Translations

Roles and responsibilities

Person of contact (POC) - External Affairs department

A member of the External Affairs department is assigned to serve as a point of contact for the translator, reviewer, and supervisors throughout the translation project. When you are the POC, you are responsible for:

• Liaising with the supervisors of the translator pool members to assign translator and reviewer

• Arranging deadlines and assigning roles on Asana.

• Creating and sharing the necessary documents for the translators and reviewers. 

• Checking in with the translator and reviewers on progress to ensure the translation is delivered on time.

• Liaising with the rest of the External Affairs team on progress and when the translation is ready.

Translator

For each translation project, the POC will assign a translator from the translator pool for the requested language. The POC will then share the translation working doc and the final English text of the report when it is available via Asana. When you are assigned as the translator, you should do the following :

• Please translate the text line-by-line, including all data visualizations, and flagging any uncertainties.

• After the first review, the reviewer may ask you to address their feedback and resubmit. In accepting and responding to the reviewer’s feedback, you should follow the Review Etiquette guidelines on ACLED Net. 

• Track hours and submit an invoice: Throughout the process, translators should track the time they spend working on these tasks and record it in each relevant subtask on Asana  (see “Tracking time spent on translation & review section” below).  If a translation task takes longer than the estimated time provided by the POC, the Researcher must submit the Hours extension request form on Asana before working the extra hours.  This applies throughout the process.

Reviewer

For each translation project, the POC will assign a reviewer from the translator pool for the requested language. If you are the reviewer for a translation project, you are responsible for the following: 

• Using “Suggestion mode” review the translation for accuracy, grammar, punctuation, clear and correct data points, and natural language. 

• Remember to follow the Review Etiquette guidelines on ACLED Net for delivering your feedback.

• After your first review, the translator will address your comments and suggestions. When the document is passed back to you, you should make sure all of your concerns have been addressed

• Final translation document: When the translation is finalized, the reviewer is responsible for transferring each translated line into the Final translation doc, which they will receive from the POC. This includes placing all the footnotes. The reviewer may request that the translator have a final look at the Final translation doc to ensure no errors have been overlooked. 

• Track hours and submit an invoice: Throughout the process, translators should track the time they spend working on these tasks and record it in each relevant subtask on Asana  (see “Tracking time spent on translation & review section” below). If a review task takes longer than the estimated time provided by the POC, the Researcher must submit the Hours extension request form on Asana before working the extra hours.  This applies throughout the process.

Supervisors (RM)

When the POC receives a request for translation, they should alert the supervisors of the members of the translator pool for that language. RMs are consulted on the availability of their supervisees before the POC assigns the task. This process occurs directly on Asana, so the RM should reply directly on Asana to indicate their approval or rejection. 

The RM will be notified via Asana quarterly about report translation projects before they begin. The notification will include the total number of hours expected for translation and review. 

Process

Share English text with translator

POC

• Share the original English report doc in “view-only mode”

• Create the folder and documents for the project, including the Translation Working Doc based on the template and the Final translation doc that will include the full text of the final translation (see example).

  • The folder name should be called “[Language] Report title”
    E.g., [Spanish] Civilians in Colombia face less deadly — but more pervasive — violence during Petro’s presidency

  • The file name of the working doc should be renamed to “Country_working translation doc”
    E.g., Colombia_working translation doc

  • The file name of the Final translation doc should be called “Translation_Report title”
    E.g., Translation_Civilians in Colombia face less deadly — but more pervasive — violence during Petro’s presidency

• In the translation working doc, put each line of the text into the template 

  • Each line that has a footnote should be marked with the number of the footnote

  • The segmentation of the report can be done manually (by carefully copying & pasting the lines of the report into the translation working doc) or using Google Sheets by pasting the text into cells and separating the text into rows using the following formula: 

=ARRAYFORMULA(TRANSPOSE(SPLIT(TEXTJOIN(".", TRUE, A1:A10), ".")) & ".")

• • This will retain the periods at the end of the sentence while splitting the paragraphs into rows. Then, you can copy & paste from Google Sheets onto the translation working doc. While doing so, you should carefully check every line of the text to ensure the formula works correctly and add the numbers for the footnotes.

  • Whichever method you choose, please ensure the translation working document includes the following four elements:

    1. Titles, subtitles, bylines, any other attributions, footnotes, short description for web, key takeaways, and extra text at the beginning or the end of the report. No need to include the “related content” section. 

    2. Visuals, pasted into the document as if it’s just another line of text. This includes links to Flourish visuals. Do not include photo captions, as the website does not allow translated text.

    3. Hyperlinks attached to the text they are attached to in the original English version.

    4. Footnotes: Translate the footnotes for sources that are in the target language. If the target language is Latin script, translate the dates for all the citations. Also translate other footnote text, including interview citations, methodological notes, or other non-citation footnotes.

  • Fill out the rest of the fields related to deadlines (see example below).