The TED Translator Tribe

It's hard to believe that my first TED Translator workshop was less than a year ago. I skyped in from my holiday home in Italy in July 2011. It was not exactly a high tech operation, but it worked. I got in touch with the emerging global translator tribe in Edinburgh. This year, I was blessed twice. I enjoyed the interaction in the room, while at the same time following the livestream chat with Language Coordinators at home and relaying some of their insights and comments to the room.

We were on an extremely tight schedule. After brief introductions, TED’s Kristin Windbigler told a personal story, involving rapid innovation, logging and as a special tribute to Jenny Zurawell’s love for bold fashion statements, a family picture showing a lady with suspenders and a bonnet.

Dick Lundgren then presented the beautiful tray he designed for us. It shows the 21 words worth spreading that I had the pleasure of collecting from my translator friends.

Deron Thriff talked about all the channels other than TED.com through which TEDTalks are spread (Netflix, iTunes and others). They account for more than half of the TEDTalk views, and the numbers will increase further as more platforms are added. Aaron Weyenberg introduced us to the brand new video player on TED.com.

Alberto Pagani proposed guidelines for Language Coordinators. Ivana Korom did the same for OTP-TEDx cooperation. Both initiatives need to be finalized, but good progress has been made. I particularly look forward to the OTPedia page Krystian Aparta promised to write about how to put subtitles on TEDTalks shown at TEDx events. I know a few TEDx organizers who will highly appreciate this.

Both June Cohen and Chris Anderson popped in and made time for us. We got a sneak peek at the video about the Open Translation Project that will be shown at TEDGlobal later this week.

Jack Welde talked about new developments in Smartling, the platform used for the localization of TED.com. Matthew Trost gave a brilliant presentation about bug reporting, that will help us improve Amara further by giving focused feedback. Alex Dean talked about the interplay between Amara and TED.com. Dean Jansen, who sadly could not make it to the workshop in person, skyped us through the latest Amara process improvement ideas.

At the end of the workshop, Mina Nagy Michel Takla talked about Taghreedat, a volunteer effort to "Arabize" web content that is inspiring to other communities too.

The interaction was lively, both in the room and online. Occasionally being “the voice of the people online” was great fun. To keep sugar levels up, we had a choice between Dora’s special OTP Cookies, Norwegian chocolates, Swedish chocolates and Belgian chocolates.

After the workshop, we held an improvised TED Salon at the Bell Tower apartment, home to 4 translators for the TEDGlobal week. Anwar Dafa-Alla, our OTP King, rehearsed his TED U talk for us. Our kitchen was his stage, Mihail was his time keeper, Hugo was his camera man and all of us were his coaches. It’s such a privilege to be part of this tribe.

--User:ElsDK 06:18, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: Links to the presentations will be added as they become available.