I am trying to manage a large community of translators. Unfortunately the way roles work at this time doesn’t completely fit my needs.
What I would like to do is for each language assign one person to be the language coordinator. That person gets to make the final call on everything for that language. I need that person to be able to lock translations for a certain string.
What I don’t need is for reviewed strings to get locked from being edited by non-reviewers. I can see how that is useful on some projects, but on ours we want new translators to be able to improve existing strings as well, and locked strings seem to cause new translators to sign off because they can’t really do what they came to do.
I would like to configure roles for our projects to work like this:
Reviewers can still mark texts as reviewed or proofread to give an indication that something has been checked, but reviewed and proofread strings are not locked for anyone. When they get edited, they simply get un-proofread and un-reviewed automatically.
The language coordinator can mark a string as “Agreed on” and by doing so lock the string.
The job of the language coordinator is to find the consensus between the other translators and reviewers.
Setting permissions this way creates a much clearer leadership structure. It prevents endless discussion while still allowing for some discussion, and it prevents new translators from signing off.
For a project maintainer it means each language now has one spokesperson: the language coordinator.
This would be good for quality and consistency across translations: one person decides on the style, and because he is the only one signing off on everything he will notice most inconsistencies.
It should also be possible to not have a language coordinator assigned, in case we haven’t found someone we trust to be that person yet.
I know the voting option is there, but unfortunately that is not what I am looking for.
I would like to request to use the roles slightly differently. What I am looking for is a model in which only the Language coordinator signs off on translations. The reason we need this is because we want to allow translations to remain open for improvements by new translators, and have one person guard consistency and orderly discussion between the rest of the translators / reviewers.
I know Transifex currently has preset roles and those apply to all Transifex projects, however I think the locking aspect of these roles is not working well for us. It would work better if only the coordinator can lock strings, not the reviewers.
We keep running into new translators finding out that the reviewers marked a string as reviewed, but in the app itself it becomes clear the translation didn’t fit the context. Our best proofreaders are often the new translators who were drawn in by the error they noticed. And so we don’t want to block them from chancing reviewed strings, we want to let them make edits to all strings. But to keep some level of control, we want to assign one trusted person per language to decide when a string really has been sufficiently discussed and proofread and make the final call on them. This person is the language coordinator.
What I am asking for:
Testing out whether changes to these roles will work well in practice on a large project (I am thinking Signalapp, the project I am working on.)
I have passed your feedback along to the Product team. If and when they decide to take action on this, we will let you know here. I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for; however, it is a big departure from how things currently work.
It could be a departure from the current way roles work, but it could also be made a choice for the project maintainer to customize slightly how their community is managed.
I rhope the transifex product development team sees why I am reauesting this different way of locking strings. We’re really struggeling to improve the quality of our localizations while working with so many languages and so many volunteers, and and putting only the coordinator(s) on charge would help. If there are any questions about why I think we need this I’m available to answer a call or write a reply.
