.
Recently I was able to put a dynamic auto-translation link on my weblog. If you click the flag it automatically translates the page from Dutch into English. This works on any individual page of my blog.

You can easily change the language codes to apply the same to other languages.

See it here: http://www.rijneveld.eu/2007/11/read-my-blog-in-english.html (english here)

"The language barrier is the only remaining barrier on the Net, but in a way, the most significant because comprehending human language is something only people can do. Breaking the language barrier is more about finding a successful organizational structure and economic incentives, than it is about technology."

Does your organization's work serve people who speak a language other than your own? Do you wish there was a way to translate your web site or blog's content so that you could reach a more diverse population?

Worldwide Lexicon is an open source, collaborative translation system for websites and publishers.

in the following e-interview, Brian McConnell, the project's leader, talks about how you can use Worldwide Lexicon with your nonprofit's blog or web site. Brian is an author, inventor and entrepreneur. Prior to WWL, he founded three telecommunications companies. He often writes for O'Reilly Media on topics ranging from programming to science and technology.

How does Worldwide Lexicon work?

The Worldwide Lexicon is a collaborative translation system, similar to Wikipedia, where people can view, create and edit translations. The translations are all created by people, not computers, so the quality can be quite good. The key idea of the system is that websites with a loyal audience often have bilingual readers without knowing it. With WWL they can organize their own users to contribute translations, for free, or for a small fee, or other incentives. WWL is usually integrated into participating sites, so they can promote it to their user communities who, in turn, can contribute translations. WWL is open source, and we are producing a wide variety of tools that can be embedded in virtually any website or web service.

http://www.babels.org/

THIS SITE IS A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE WHO CAN SPEAK AND WRITE MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE CAN HELP WITH TRANSLATIONS

SO IF YOU FEEL LIKE HELPING ORGANIZATIONS THAT NEED TRANSLATORS THIS IS A GOOD PLACE