Last week we wrote about the translation marathon to localize OpenOffice 2.0 into Macedonian over the weekend. Seventy translators — including volunteers from the local language school — completed the localization of the user interface and made much progress translating the help files. The next step is for professional proofreaders and computer experts to review the material before the Foundation makes it available for download.

Bravo! We believe that this type of effort — typical of the open source community in its reliance on volunteer work — could serve as a model for educational institutions as they train software engineers and translators. This approach would address some serious shortcomings in localization and translation training:

• No real-world experience. Translation agency owners and localization managers often complain that students coming out of school are not really prepared for real-world projects. These industry professionals cite the students’ disconnect with technology, unfamiliarity with process, and overall lack of experience.
• A focus on literary translation. Elsewhere on campus, linguists prepare themselves for the literary world by learning how to translate prose and poetry, not technical texts. While relevant and uplifting, translating belles lettres does not provide enough income for the many translators who graduate every year.
• Limited practice with texts. Each student in a typical translation class translates the same texts, and the professor reviews all the translations. Year after year hundreds of students translate the same text. Cui bono? We guess it’s easier — albeit boring — for the instructor to grade the same old texts, year after year.

Here’s where the Macedonian translation marathon could teach universities a lesson. Put students and instructors to work on some task with some usable output. For example, class projects could include:

• Translating articles for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and translate.
• More advanced efforts such as localizing an open-source application from scratch, eventually in collaboration with a software development course. Look for projects at SourceForge.net, the largest open-source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 programs.

What would this kind of training yield? We could expect to see more software engineers and translators who have worked on a real localization project, used real tools, and dealt with real-life project shipment deadlines. Besides better preparing students for localization work, these open-source efforts would add more localized content and software for less commonly spoken languages, thus bringing more emerging markets into the information age.