Collaborative Content Translation Interface

Proposed by Scott

Goal:

To make Drupal a better platform for communicating/publishing across languages.

Problem:

I write articles (in English) that I post on my Drupal-driven site, and readers frequently ask if they can translate my articles for the benefit of non-English-reading people in their country/language. The problem is that they are not professional translators and they may be new to the concepts I write about, so I have no way of knowing how accurate the translations are. Also, I make use of idioms, cultural references, metaphors, and other languages subtleties that may not be familiar to them.

Proposed Solution:

The new module would facilitate higher quality translation of node content by allowing volunteer translators to work collaboratively with content authors and each other.

The module would enable authors to annotate their articles with translation "hints" -- e.g., to point out subtle cultural references and other "subtext." The annotations would only be visible in the translation interface: a node editing form with the annotated original content displayed above (or next to) the translation editing field.

Each original article would automatically include links to existing translations, as well as a "New Translation" link visible to those with translation privileges. Once a new translation node was created, other translators of the same language could refine the translation in a wiki-like way, with all revisions saved by default. They could also annotate the translation (e.g., to show the original text of a phrase that has no exact equivalent in the new language). These annotations would be visible to the end-users (readers) of the translations -- perhaps as "tooltips" that pop up when you roll over the relevant text, like this.

The "edit" tab of a translation node would open the translation interface (described above) rather than the usual node editing form.

In addition to normal comments, each translation node would have an extra comment tree for "meta-comments" -- discussion about the translation process. Perhaps these meta-comment threads should be displayed in a popup window for easier reference when using the translation (editing) interface.

It should be possible for each original article to have multiple translations, not only for different languages, but also allowing multiple translations in the same language. Then the admin/author should be able to give a higher ranking to translators in whose abilities s/he has more confidence, so that when (for example) several French translations of the same article are created, the one from the higher-ranking translator will be automatically shown first.

This module would have hooks for Views (to be able to filter by language or translator) and Actions (to send email notifications to all a translation's collaborators/authors whenever one of them modifies it).

A similar, more basic translation module exists and might be used as a starting point for this project: http://drupal.org/project/translation

For more ideas, please email me through my user contact form.