News — 14 October, 2021

The Language Localization Project: Enabling Inclusion and Participation

Together with the local communities and contributors from Vietnam, Madagascar, and Mozambique, as well as the Open Mapping Hubs in the Asia-Pacific and East & Southern Africa, the Localization Project aims to develop baseline data to inform a self-sustainable Localization Strategy. We aim to bridge the gap between language and accessibility of Humanitarian Open Mapping resources.

Versions: French |Portuguese

Together with the local communities and contributors from Vietnam, Madagascar, and Mozambique, as well as the Open Mapping Hubs in the Asia-Pacific and East & Southern Africa, the HOT Community Team is pleased to announce the collaborative Project: Localization as an Inclusion and Participatory Enabler (also available in French, Portuguese and Spanish).

Context and Background

Language barriers and the use of English as the default puts non-English speakers at a systemic disadvantage throughout open mapping communities and the humanitarian open mapping activities that HOT tries to support. This exclusion of non-English speakers results in significant missed participation and impact (Gayton, 2021).

We believe that language localization will enable inclusion and participation of underrepresented groups in mapping, dialogues, and other humanitarian open mapping activities.

Goal and Methodology

We will be running small experiments such as translation workflows with local communities to test how localisation of resources could work with the main languages of the three (3) focus countries: Vietnam (Tieng Viet), Madagascar (French) and Mozambique (Portuguese).

With this, we aim to develop a baseline understanding of the process and its challenges to inform a self-sustainable localization strategy to bridge the gap between languages. This will enhance the accessibility of Open Mapping resources used by communities involved in humanitarian / development work.

Timeline (may change):

June-July: Initial brainstorming, Experiment set-up and analysis of requirements (complete)
August- September: Engagement with communities that will be taking part in the experiment (complete)
October - November: Experimental translations running — Communities identify and prioritize which resources are important to them and they want to localize — HOT Community Team supports in translation using machine translation — Communities review the first pass of translation and finalize the resource in their language to promote in their communities
Mid-November - December: — Experiment results and insights published — Localization strategy initial proposal — Community review

How you can get involved:

Read the project document and comment your thoughts directly to the document or on the Humanitarian Open Mapping Community WG Forum thread
Suggest people or organizations (or articles or initiatives) that you think can advise us regarding this project (share them in this thread).

Special thanks to local community collaborators:

Vietnam: Tony, Huy and Grab Vietnam Map Operation Team
Madagascar: Faneva and Dolly
Mozambique: Rodolfo Junior, Pechiçoane Pechiço, Dinércia Macaringue, Edmilson Fuel, Daniel Mapsanganhe, Emerson Lopes, Rosário Mulhui and Vânia Muianga.