Who We Are
The Translation committee is an all-volunteer team from all over the world. Our main responsibility is to make content from the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) and its projects accessible to fans who don’t speak English. We also help other OTW committees communicate with non-English-speaking fans and users.
We have 45 language teams of varying sizes: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to start new language teams! If we don’t have a team for your language yet and you’re interested in volunteering to start one, please contact us.
Our Work
The Translation committee translates material for the OTW and its projects, including the organization’s main site and the Archive of Our Own (AO3) FAQs. We also work on news and notices for OTW projects, such as Open Doors import announcements, OTW membership drives, and other AO3 news posts.
Additionally, we collaborate with the AO3 Policy & Abuse and Support teams to translate user messages and requests in languages not covered by the User Response Translation committee, and help answer non-English comments on public posts.
Internal Structure
The Translation committee has the following roles:
- Translators translate and review translations, primarily from English into their target languages. Some translators may take on additional responsibilities, such as publishing translated content on platforms like WordPress. Some translation teams have team coordinators to help organize their internal discussions.
- Task assistants work on administrative tasks to support translators’ and volunteer managers’ work, such as updating all language teams’ versions of a document, cross-checking records, and adding new terms to Translation’s internal glossary.
- Volunteer managers are responsible for personnel management and assignment tracking for both translators and task assistants. They carry out recruitment and training for all positions in the committee. They’re responsible for leading Translation’s multi-language projects, such as committee-wide efforts to translate time-sensitive material.
- Chairs are responsible for supervising and providing support to all Translation personnel. They ensure that the committee’s planning, progress, and roadmap are in line with the feedback received in internal surveys, meetings, and one-on-one chats. They help develop volunteer managers’ skills at all stages.
If you think you might like to join us, get in touch! Please note that only the translator role requires fluency in a language other than English.
Where We Are
Here’s a map showing the concentration of OTW Translation members around the world as of September 2024, with countries with more members shaded darker. (Only members who were willing to appear on the map have been included.) The map shows people’s nationality or residence status, depending on what each volunteer chose to use.
Contact Us
If you want to learn more about the work of the Translation committee, our teams or volunteering with us, or if you have any questions, please contact us—we will be happy to hear from you.