Translation Hack-a-thon!: Applying the Translation Toolkit to a Global dh+lib

workshop / tutorial
Authorship
  1. 1. Sarah Potvin

    Texas A&M University

  2. 2. Élika Ortega

    University of Kansas

  3. 3. Isabel Galina

    Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous University of Mexico)

  4. 4. Alex Gil

    Columbia University

  5. 5. Daniel Paul O'Donnell

    University of Lethbridge

  6. 6. Patrick Williams

    Syracuse University

  7. 7. Zoe Borovsky

    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

  8. 8. Roxanne Shirazi

    Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center)

  9. 9. Zach Coble

    New York University

  10. 10. Glen Worthey

    Stanford University

Work text
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Efforts to forge a global digital humanities community are continually hampered by linguistic divides. Fiormonte
argues that non-Anglo American DH is largely ignored by the dominant Anglo-American hegemony in the field: “But from the point of view of the scientific results, research projects, and institutional presence, Informatica Umanistica, like most of the “other” DH practiced in the world, practically doesn’t exist“ (Fiormonte, 2012). Rockwell
asserts that lack of access to this “other” DH diminishes DH as a whole: “...it is precisely when thinkers make strange what you thought you knew that you can think about it afresh. This would be thinking-through translation. This is the message Domenico Fiormonte returns us to when arguing for multiculturalism in the digital humanities” (Rockwell, 2016).

Even when many aspects of global DH practices are not dependent on language, especially within a scholarly community that has adopted a
lingua franca, multilingual translation is a productive avenue to explore the situatedness and locality of global DH work. It is also an indispensable basis to
interlink peripheral, border, global south DH practice with mainstream and canonical DH work (Ortega, 2016). Galina poses language as a potential mode of inclusiveness, given the dominance of a few countries/institutions and English language in DH, a dominance that is reflected from academia writ large. She
suggests: “… there are some indicators that there is an interest by the main DH organizations of proposing alternative models that can, if not solve, at least alleviate this phenomenon. There are two approaches: the first is making more information available in other languages and the second is making English, used as the
lingua franca, more accessible to non-native speakers“ (Galina, 2014).

How can we move beyond a monolingual DH, and promote exchange of works among linguistic communities? And how can we ensure this exchange is ongoing and sustainable? This hack-a-thon brings together practitioners from two ADHO SIGs--
Global Outlook::Digital Humanities and the
Libraries and DH SIGs--and a primarily monolingual dh community project--

dh+lib

-- in an attempt to hack a solution. The half-day hack-a-thon will work on a pilot that models a translation process for a particular publication,
dh+lib, that could be applicable to other scholarly communication vehicles and venues. The group will think through existing infrastructure, address questions around translation, labor, and design, and perform hands-on translation of works nominated by the DH and libraries community. Translation is, of course, more art than science, and any attempt to build a multilingual dh/libraries exchange must acknowledge the complexity of the undertaking. Thus the hack-a-thon builds upon previous translation exercises put into practice by both SIGs and
dh+lib, like
DH Whisperers (Ortega et al., 2015) and
simultaneous
bilingual publication of blog posts (Galina et al., 2015).

Despite the clear need for and benefit of broader translation in the DH community, translation is shied away from, perhaps due to a perceived inability to deal with the associated costs or develop the necessary skills. By applying the
Translation Toolkit developed by GO::DH, the hack-a-thon will position translation as achievable. The Translation Toolkit gathers a catalogue of readily available tools and suggested practices to approach the sometimes daunting task of translating and preparing multilingual resources, whether at conferences, in editorial and authorial journal work, and website and resource developments. During the hack-a-thon, participants will be able to explore and put into practice the materials available in the toolkit in order to launch the translation exercises and the design of sustainable multilingual workflows at the center of the session. Further, the Translation Toolkit proposes translation and multilingual exchanges based on distributed community efforts like those put into practice by
dh+lib.

The focus on
dh+lib as a pilot project is notable. A community publication project,
dh+lib was launched in 2012 by a group of librarians to enable exchange at the intersection of digital humanities and librarianship.
dh+lib has enjoyed support from the
Association of College & Research Libraries and the ADHO Libraries and DH SIG. The project includes an
active site, featuring
original posts, a weekly

Review
round up (using the
PressForward curation tool and a multi-tiered process of editorial review), and
resource pages. More than 200 volunteers and 50 authors have contributed to the site; according to GoogleAnalytics, more than 38,000 users have accessed the site. Modeled on

DHNow
, the
Review engages volunteer editors-at-large, who develop conversance with current scholarship in digital humanities while using their Library and Information Studies expertise to bring important work by libraries to a broader audience. Editors come from a variety of professions, disciplines, and institutions (both within and outside the United States), and form a distributed community of practice connected through the collaborative hub of this participatory project. This, then, provides an ideal use case to test out the mechanisms of collaborative translation: how would a multilingual
dh+lib function? Could this editorial system of nomination and curatorial intervention be extended to operate as a translation hub?

Building in translation as a feature of aggregation and community-based distribution will benefit the global DH community by facilitating timely cross-linguistic exposure and dialogue. Since its approval as an ADHO SIG, GO::DH has
sought to “leverage the complementary strengths, interests, abilities and experiences of participants through special projects and events, profile and publicity activity, and by encouraging collaboration among individual projects, institutions, and researchers” (Global Outlook::Digital Humanities, n.d.). The collaborative hack-a-thon seeks to take full advantage of both SIGs’ pre-existing communities, the multilingual and translations initiatives previously put into practice, and the content nomination practices of
dh+lib. The convergence of expertise will allow us to investigate approaches for sharing the labor of translation and making use of existing channels.

This hack-a-thon will prepare attendees to engage in translation work and will continue conversations around translation practices and existing workflows. It will offer participants practical and adaptable approaches to developing comfort with and practices around translation in their own institutions and endeavors. Additionally, it will provide the workshop presenters with feedback from potential users, which will help guide development of both the Translation Toolkit and a more international
dh+lib.

We anticipate that this event, situated as it is at the beginning of DH2016, will stimulate conversations on translation and linguistic diversity that will permeate other conference events. We further expect that it will connect participants in both SIGs and serve as the basis for an ongoing collaboration throughout the year on translation workflows. We envision hosting follow-up sessions in Montreal in 2017 and Mexico City in 2018 to regroup, report progress, and continue to articulate strategies for increasing translated material among our communities, publications, and projects.

Bibliography

Fiormonte, D. (2012). Towards a Cultural Critique of the Digital Humanities. In Thaler, M. (Ed), Controversies around the Digital Humanities, Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 37(1): 59-76, Köln: Published jointly by QUANTUM [and] Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung.

Fiormonte, D. (2014). Digital Humanities from a Global Perspective.
Laboratorio dell’ISPF, 11: 10.12862/ispf14L203

Galina, I. (2013). Is There Anybody Out There? Building a Global Digital Humanities Community.
Humanidades Digitales.
http://humanidadesdigitales.net/blog/2013/07/19/is-there-anybody-out-there-building-a-global-digital-humanities-community/.

Galina Russell, I. (2014). Geographical and Linguistic Diversity in the Digital Humanities.
Literary and Linguistic Computing, 29(3): 307-16.

Galina, I., Ortega, É., Priani, E. and Ricaurte, P. (2015). La RedHD y contextos latinoamericanos: auto-representación y geopolítica en las HD.
Humanidades Digitales.
http://humanidadesdigitales.net/blog/2015/02/02/la-redhd-y-contextos-latinoamericanos-auto-representacion-y-geopolitica-en-las-hd/. Also published in translation as RedHD and Latin American Contexts: Self-Representation and Geopolitics in DH.
dh+lib. Published February 2, 2015:
http://acrl.ala.org/dh/2015/02/02/redhd-and-latin-american-contexts-self-representation-and-geopolitics-in-dh/.

Gil, A. (2014). The (Digital) Library of Babel.
@elotroalex. Published June 7, 2014:
http://elotroalex.webfactional.com/digital-library-babel/.

Gil, A. and Ortega, É. (forthcoming). Global Outlooks in Digital Humanities: Multilingual Practices and Minimal Computing. In Lane, R., Siemens, R. and Crompton, C. (Eds.),
Doing Digital Humanities. London and New York: Routledge.

Global Outlook::Digital Humanities Special Interest Group. (n.d.). About.
Global Outlook::Digital Humanities.
http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/ (accessed 19 March 2016).

Global Outlook::Digital Humanities Special Interest Group. (2016). Intercultural Communication and ADHO: A GO::DH Response. Published February 12, 2016:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11b87VmblizmYeFoOUbHDOeR8A2EQ1F_Kg9jNQwUszZE/edit?usp=sharing&usp;=embed_facebook.

O’Donnell, D. P., Walter, K. L., Fraistat, N. and Gil, A. (2016). Only Connect: The Globalization of the Digital Humanities.” In Schreibman, S., Siemens, R.G. and Unsworth, J. (Eds.)
A New Companion to Digital Humanities. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons Inc., pp. 493–510.

Ortega, É. (2014). Whispering/Translating during DH2014: Five Things We Learned | Readers of Fiction.
Readers of Fiction. Published July 21, 2014:
http://lectoresdeficcion.blogs.cultureplex.ca/2014/07/21/dhwhisperer/.

Ortega, É. (2016). Crisscrossing Borders: GO::DH Regional Networks in Dialogue.
élika ortega. Published January 13, 2016:
https://elikaortega.net/2016/01/13/mla-dh-at-the-borders/.

Ortega, É., Gil, A. and O'Donnell, D. P. (2015). Psst! An informal approach to expanding the linguistic range of the Digital Humanities.
Digital Humanities 2015: Conference Abstracts.
http://dh2015.org/abstracts/xml/ORTEGA_Elika_Psst__An_informal_approach_to_expand/ORTEGA_Elika_Psst__An_informal_approach_to_expanding_th.html
(accessed 16 March 2016).

Priego, E. and Gil, A. (2013). Global Perspectives: Interview with Alex Gil.
4Humanities. Published January 11, 2013:
http://4humanities.org/2013/01/interview-with-alex-gil/.

Priego, E. and O’Donnell, D. P. (2013). Bringing Diversity of Experience Together: An Interview with Daniel O’Donnell.
4Humanities. Published May 7, 2013:
http://4humanities.org/2013/05/interview-daniel-o-donnell/.

Risam, R. (2015). Across Two (Imperial) Cultures.
Roopika Risam. Published May 31, 2015:
http://roopikarisam.com/2015/05/31/across-two-imperial-cultures-2/.

Rockwell, G. (2016). Edoardo Ferrarini on the Digital Humanities in Italy.

Theoreti.ca. Published January 28, 2016:
http://theoreti.ca/?p=6010.

Terras, M. (2012). Quantifying Digital Humanities.
Melissa Terras’ Blog. Published January 20, 2012:
http://melissaterras.blogspot.ca/2012/01/infographic-quanitifying-digital.html.

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Conference Info

Complete

ADHO - 2016
"Digital Identities: the Past and the Future"

Hosted at Jagiellonian University, Pedagogical University of Krakow

Kraków, Poland

July 11, 2016 - July 16, 2016

454 works by 1072 authors indexed

Conference website: https://dh2016.adho.org/

Series: ADHO (11)

Organizers: ADHO