As part of our community translation research program, we talked to dotSUB's CEO Michael Smolens about community translation for TED.

TED Open Translation Project launched on May 13th, bringing TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world, by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts, and the ability for volunteers to translate any talk into any language.  A year in the making, two weeks after launch, more than 512 volunteer translators have already contributed, resulting in 371 videos completed with subtitled translations, 762 more in process, in 64 languages.  The project is generously sponsored by Nokia. dotSUB provides the technological backbone and project management architecture behind the initiative.

Nearly a decade ago, Symantec took a number of key decisions about how to manage its Web site translation processes when its previously-distributed localization activity was centralized. At the time, there were no exemplars of how to do this, so the team had to invent its own approach. This marked the start of a process that has led to one of the most efficient workflows for multi-stream localization. The Symantec localization hub offers services to other in-house customers, ranging from customer service through the legal department to marketing and more. Fred Hollowood (see picture) has been leading Symantec's translation automation activities.