Research:Collaborative Translation Research
This page documents a proposed research project.
Information may be incomplete and may change before the project starts.
Understanding group processes and needs around translation
As part of the Wiki Experiences 2 (WE2) “Encyclopedic content” objective from the annual plan, the WE2.1 key result is intended to support organizers, contributors, and institutions to increase the coverage of quality content in key topic areas. Organizations such as the Healthcare Translation Task Force, amongst others, have increased outputs thanks to Content Translation. Indeed, Content Translation is used in campaigns, wikiprojects, and University Courses and similar collaborative settings. Historically, the main focus has been to support translation needs of individuals; the goal of this project is to more thoroughly investigate the specific needs of groups, which through their size and collaborative efforts can have big impacts on closing knowledge gaps.
Background & Goals
editThe Language and Product Localization (LPL) Team plan to expand the capabilities of Content Translation to empower communities to define and translate content to cover specific knowledge gaps. Thus, they are currently working on expanding capabilities associated with suggestions and lists for translations. We know that often individuals will join forces through group activities such as WikiProjects (e.g., Healthcare Translation Task Force), campaigns, competitions, and edit-a-thons, for which there is a common shared goal to reduce certain knowledge gaps. Unlike individual translators, these groups may coordinate and track efforts in their pursuit of shared goals. As such, there is an opportunity to learn how groups select and track work around translation activities because of product opportunities to better support these organizing activities.
Research questions
editOrganizers & collaboration. How do groups of individuals select areas of work and focus, especially in regard to shaping (and potentially tracking) others’ translation activities?
- What are their goals?
- How do they select areas of work and generate work lists?
- What tools do they use, and to what extent do these tools meet and serve their purposes?
- What if any activities do they engage in with regard to monitoring progress and/or quality of work?
- To what degree is bringing in newcomers prioritized? How so?
- Regarding quality of translations and editing outputs, do organizers prefer to oversee such aspects or leave them to usual community processes? Why?
Process of organizing. What does the process of organizing (i.e., identifying, organizing, tracking, etc) translation efforts look like?
- What strategies and workflows have people developed?
- What gaps and pain points exist in these workflows, and where are there opportunities to better support the organizing work?
- What, if any, external supports are individuals using and why?
(Non-organizer) group participants. In addition to the perspective of organizers, how do group participants engage in these processes?
- What motivates these individuals to aprticipate in a group/collaborative setting (compared to engaging in individual work alone)?
- Relative to organizing activities, what do participant workflows look like?
- What gaps and pain points exist in the (non-organizer) participant experiences?
General opportunities. What opportunities are there to better support this work and integrate translation support into collaborative workflows?
Possible focus areas to combine with these basic, foundational questions above:
- Translation quality. Group translation may imply the participation of translators who may not be Wikipedia experts. What tools and guidance are needed for these individuals to contribute content that is perceived as high quality and valuable by the Wikipedia community?
Approach
editMethods
edit- Basic desk research and informal interviews with select WMF staff
- There is topically-related work and efforts happening with the WMF Campaigns Team. Some preliminary, informal conversations/interviews will be needed with the Campaign Team’s PM and designer.
- Some basic discussions will be helpful with the LPL Team, in order to better understand current parameters of the team’s work, and input and alignment around the proposed research questions and approach.
- Contextual inquiries
- Semi-structured contextual inquiries, involving a combination of workflow observations, task analysis, and interviews, will be conducted with both organizers and non-organizing group participants (the latter of which should be segmented according to both general experience editing Wikipedia and experience translating on Wikipedia).
- To determine participant segments, we will need to develop a selection criteria for ‘groups’ we will focus on for recruitment and involvement (some possibilities include wiki projects, campaigns, competitions, and edit-a-thons).
Participants
edit- Participants are in part determined by the type of groups selected above.
- For each group, we’ll need to recruit ‘organizers’ as well as (non-organizing) ‘group participants’.
Phases & Timeline
editAdditional details may be available at phabricator task tracking this work.
Phase 0 - Scoping
- Finalize research brief
- Receive input form LPL on project planning
Phase 1 - Preparation
- Complete desk research and WMF interviews
- Discussion guide development
- Recruitment materials development
- Translation of discussion guide and other materials
- Secure supporting resources, such as language support
- Recruitment plan
Phase 2 - Data collection
- Pilot and refine discussion guide
- Ongoing recruitment of participants
- Conduct contextual inquiries
Phase 3 - Analysis and reporting
- Analysis of contextual inquiries
- Preparation of report and/or slide deck
- Presentation to stakeholders
- Discussion and report revisions
Resources
editA note on terminology - ‘Collaborations’ and ‘Collections’. In general, there may be a lot of terms used for this type of thing, and it’s not clear what terminology community groups may use. That said, “collaborations” was a WMF renaming of “community lists” to refer to collaborative editing group activities (e.g., edit-a-thons). Currently the LPL Team is referring to sets of contents that could be worked on in connection with an event or organized effort as “collections”. Collections are lists of content, which aligns with the notion of knowledge gaps; that is, they are content-focused, whereas collaborations describe human activities and efforts. Collections may be used by collaborations.