I think you should think about how to motivate people to translate the user interface of LingQ into other languages.
Learners who have a low level of English will not stay on LingQ unless everything is translated in their native language.
I translate new parts of the interface almost every day and I correct the existing translations whenever I see an inconsistency in the existing translation.
However, I don’t spend hours doing it, since it’s not even rewarded. I prefer adding lessons to the different LingQ libraries.
I think using POOTLE is discouraging. Too complicated and not enough visibility of parts which are important to translate. The google spreadsheet is much easier. A good idea could be to send out a small batch with important phrases to translate, say once a week, this would encourage translating.
Hm, I like pootle but sometimes I wish to have more context. Some explanations where the word or phrase is used would be helpful. Sometimes I can figure it out by the link that is displayed under the term.
Probabyl Pootle is more handy for the programmers.
I guess the main problem is that there was no reward for a very long time for the translators. That has discouraged a lot of them.
Yes, I am often in trouble because of the lacking context, too.
I would support Silvia’s idea to send us a weekly batch of important phrases to be translated. For example, many of the still untranslated Italian parts belong to the testimonials and to the LingQ Academy, which aren’t very important parts, I think.
I have noticed that some phrases are not even included in Pootle. For example, I couldn’t find the fields for the choices in the Vocabulary dropdown menu (“Move to Known”, “Increase/Decrease level” etc.). And Latin is still called “Latin” instead of “latino”…
Yes, the testimonials were discouraging me to translate. I did not see any usage of translating them, too much work and I do not even know where to find them on the website. If LingQ wants testimonals, rather try to collect testimonals originally written in each language. Many situations do not apply at all when translated. American gradings and schools do mean nothing to many foreigners.
I fully agree!
Thank you for all the useful comments.
The main reason for using Pootle is it is far more convenient than Google Docs. We would eventually like to reward users for their translation, and Pootle helps us keep track of how many strings each user has translated, where as Google Docs is essentially anonymous. In addition, using Google Docs for translations requires significantly more time on our end to facilitate that things are running smoothly.
I’m not sure if anything can be done about the context issue that wouldn’t exist in any other translation interface, but we can look at it.
The testimonials can be found here: LingQ reviews and testimonials - See what our users are saying
That being said, we have talked about having users submit new testimonials and perhaps even video testimonials. We’ll see what can be done in this regard.