In your own words

Your map, your language. It is our mission to localize and translate Ushahidi with our community into your language of choice. We know that having a map in the local language increases accessibility and usage. Maps are story telling devices but better when in your own words.

Translators without Borders facilitates the transfer of knowledge from one language to another by creating and managing a community of NGOs who need translations and professional, vetted translators who volunteer their time to help.

The Translation Project

Translate Ushahidi software completely in KiSwahili

In January, our localization for KiSwahili was at approximately 60% for Ushahidi_Web and our mobile apps. We partnered with Translators without Borders for Uchaguzi Kenyan Elections project. The result is that now any Ushahidi community member can use this language set at 100% for their projects. Each organization had a community and toolset to get us there. Translation Without Borders team members used the project to try out a new tool: MemoQ. Ushahidi's community uses Transifex for our translation community. Leading up the election, you can see the edits for March in our translation dashboard.

Support Real-time translation of SMS messages for Uchaguzi live mapping

(March 1 - 7, 2013) While having our software in KiSwahili is a priority, the most intensive and exciting parts of this collaboration was the "Real-time translation." I've written previously about how our community has changed us:

"The Translation team is a combination of trained professionals at Translators without Borders and digital participants from Kenya and beyond. The transition to being deeply inside a software deployment had a steep learning curve. But, it was fantastic to see reports quickly translated. Being fast paced on global teams is hard enough, try doing it in a few languages like these folks."

Rebecca Petras, Translators without Borders, and I had a talk a week ago about the big lessons that we learned in our collaboration. Truly, this applies to the whole project, but especially our mighty translation team.

Real-time global collaboration is a new for most people.

Ushahidi software needs optimization for translation workflow.

We taught our collective communities: new tools, new workflow, and new collaboration methods

The community was in "make" and "edit" mode. This means we mentored and learned from each other.

The Translation team almost had triple the work as they did all of the above in multiple languages.

For the whole project, some of the key barriers and 'growing joys' were: language barriers, cultural norms, digital literacy, different skill-sets, global 24/7 time shifting, new relationships, new partnerships, multiple tools, and, of course, the fast pace of information. Getting into the flow and incorporating all of these elements some time and tenacity, but the win was in the words and reports. Rebecca advised that Translators without Border's team strengthened because of their participation. Ushahidi's team and community (including the Translation without Borders team) were able to provide citizen voice to multi-lingual reporters because of the efforts and quality that our translation communities delivered. Thank you. احب الخريطة...J'aime les cartes...Maps are Love...ramani ni upendo Here's to more adventures in localization: To get involved, you can learn more on our wiki.