Recommendations for repository managers on translated content
¶ 54 Leave a comment on paragraph 54 0 Multilingualism and translation are inevitably intertwined and can complement one another. It is therefore important to enable further recognition of translation and translated content as valid contributions to the research ecosystem to further support and acknowledge translation as a valuable scholarly output and promote linguistic diversity in research culture. To do so, it is necessary to encourage and properly credit translation both as a practice and output. This can be in part achieved with the implementation of the following recommendations:
- ¶ 55 Leave a comment on paragraph 55 0
- Include a specific field for the role of translator(s) in deposit forms of online archives and repositories to accommodate translator crediting (e.g. use dc.contributor – translator)
- Accommodate translator identification with other fields such as:
-ORCID or other similar interoperable identifiers if possible
-organization or affiliation if any
- ¶ 56 Leave a comment on paragraph 56 0
- Include specific (sub)field(s) for the document’s translation status, the language(s) used for the translated content, and the language(s) of the source document, preferably by designating the languages in international standard language codes.
- ¶ 57 Leave a comment on paragraph 57 0
- Allow users to point to other related records of the translated content by adding relation fields such as the dc.relation field. Labeling options in this relation field could include:
-“Is a translation of”
-“Is translated from” (This second option could be best used in case of partial translation, e.g. of a book chapter or section).
- ¶ 58 Leave a comment on paragraph 58 0
- Accommodate this relation field with other fields of identification pointing at the original document with:
-DOI or other PID of original document or a handle
-URL if no interoperable resolver
- ¶ 59 Leave a comment on paragraph 59 3
- Export options of records of translated content should ideally include all of the above information, which could read like this:
“This material titled ‘[translated title]’ is an integral (partial) translation in [language name – standard language code] dated [DD-MM-YYYY] by [translator(‘s)s name(s) of “original title” by [author(‘s)s name(s) in [language name – standard language code] as published in [publication details]/retrieved from [DOI, other PID resolver or URL].”
- ¶ 60 Leave a comment on paragraph 60 0
- Unless the document justifies it (e.g. parallel translation, commented translation, mirrored bilingual or multilingual versions), upload translations of documents as separate records. This is especially true for prefaces, introductions, or other contributions published in multilingual multi-contributor volumes.
- ¶ 61 Leave a comment on paragraph 61 0
- Promote the use of (re)translation-friendly licences to encourage translation of newly produced content and retranslation as well as promote translation crediting (e.g CC-BY) – see https://hal-lara.archives-ouvertes.fr/OUVRIR-LA-SCIENCE/hal-03640511
- ¶ 62 Leave a comment on paragraph 62 0
- Make sure to provide sufficient information and recommendations for depositors in the form of FAQ or another form to implement the above.
Sadie Roosa
Susanna Fiorini
Ginny Barbour (on behalf of Open Access Australasia)
This statement implies that a translation is always made – or at least revised – by a human, but especially for metadata, texts are more and more machine translated with very limited human supervision. How can we make machine translated content – and the associated error risk – clearly identified? Maybe we should at least make a distinction between the two cases below:
1. For human translation and human-revised machine translation of publications -> “This material titled ‘[translated title]’ is an integral (partial) translation in [language name – standard language code] dated [DD-MM-YYYY] by [translator(‘s)s name(s)] of “original title” by [author(‘s)s name(s) in [language name – standard language code] as published in [publication details]/retrieved from [DOI, other PID resolver or URL].”
2. For raw machine translation, and especially for metadata ->“This material is a machine translation in [language name – standard language code] dated [DD-MM-YYYY] of [“original title”] by [author(‘s)s name(s) in [language name – standard language code] as published in [publication details]/retrieved from [DOI, other PID resolver or URL].” NB: It should be noted that his kind of description omits translation credits because the content is actually generated by a machine without human intervention, but it raises the question about who is actually responsible for this machine translated content.
Thanks a lot Susanna, I agree with you. This is what we suggested in our blog post about machine translation: “This document/This material is a machine translation [of : [citation of original]] from [source language code] into [target language code]. This machine translation has not been reviewed or edited and is provided “as is” for the sole purpose of assisting users in understanding at least part of the subject matter of the original content expressed in [source language]. This provision does not imply a guarantee of correctness and accuracy of the said machine translation [in target language] by any natural or legal person in any part of this translation. [Consequently, the provision of this translation shall not give rise to any liability on the part of any person to any other person in the event that this translation is used for any purpose whatsoever.] Users of this machine translation are expressly invited to have it checked, revised or edited by a professional translator or relevant expert.” https://www.coar-repositories.org/news-updates/is-there-a-case-for-accepting-machine-translated-scholarly-content-in-repositories/. And this is one of the real cases where the author used machine translation https://zenodo.org/record/7935017
Is this suggesting this language be included in a cover page or README supplemental file during download? Could you make it clearer how the export options could include this information?