Suggestions for supporting translation

It would be good to get more linked to active translators. I tried to get in contact via transifex with two translators to start the verifying process of my translations. Until now I don't have any answer. So it will be necessary to have a possibility to get in contact with the translators via Loomio.

thanks for the great feedback @jochenwalter @renato @joopkieftelapingvi @christianmairoll

On your recommendations I'll start building a clearer introduction/ guide page.

Communicating with other translators is a very relevant problem. I don't think Transifex makes messaging easy enough. Perhaps, we can run an experiment with how to set up good translator communication. If one of you is interested, perhaps we can try it with one language first, then take the learning from that and repeat.
Anyone keen? I have an idea where we might start

German wouldn't be wrong to start with. We have at least 3 active people there who currently can't reach each other, except via the public forum.

I'd love to get a simple personal message feature in Loomio. :) Not all communication needs to be fully public.

I support to start with German, if there are really 3 active translators?!

I would like to have a subgroup for German (or other languages) that is not public because of two possibilities:

1. Since yesterday every Loomio gets an eMail when s_he is @mentioned.
2. If someone is starting later by joining such a subroup s_he can read what was discussed, if s_he wants to.

In Transifex you can see references of many people who contributed. Unfortunately I couldn't find any statistics or overview feature there. Not sure who is still active at the moment. I (emsi) did only the subtitles of the updated video and some minor parts of the main resource but most of the texts were already done when I joined (a few months ago).

@christianmairoll , @jochenwalter , it would be great to start with German. Re: instant messaging in Loomio that's not on the roadmap for the next 6 months, so if you'd like to do that, it would have to be through a different platform.

Note that @mentioning has always emailed people, (unless you have that disabled in your email preferences)

I think when trying to decide where the best place for the conversation is is tricky. You are of course welcome to start a private or German Translation subgroup. Unfortunately we can't nest/put it inside this Translation group (you can only go one subgroup deep).

I am interested to know more about why you would like to keep details you discuss about translation private, so I can understand the problem you're trying to solve.

Would it be sufficient to have discussion set to private within this group, so that only Translation subgroup members can see it?

p.s. there has actually been an extension to the @mention emails. It's called following, and is designed to make it easier to keep up with conversation via email if you want to. If you don't like it you can disable it for a discussion, or for all discussions

To me it is not necessary to keep something private. It is just the "flood" of discussions when You are part of the group. Like the discussion of the dutch colleagues - I wasn't interested in because I don't understand Dutch very well. But probably this will be solved through the new email preferences. I have to get in touch with the new filter and the following settings of discussions...

To give some examples of things people may want to communicate in private:

When you are new to Loomio, everything is new and unknown. You have no starting point except the plain link to Transifex. All you know is you want to help with the translations. But how to actually start? Just open Transifex and start hacking in some new texts or first get in touch with the existing translators and ask how the typical procedures here are. Every organization is operated differently.

Before I started translating I wanted to ask e.g. whether it is preferred to use formal or informal style (it makes a huge difference in German). I'm not sure if things like that are subject to an open discussion when I'm new. A new translator basically just wants to follow the established procedures and not come in and start questioning and changing everything (which could be seen as an offense or at least as impolite by others).

It's also the necessity to avoid spamming others with basics questions. At start I don't know if I'm the fifteenth person asking the same thing, just because I couldn't find it via the search feature. There's a huge potential to run into embarrassing situations that people want to avoid by nature. It almost stopped me from participating in Loomio translations at least.

Personal communications is not always about open discussions in my opinion. Some things just don't need to be read by the whole world. Keep it simple and efficient. :)

@jochenwalter please let me know if you have any questions about how to use the new following + email features :)