Monthly Translation Service Package: English to Chinese

Proposals Pre-Proposals
1

Attributes

  • Author: @bruceyin

  • Recipient: @bruceyin

  • Category: Imbursement

  • Asking Amount: $1,550 USD or equivalent $POKT per Month

Summary / Abstract

Routinely translate the new articles on Blog & important announcements/updates/reports into Chinese, then get them published on WeChat public platform (WeChat is the most popular social App in China).

Motivation

The Pocket Network blog is a great place to track the latest progress/info and explore the Pocket’s protocol/ecosystem. The important announcements/updates/reports like Protocol Revenue Report also are the valuable resource to understand the past and future of Pocket Network.

However, there is always a language barrier to discourage the Chinese community members from reading these English contents.

By translating these contents to Chinese, the obstacles will be removed, and the Chinese community members will be encouraged to read these Chinese contents then get aligned with the latest progress.

Samples of Previous Work

I have been doing this work since April 2021 and get more than 200 articles translated including the weekly/monthly reports, PR, news… A few samples are as below:

Budget Explanation

Generally there will be 3 articles get published on the blog per week, roughly 1,000 – 1,500 words (roughly would be 1,500 – 2,300 words in Chinese) on each article. That means there will be at least 12,000 words need to translate per month (4 weeks). In fact, based on my previous experience, it’s even more than 20,000 words in some months.

In addition, the important announcements / updates / reports will also be translated. Given their nature is not periodical and predictable, I conservatively set the word counts as 1,000 per month.

In general, the estimated rate would be in the range of $0.08-$0.12 per word.

Deliverables

English contents will be translated and published in 1 day after their public releases, unless it’s too long to get done in 1 day or encounter the unexpectable situations like disease, power outage, etc.

Once the article in Chinese get published, the link of it will be shared in the Chinese groups.

Contributor(s)

Currently, I am the sole contributor.

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Not sure if I can fully support this for reason 1 below:

  1. The DAO should consider a process where any one individual has the ability to claim a translation request, so to avoid having 1 single individual as the sole translator of a language, and in having such opportunity.

  2. Consider utilizing a platform, such as DeWorks in creating a translation request section, where any ecosystem contributor can submit a request to seek approval for a translator of their article, and once approved by a review team, can then be claimed by a translator. This will also help to avoid the guess work on which article should be translated, as well as avoid multiple individuals working on a translation of the same article.

    2a. If article content is at the Protocol, Foundation or DAO level, the grant can be funded by the DAO if approved.
    2b. If article content is regarding the said requestor’s own proprietary product or service (for-profit/non-public good), the grant must be funded by the requestor.

  3. Price per article can be considered via past approved DAO grants of such activity as the baseline, but might vary based on the language, which should be considered if such is the case based on research. The standard rates can then be documented so that it is clear for each language.

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Thanks for your feedback, Ming! An opening platform to list the bounties is a great idea, as well as the standard price rate. I do believe it would be a decent improvement for our ecosystem, and worth for the cooperating efforts to make it happens.

For the contents mentioned on this proposal, I still prefer to a package service for the reasons below:

  1. Most of the articles/announcements/updates/reports, e.g. Weekly Relay Report, are high time sensitive, so the translations are rush work need to be done in 1 day. The bounty is good, but hard to assure a timely manner, which would affect the effectiveness of publicizing.

  2. Different translators may bring different styles and interpretation of terms. For the contents, e.g. Weekly Relay Report, are published routinely, that might bring the confusion to readers.

  3. With a sole contributor in a period, it would be easier to assure getting the work done in a timely manner, and keeping the consistency of translated context.

  4. Price rate per word would benefit to me, as based on the market price ($0.1 to $0.6 per word) and the potential workload, probably the monthly payment would be more than $1,550. I would like to do a little contribution, other than a pure freelancer to hunt bounties, so I bid a relative lower amount of package service than the market price.

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After a chat with Ming where we discussed the concerns he raises in his reply above, Ming and I are proposing that this proposal be expanded as set out below. The expanded proposal will supersede and incorporate Bruce’s previous pre-proposal “Translate Pocket Foundation Articles of Association into Chinese.” Ming will join the expanded proposal as co-author.

Community feedback is requested regarding this expanded proposal.

Template for Translation Work in Other Languages

The idea is to create a process for translation of Pocket-related documentation into Chinese that can serve as a prototype for translation work in other languages going forward (e.g., Spanish).

Background

As of January 20, 2023, these are the number for our Chinese audience:

  • Telegram Chinese members: 2471

  • WeChat Chinese readers: 1,179 followers on the public platform; 1,073 members in 3 groups

This compares as follows with our English-language audience (figures as of January 29, 2023):

English Discord: 19,595

Poktopus Den: 1876

Poktprice: 1548

Pocket Twitter: 39,200

It’s a given that the DAO wants to expand Pocket’s reach and adoption into the hugely important Chinese market. (Alongside this proposal, the DAO encourages efforts, and will welcome proposals, to study Pocket’s penetration of the Chinese market and to grow this audience.)

To this end, the DAO is requested to fund translation of material that will help keep our Chinese audience informed about Pocket and up-to-date on important new developments. Depending on the nature of the material, timely translation may be necessary.

Given that not all blog pieces are related to the Pocket ecosystem (e.g., a coming piece on MEV and PNI) and given that a determination needs to be made on whether updates, reports, and announcements are important enough to warrant translation, someone will need to approve each translation.

Selectiveness is also justified by the small Chinese audience size. As this audience grows, a bigger spend and the translation of more material will be warranted.

Process

Material proposal and selection will take place on Pocket’s Dework platform. Ming will provide the details shortly. But generally, anyone in the community can propose that a document be translated into Chinese: Bruce, other translators, an author, etc. A Dework review team will give the go-ahead.

(Translation work can also be requested - and paid for - by private Pocket-related enterprises and a translator can accept the request.)

A proposal/suggestion to translate the Articles of Association (currently the essence of Bruce’s prior pre-proposal “Translate Pocket Foundation Articles of Association into Chinese”) can be made using this process.

Roster, But No Fewer Than Two

Translator Roster: The idea is to have a roster of translators, but no fewer than two. One would do the translation and the other would copy-edit and proofread. (To ensure quality, all copy produced on behalf of the DAO for public consumption should be copy-edited and proofread.)

For fairness, as translation work is more profitable, the translators would take turns doing the translations – unless there are only two translators and one prefers to do only proofreading. If the roster has more than two translators, the work would rotate. Of course, the translators can work out their own arrangements; availability for work that needs to be done quickly also could impact who does the translation. A similar system will be created for copy-editing and proofreading.

Payment

Industry rates will be applied. Bruce, above, estimates that the “rate would be in the range of $0.08-$0.12 per word.” For copy editor/proofreader, we are suggesting a lower rate, say, 25% of that paid to the translator.

We invite input on these rates and will make further inquiries of our own.

Qualifications

As we wish to onboard other translators and also are creating a template for work in other languages, it is important that a uniform evaluation process be implemented to approve any translator in any language, starting with Chinese. I will work on this (through my litigation work I am familiar with translator/interpreter accreditation and in a previous life did a short stint as a government translator).

Bruce has translated more than 200 articles for PNI since April 2021 including the weekly/monthly reports and PR. Also, he understands the ecosystem and governance of Pocket Network. He is no doubt a shoo-in, but will need to pass the same evaluation. Based on his proven track record, however, we are content that he begin work as soon as this proposal is approved and that he do the evaluation once it’s put in place.

Also, we are content that he begin work even before the onboarding of a second translator who can share translation and proofreading work. We encourage Bruce to locate such a person, or we can ask him to announce on Chinese Telegram and WeChat that we’re looking for one.

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I am fully fond of these modifications and updates and willing to merge with my pre-proposal Monthly Translation Service Package. There is one supplement point I would like to mention: The rate in the range of $0.08-$0.12 per word is not the industry rate. Based on the Google results on the first page with Keywords “English to Chinese translation price” The estimated industry rate of the timely human’s work would be $0.12 to $0.15 per word, even more for the specific industries or complicated docs, e.g. the rate on theprotranslation

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Given the natures of the Crypto related materials, personally, I assume $0.12 - $0.15 would be a more fit industry rate. However, I am open to different opinions.

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Point one four $.14 –

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I agree that this proposal is asking more than what is the industry rate. Besides that, I’m not sure if POKT need Chinese translations during these market conditions.

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Hi Ray. What is the industry rate and where are you getting it from? Also, can you expand on why Chinese translations might not be helpful in this crypto “winter”?

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I’ve been thinking more of how this will align with the regional community hubs program that I am working on, especially after my discussion this morning with @Igboze.

One of the monthly KPI for the hubs is to perform a certain amount of translations as task, so the initial thoughts are, if this translation program is stood up, then it should only cover the languages still needed, which means ones we currently don’t have any regional community hub representation.

The hubs (e.g. Chinese Hub) will have their own operating monthly grants that can be used to provide bounty grants to their own community members, therefore we can better allocate resources from this translation program to only the languages needed.

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Yes, i agree with @Ming on this.

It is much better and cost efficient to have the regional hubs do translation contents from their monthly budget.

With my experience with building communities, this works better.

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If we move the content translation tasks to the community hub with grant, we need to set up a reasonable price baseline for them to attract the real talents, other than the quality like machine translation.

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For sure, machine/google translate won’t be allowed, and there will be ways to find out and catch those, because honestly, it only produces horrible translations that are fairly obvious if used. We can also have the proofreader to perform their audits before the bounty is paid out.

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Quality Control

Regardless of the means chosen to organize translation work, quality control is a necessity. As I note above (1) any translators that get paid by the DAO must satisfy competency requirements - generally this means passing a test, and (2) all translation work must be proofread by someone other than the translator.

If the DAO is paying to translate material into Chinese or any other language, it must be done properly: by a qualified translator and error free. For that matter, since Pocket’s reputation is on the line, translations done voluntarily should also meet these criteria.

I would urge PNF to adopt the same approach.

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:100: in agreement, regardless if coming from hubs or individual translations.

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