Meedan at Centre for Translation Studies, Leeds University

George discussing Meedan’s approach to collaborative translation at the Centre for Translation Studies

Yesterday I presented Meedan’s approach to collaborative translation to students at the Centre for Translation Studies at Leeds University, UK.

There was a great turn out, particularly from Arabic students, and I was absolutely amazed be the quality of the feedback.

We discussed Meedan’s approach and how to get started using the tools, and I tried to demonstrate how getting involved would increase translators’ opportunities by boosting their profile, increasing their technology awareness and honing their translation skills with a live audience.

I used a delicious tag to organize pages for discussion and then used the new beta Delicious browsebar to scroll through them (with one or two minor slip-ups).

The students were really interested in ensuring quality and resolving disputes.

Students get to see Meedan’s cross-language news sharing site for the first time

One suggested we should have a translation discussion page alongside the translation history of any comment – a great idea. Another suggested a feed of human translated content – a feature we’ve had in the pipeline for some time at Meedan.

There was also a suggestion that you should be able to receive updates for any piece of content you create on Meedan. Perhaps you’ve written a comment or posted a link and want to know when someone translates it. Or maybe you’re a translator and you’d like to be informed if someone modifies your edits.

These seem like such brilliant ideas – and it is always refreshing to hear them live from an audience.

So I hope we can take this presentation to other universities and translation studies centres in the coming months because it has proved to be a great way for us to learn, and get the Meedan message out at the same time.

We’ve so far spoken in the UK at London Metropolitan, Westminster, and SOAS in addition to Leeds – let us know if you’d like to hear from us at your university.

We are @meedan on Twitter or I am gweyman [at] meedan.net.