Organizing Tips For Language Moderators (Utopian Translations Category)

As most of you know, I have been part of the Utopian Universe for the past 3 months. I have had the honor and duty to be a Language Moderator for the Greek team and I have been working with great people I had already known from the Greek Steemit community (@greek-trail) and @steemstem.

Over these months, I have gained enough experience to know what would make my work more efficient and productive. My eyes have seen sixteen projects so far (four of which are not yet completed). Therefore, I would like to share a few organizing tips that will probably help any other LM and their team.

Some projects are very long (take "The Curious Expedition" for example). Some would think that assigning it to 2 or 3 translators would help finishing it sooner.

In my opinion this is wrong!
Different translators means different writing styles, therefore different wording. What does this get us? Inconsistency that will make the final text look like a mess.

Let each translator choose one project at a time and let them make it theirs. That way, you'll have a coherent text all the way through.

A good idea is to create a shared document where you list all projects available in your language, the projects assigned to each translator and the days their contribution posts come out. That way everybody knows who is working on what, how many contributions the team had for the week, when a post was published, when it was reviewed and whether it was upvoted or not.

Have an idea of what I am talking about:

The assignment list

The weekly posts

Everything is open and organised for the team to see. They can always keep track of their work and see for themselves how productive they and their team members are.

In the team spreadsheet it's a good idea to keep different sheets as Project Glossaries. That way the whole team will have access to what their fellow translator is dealing with and be able to help with their input in deciding on a correct translation.
Discussion on each team's discord channel is helpful, but because it is tiring and frustrating to scroll up and down in a long conversation to see how the team concluded that the word "key generator" should be translated the other day; it's a better idea to keep a separate sheet for each project.

One would say: "Hey, we have the TM tool on Crowdin for that."
And I would reply: "Yes, but it's only something you and one translator can see, not all the other members who are squeezing their brains to help out when someone has doubts on specific terms and turns to the team for some help. Plus, it's good to see how some terms were translated in a project as you might come across them in future similar projects."

If you don't want to end up being at a loss and running after the clock to make sure you'll manage everything, it's good to have specific days scheduled for when you'll be proofreading and reviewing. Let your team know when you will be available, so that they will be able to organize their work accordingly.

This tip was basically @dimitrisp's idea. It would be unfair not to mention his name.

To make sure you can follow how productive a translator is and have bigger projects under control, you can have a list on your personal Report Sheet with the different project parts and dates of publication.

Yes, a diary. A weekly overview as an extra comment on your personal Report Sheet is very helpful. A quick description of what happened the past week: issues that came up, things you liked and things you didn't like, a general comment for each translator, anything that will help you follow the course of your team's work as weeks go by and see how your team has evolved, whether people got better or worse and if there are issues that remain unresolved for a long time and more drastic measures should be taken.

That's what @ruth-girl had to say

Those were some of the things we do with my team and so far they help us stay organized and on schedule. It doesn't mean that we are not always open to changes, if they mean our work will be even better, simpler and more efficient. I know that some things might seem like a waste of time, but if you want to be able to control the team work and go back to see past contributions, those tips do help a lot.

Are you an LM?

Do you have any tips to share? I'd love to hear them!

Credits

A big thank you goes to @davinci.witness and @utopian-io for a collaboration that promises to open the doors of the Open Source World to a lot more potential users.

Wanna give a hand ?

You can always consider delegating some of your SP to those communities.

Or show your trust?

Why not put @davinci.witness and @utopian-io in those empty slots of your witness list?

^{Thank you @aka-alias for the cool, free gif dividers!}