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Re: Effort and time required to translate WCAG 2.0 guidelines into a new language?

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From: Shadi Abou-Zahra
Date: Jun 7, 2011 8:48AM

Hi Birkir,

Great to hear about your interest in translating WCAG 2.0.

It is not possible to give exact measurement of the effort and time as
it depends on many parameters. I have observed that translation effort
increases when the language has many dialects or sub-communities. This
has been the case for French and Spanish, for example. On the positive
side, the effort seems to decrease when the translators have knowledge
of the accessibility community and the corresponding terminology.

A good approach is often to start by translating key terminology (such
as those defined in the glossary) first, then the rest of the document.
I think that the existing WCAG 2.0 translations in Nordic languages may
help accelerate your work on translating the key terminology.

Also, John was referring to the Policy for Authorized W3C Translations
[1]. This is a community-review based process to ensure consensus on a
particular translation within a language community. We have seen that
this process helps create better translations and I recommend you to
consider that opportunity too.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/2005/02/TranslationPolicy>;

Let me know if you have further questions on W3C/WAI translations.

Best,
Shadi


On 7.6.2011 03:53, Birkir R. Gunnarsson wrote:
> Thank you John
>
> I will get information from my colleagues in the Nordic countries on
> their experience with the translation process.
> I feel most comfortable with English myself (plus Icelandic is
> significantly different from even Norwegian, its the language that
> resembles it the closest).
> Thanks for the info, this will turn out very helpful.
> -B
>
> On 6/7/11, John Foliot< <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Addendum:
>>
>> Translated into Finnish as well...
>> (http://www.w3.org/Translations/WCAG20-fi/)
>>
>> JF
>>
>>>