Translating PeopleWords.com: Self Case Study

May 2006, by Joannès Vermorel

This case study focuses on the PeopleWords website itself. As a proof of concept, PeopleWords has been translated by posting translation offers directly on the website.

Key figures - PeopleWords.com internationalization

• 8 languages (including 3 languages relying on non-Latin alphabets).
• 40 resource files to be localized for each language.
• More than 10 translators selected for this work.
• More than 20 positive translator ratings.
• More than 30 payments.

Customer/translator dialogs: a constant need

On PeopleWords.com, many simple English terms like job, freelance or workspace did raise translation issues in several languages. With, on average, more than 10 comments exchanged per job, translating PeopleWords.com would have involve more than 300 e-mails. But much fewer e-mails where actually sent, since the discussions did mostly occur within the PeopleWords workspaces.

Handling a large number of documents

The translation process for PeopleWords did follow only a minimal 2-step translation process (draft versions followed by final versions). Even with this minimal process, translating PeopleWords into 8 languages did involve the exchange of more than 500 files (files send or files received).

The PeopleWords platform did prove to be a very valuable tool to manage all documents, discussions and payments in a single centralized manner.