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(S. Kuo) Hello everyone and welcome to the GTC's first kick-off hangout on air event.

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We're so excited in having [you] join us and to answer your questions live

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I am Sébastien, you may have received an email from me

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I am the program manager for localization here at Coursera

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And I am joined by Eli over here, on your right,

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who is Product Manager for International Growth,

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as well as Daphne, our illustrious co-founder and President of Coursera.

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First off, I want to thank our volunteers.

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In just a short two and half weeks since we launched the program,

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we've had over (check) 25'000 people who joined across a variety of languages.

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The response has been overwhelming and truly impressive

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and I am impressed everyday by the dedication

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that the Coursera community is showing towards this translation's program.

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In that short time, we've already had nine courses translated

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70% or more towards completion, which represents over a milion words.

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So I want to thank you again and again for your tireless effort and hard work.

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So, the structure of today's event:

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We'll begin with Daphne giving us a brief welcome

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and answering any questions that you may have about Coursera

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and our international growth strategy.

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Following that, Eli and I will be happy to take questions about the GTC

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............. (check) or any other thing that may have to do with your daily interaction (check)

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feedback about the translation's program.

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In order to ask questions through Google Hangouts on Air,

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you'll notice a section on the right that has a 'Ask a question' button.

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So if you click on that, it'll allow you to type in your question into the text box

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and when you're ready to send it, click 'Submit'.

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Eli will be fielding and moderating the questions as they come through.

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So, without much further ado, Daphne,

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would you like to say something, say hello?

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(D. Koller) 2:19 -> 33:34

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(Eli Bildner) Great, thanks so much, Daphne, and then again, just to remind everyone here,

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so now I will spend some time talking more specifically about the GTC and we'll let you get on with your day

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But thanks again for having been with us.
(Koller) Thank you. - Thank you

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(Bildner) Just a reminder: if you see questions that are being asked on the ...... (check 33:50)

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and that you're really in ........ (check) boost them up so they come to our attention.

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And - let's take a quick look at kind of questions have been asked already.

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So, I see that there is a great question here about translation quality.

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Sébastien, do you want to talk a little about what we're thinking about ensuring translation quality in the GTC

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and what kind of procedure ...... (check) on place?

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(Kuo) Sure. So, the way we tried to continually up quality of the translations from GTC

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is to have sort of a tutoring system for, you know, as individual like volunteers (check)

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we rely on you just sort of submit the translations and let us know what you think would be the best translation

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but obviously, there is a lot of range of opinions and a lot of different ways you can translate something.

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And so, I think it's always important to have at least one person per language

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to sort of be that voice and have the final say in deciding,

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this is how we want to present translations of our content in this language.

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And so, in this capacity, we have a specific role, known as the language coordinator.

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Not all languages have this at the moment.

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As we scale up the program and learn from the particular needs of each community,

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we intend to fill those spots where we can, strategically

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and give that person the responsibility of deciding the directions of translation for the language

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but also having the daily task of reviewing translations on Transifex,

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to make sure that everything is always correct,

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but also in line with what they sort of are wanting to project,

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like when we have that translated content shown to our international users. (35:56)

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(Bildner) Thanks, Sébastien.

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I wanted to talk a little bit

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-- there's a question here from .... (check) about when language coordinators will be chosen.

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So, as Sébastien mentioned, ....... (check) is being totally thrilled and overwhelmed, frankly, with response to the GTC

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and are really grateful to everyone.

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Part of the challenge for us, now, is that we're a tiny team here ...... (check 36:23)

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and we're trying to help kind of enable this program and channel the great work that everyone here is doing.

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So, as part of that, we're working a little bit more slowly than I think we would have liked.

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But as a first step, we really wanted to bring everyone onto this internal translation portal, these GTC Headquarters,

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and also give everyone the ability to just kind of jump into things.

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And as Sébastien mentioned, we sort of have this tutorate system

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where we work with partners in certain languages

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and then, for other languages where we don't have partners yet,

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although youknow, we very well might in the future, it's a little bit more unstructured now.

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But part of the structure that we will be building into these currently unpartnered languages

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is by bringing in language partners

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So we've been thrilled to see a lot of interest from people all around in serving as language coordinators.

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And over the next week or two, we'll be looking through those applications

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and working out procedures to ...... (check) language coordinators.

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An idea is that right now, things are very unstructured.

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If you -- you know, you just have a list of courses, you can jump in and translate,

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there's no one for unpartnered languages to really review

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but the idea is that we'll be building out a lot more structure around that

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and we think that structure is really effective,

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- we've seen it be really effective in our Portuguese and Chinese language communities

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that work on this team model, where there are team leaders and they help recruit a team

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and then at the end, when the course is finished, the team leaders help review the content

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and then you can ensure really high-quality translation,

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while also creating a really good experience for everyone participating.

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So, that's one model that's worked really well

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and we hope to bring some of that into our currently unpartnered languages too.

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So again, thank you for your patience in these initital days and couple of weeks

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and over the next week (check) we'll be digging much more into the currently unpartnered languages

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to help create a more structured and smoother experience around those.

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Amazingly -- this is a final note and sorry to talk so much --

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you know, we've been totally overwhelmed by how

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-- even for these languages where there hasn't been a lot of structure --

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how busy ....... (check) and how a lot of you are creating structure in the absence of structure.

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So, really, really impressed and grateful for that,

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and we're hoping to help a little bit more on our end over the next .... weeks (38:50)

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(Kuo) Yes, and I also want to mention that, you know, as we sort of are getting over this, sic, initial

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-- I guess I'll catch up in trying to get everyone into the community and get started --

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we're freeing up more time to sort of engage with you directly.

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I think it's, you know, I think the beauty of -- ....... (check) like you said, Eli -- of crowdsourcing

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is the fact that, like, we all have different skills and different interests

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and, you know, different amounts of time that we're able to contribute.

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And, you know, [to match check], I look at it as our job to figure out

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how to best enable everyone to work the way that they want to work together,

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and complement those skills.

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So, that's sort of the philosophy behind the way that we are approaching

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building up this structure of the translations programs.

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The other aspect, though, is community,

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which I feel like is the primary focus.

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And, you know, as we have more bandwidth (check) to sort of personally engage with you,

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either through forums or emails, you know, I can see this consistently like

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this is a learning experience for a lot of us, you know,

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and you know, I -- as the people on the ground, like I want to hear, you know,

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your feedback and your ideas, you know,

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like Eli mentioned that some people are creating structures on their own

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and that is stuff that should be shared with us, you know, so that we can, you know, learn from

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how you guys best work and what we can promote to other people

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and evolve, so that we take the best of what's happening within the community

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and make the entire community better.

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(Bildner) Thanks, Sébastien. There's a question here, asked from Luis (check) - thank you Luis.

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"Are you going to offer some capacitation for translators?"

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I'm not -- I hope I'm answering this as you intended but I think the question is,

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"What kind of recognition does Coursera provide for people that are participating in this program?"

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And as we tried to mention in different areas in the forums and emails,

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we really want to recognize the amazing work that's going on in the community

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and so we're doing a number of things for that.

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So one is, once you translate, once a member of the GTC translates a certain threshold,

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a certain amount of content, they will be recognized on our public site

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and we think that this is hopefully a nice way to recognize people putting in time and energy

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by recognizing them on our public site on coursera.org/about/meetourtranslators

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-- I think that's the URL but we'll make sure that it's clear in our GTC headquarters --

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and that's one way.

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Another way is by offering certificates.

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I know there is another question about, will Coursera have some formal recognition for translators,

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and so, for translators who have participated at a certain level,

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you'll receive a statement of accomplishment, just like one from a course,

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and that's something that we're also open to ............ (check) including,

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but as a start, that's just one form of recognition that we want to give, for

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-- you know, we -- once we have a little bit more structure,

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particularly for languages that are currently unpartnered,

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it'll be easier for us to introduce some of these reward systems.

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So one thing that we're doing both in the Chinese and Portuguese communities now,

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where we do have a little bit more structure, is that we are offering team leaders,

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so, people who are ...... (check) effort and pouring a lot of energy into translation,

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get a free signature track, and that's something that will continue

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and then we want to do all sorts of small things too.

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I'm sure I'm missing things, l -- let's have a peak on our Global Translator Community Headquarters

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and go through this stuff in detail, so I recommend .... (check) check that out

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But we want to do lots of small things too, for instance this sort of hangout,

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which is only open to you GTC members, other special events, you know,

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one thing -- things we've done in the past, are bringing in professors of courses

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to do hangouts on air like this,

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facilitating regional meetups of translators, maybe providing some, you know, financial support

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to make those kinds of regional meetups possible.

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And I think there are tons of ways that we can help recognize the work that is going on in the community.

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And I think at the end of the day, Sébastien

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-- ............ (check) community supportive of the people who are involved in it --

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so, this is really important to us and we really, we welcome your feedback and any ideas that you have.

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So hopefully, that answers your question, Luis,

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and I know that lots of other people are interested in that as well.

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Let's take a look at some of these other questions here.

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So, there's a good question about choosing courses.

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Sébastien, do you want to talk a little bit about how, you know,

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how we might allow volunteers to help choose the courses that we're working on?

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(Sébastien) Errh, totally. So just some background about

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-- some insight into how we choose the courses that we currently translate,

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because I realize that's, like, a little bit "black box" at the moment.

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We work with either partners in different countries, like you already mentioned,

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or using analytics data to just sort of understand the needs of various populations

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and determine the appropriateness of courses

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and that's sort of like the primary driver of how we decide that we want to translate a course.

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And then, even before that happens, a lot of --

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course instructors, you know, they are ultimately the ones that can --

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we work with course instructors to enable courses for tranlation, right?

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And so, in order to make sure that translation work is not,

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I don't (check) want to say, like, wasted,

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but we work with course instructors to make sure that their course content is stable,

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as in, like, it will be reused in the future and won't change significantly,

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so that, like, the translation work that you guys will put in

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won't be just eliminated if they just decide to change individual modules.

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And so, there's sort of a discussion process here about, like,

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selecting the courses and making sure that they are appropriate for translation.

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And then, to get to your specific question, I think that having a feedback module

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for community members to tell us what they want to see translated is really important

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and something that is on our, like, near-future road map.

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I don't know if it will be like a Google form, or something in the forums,

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but I think it's really important to collect that kind of -- those requests from people

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who actually are the people who would be most interested in taking those courses.

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And so, good idea, something we've already thought about and hope to implement soon.

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(Bildner) Thanks, Sébastien. A really fundamental and important question from Tasia.

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Tasia asks: "I'm not sure how to get started. Do we get assigned to a project or do we choose one?

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What should we do. Thanks."

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Thank you, Tasia. So, right -- so, basically, this is how it works:

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so, you're part of the GTC community, you're part --

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you've access to this internal private translators' portal, the Global Translator Community Headquarters.

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And once you come on the Headquarters, there are different features for each language community.

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And the pages explain how to get started within that language community

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and each language community will be a little bit different.

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That's part of, you know, in designing the program we wanted maintain flexibility.

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So, for instance, if you want to join the Chinese language community

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if you're a Chinese speaker,

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we work with a partner, a wonderful partner, Guokr, in China

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and so, you go to the page and Guokr explains how to join the Guokr program.

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Our Portuguese community, which is managed by Tatiana,

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I don't know if Tatiana is here today, but thank you for all the amazing work you're doing,

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our friends of the Lemann Foundation in Brazil.

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This is a Brazilian Portuguese community.

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There is a page for that, you go to that page, and then you can apply to work on a particular program.

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So they work on a team-based model.

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Right now, as I mentioned before, besides Portuguese and Chinese and Russian

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-- I'm sorry, so Russian ..... our friends at ABBYY --

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have a system where you go to a different platform outside Coursera

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and it's a kind of crowdsourcing model, so you can add a sentence,

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or upload or download existent translations, it's a really really wonderful platform

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and their page on the Coursera Translator Headquarters explains

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how to get started on that.

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So, if you're not from one of those communities right now, we have other pages,

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our page for Other Languages and Spanish, which is also currently still a little bit more "free for all" (check)

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and again, we'll be building in structure to that by this language coordinators mechanism.

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So once language coordinators come onboard, there'll be more structure in these communities as well.

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But for now, you should feel free to jump in to Transifex,

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which is our main translation platform, and just start working on translations.

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And we realize that there are going to be inconsistencies in the courses,

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that these courses need to be reviewed,

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but very quickly, we will get a language coordinator system moving,

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and a reviewer system in place and so, things will be better on that part.

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That's a summary of how you should get started translating.

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(Sébastien) And it's also worth mentioning that we've listed a few projects

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that represent some of those most popular courses on Coursera

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under that Other Languages tab, and so, even if you want, like, more --

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if you just want to dive in and like, choose a course out of the vast number of courses

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that we are offering for translation, then that's also a good starting point.

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(Bildner) Thanks. There is a good question here about native language course transcripts.

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By the way, another housekeeping note: I see it's already 8:50 a.m. PST,

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so, Sébastien and I will chat for another 10 minutes.

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There are definitely questions we are not going to get to, but we'll go through the questions

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and we'll make sure that any questions that are, you know, that need to be answered,

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are answered in the discussion forums of the GTC portal.

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We'll do this again, I think it is a great mechanism for sharing information with our community

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Thanks again to everyone for being here.

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That said, let's take a couple more questions.

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So about the English language transcripts.

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So how it works right now is when a -- so Coursera is a platform.

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Our university partners use the platform and when they create content on the platform,

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when they add videos to the platform, they can request captioning, native-language captioning for those videos,

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When they request captioning, that goes to a company that we work with,

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that does human language-captioning of videos.

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So then people listen to the videos and actually,

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humans write out the words that are being spoken on the screens.

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Now, the people who are doing these captions, they are not subject-matter experts,

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so, for instance in the course on Machine Learning, you know,

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they're probably going to get some words wrong, there are going to be grammatical mistakes

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and, you know, one of the challenges that I realize, that we certainly realize is a challenge,

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is that English transcripts are not perfect.

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We think that they've improved a lot, we've worked with this provider that we use to improve that.

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I don't know if any, if actually some of you had been on the platform for a couple of years

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and saw the transcripts back in 2012,

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and maybe you can tell that they have gone better -- I hope so.

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But one thing that we'd really love to do in the future

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is that native English speakers participate in this translation program as well

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and work on correcting the English language transcription,

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verifying that as corrected (check).

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This is somewhat difficult technically and we don't really have an infrastructure for it

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-- infrastructure or a program for it right now,

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but I think it's a great idea, it's something that we'd love to do,

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because we realize that as Aurelia (check) says, it does make translation harder,

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because you have to consult the videos as you're going through the transcripts.

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So, thanks for the question. Definitely agreeing and would love to --

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and we're planning on working on it in the future.

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Alright. Other questions.

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Sorry, looking through the great questions here.

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Sébastien, one for you: "Is there any Coursera-approved information

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on tech details of translating subtitles, such as, what is the longest line that would fit into a screen?

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Other kinds of technical details about using the platform, or maybe kind of translation best practices?

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(Kuo) Ehm, yeah, I mean, as like, I think I can, like, if you just follow sort of the --

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like general translation best practices, they should cover almost any issues that you'll face.

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I think one will be working with something as, I want to say like a rigid format like subtitles,

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you know, there's not a whole lot of margin for errors.

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So the advice that I would give for translating is that, you know,

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first and foremost, like, you know, consider the semantic meaning of the text that you're translating.

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So, if you are in Transifex and you see the subtitles, you'll see that they're grouped by sort of lines,

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where it, like, the screen, the individual sentences that will come up at a time,

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and a lot of people sort of, like, fall into this trap of like,

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"Oh I need to, like, format my translations in, like, exact same line breaks"

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or like, where, like, the English sentence, like, starts on a new line

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and I would say, don't give yourself a headache like doing that, you know,

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I've seen like a lot of trans-- innovative (check) translators, like,

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take source text and translate it into for example Russian,

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and they will rearrange the sentences so it makes more sense in Russian.

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And so, feel free to do that if you feel, like, that is what is valuable for you as a native speaker.

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In terms of length, I would also try -- that's kind of the one concern I would advise for,

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like try to stick within, or under the length of the subtitles,

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because subtitles, if you go on too long, it can impact the readability

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and so, always err on sort of shorter translations

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and use the source text as your bar to measure against.

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And then, you know, as I've been sort of explaining through Transifex

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when people submit a translation, I try to keep a list of sort of these, like, issues where that came from,

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I haven't noticed very many so far, but if you do have questions,

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feel free to sort of write.

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I can even actually start a sort of, like a Translation Best Practices forum within our GTC,

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just keep that discussion going and collect your feedback and, you know,

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help you guys with sort of the daily questions you might have about the work that you do.

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(Bildner) Thanks, Sébastien. Another question here from Hunadahs

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about promoting courses.

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So, you know, the Translation Community translates a course,

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the course is now available in another language.

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a) how does this work?

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And b) how do you students on Coursera know that that course is now available in this other language?

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So, Sébastien, do you want to field that one, so how does,

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how do courses get from the translation platform to the Coursera class site?

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And then, how do students on the class site know that these courses are now available in a new language?

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(Kuo) Sure. So, once a course's content is both complete and reviewed,

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which are two separate sets on Transifex, we actually have an automated script

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that sort of checks for these two things to be true, and then we'll, you know,

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import the translated subtitles to that course's class site on Coursera.

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And so, first and foremost, as, when you visit like the class page

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that kind of introduces the course information,

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there'll be a little, like, a module on the right that displays information about the course.

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And one of those facets is available subtitles.

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And so you'll see, if there's available subtitles for Chinese and Spanish,

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then it'll say "English, Chinese and Spanish subtitles."

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And so, that's kind of the first point where somebody would notice something about that (check)

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And then also, as it works on YouTube, like while you're watching a video,

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there'll be a sort of a closed caption / subtitle button

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and hopefully, you know, people will see that and click it

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and see that there's the list of, like, available subtitles,

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and one that may match, like the one that they're trying to look for.

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We also work with course instructors to sort of have them,

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like a lot of course instructors, you know, market and promote their own courses themselves

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and so, you know, through our partnership managers and also us,

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like, we work very closely with them to sort of keep them abreast about translation progress

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and you know, let them know, like oh, like these language subtitles (check) are available

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and so that they can also promote that to their students outside of Coursera

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or on Coursera itself through an e-mail or their forums.

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(Eli Bildner) Thanks, Sébastien. So let me just answer a couple more questions very quickly

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and then wrap things up.

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So there is a great question about translating the user interface,

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" Is it possible to translate that with Transifex?"

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So right now, we work with professional translators to translate our user interface

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and in the future it's something we'd love to consider opening up to the community as well.

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You know, part of, I guess -- what we're thinking is that once the community develops and grows, that

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-- and matures and there is more structure in it -- and that will be the appropriate time

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to open up the interface.

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Because obviously, the interface is something that's very visible

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and, you know, it's really important that the quality is super-high.

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Right now, we're still working on improving the technical aspects of translating the user interface.

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It's actually somewhat tricky, when you pull down the text from the interface to a translation form,

348
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making sure that there is enough context there to translate it.

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So, you know, for instance, sole example:

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you know, someone reported a translation error the other day

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where it said "There are three days left to register for signature track."

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And "left" was translated as, in French, as the word meaning, physically left.

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And, you know, clearly, this is a big problem but on our translations platform,

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that string "left" was in isolation and was used in two separate locations,

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so it actually takes a lot of work, technically and programatically

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to make sure that the interface translations work well and you don't have silly errors like that.

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So, it's something we'd love to do in future. Thanks for the great question, Leonardo.

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Another question about: "Currently, most of the translations are English course to other languages,"

359
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you know, would we consider going the other way around?

360
00:59:08,251 --> 00:59:10,670
Great question: the answer is definitely yes.

361
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Already, you know, I've seen some amazing things.

362
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Our Chinese community has translated Russian and is now working on Russian and French courses,

363
00:59:20,991 --> 00:59:25,710
translating them into Chinese or adding Chinese subtitles: totally amazing

364
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and we'd love to introduce other language pairs in the near future.

365
00:59:29,293 --> 00:59:33,195
Again: on the road map and and once the community matures a little bit,

366
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it's something that we definitely want to do.

367
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I would love to work on translating Chinese courses: I speak Chinese

368
00:59:39,852 --> 00:59:43,198
[blurred] some amazing Chinese courses on our platform

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and I'd love to see those available.

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00:59:45,237 --> 00:59:49,053
So, thanks for the great question, Yufan. And--

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(Kuo) You know, Eli, it'd be pretty cool one day for you to lead a Chinese community

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-- GTC Community --- Google Hangout On Air, your Chinese is really impressive.

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As a native speaker I can say that.
(EB overlaps - incomprehensible)

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(Bildner) Yes, that would be fun with me and Kuo co-partners.

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There's another question about Chinese, I think this is a broader question about --

376
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the question is, you know, obviously there are different dialects of Chinese,

377
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there's Cantonese, there is, you know, traditional characters and simplified characters,

378
01:00:17,851 --> 01:00:22,127
slightly different usages in, say, Taiwan and Mainland: how do we deal with that?

379
01:00:22,127 --> 01:00:24,457
I think there's a broader question of, you know,

380
01:00:24,457 --> 01:00:26,754
there is Brazilian Portuguese and there is European Portuguese, you know,

381
01:00:26,754 --> 01:00:29,177
what kind of Spanish are we accepting on the platform?

382
01:00:29,587 --> 01:00:34,483
These are all great questions and these are things that we'll kind of need to work out on a case-by-case basis.

383
01:00:35,044 --> 01:00:38,707
You know, we'll talk about this more in our forums but, you know,

384
01:00:38,717 --> 01:00:40,065
we think that it makes sense

385
01:00:40,065 --> 01:00:44,663
to have separate languages for European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, for instance,

386
01:00:44,663 --> 01:00:49,441
that it'll just be a clearer and cleaner experience for both students and translators

387
01:00:50,062 --> 01:00:53,542
and certainly, there are things that can be done

388
01:00:53,552 --> 01:00:58,789
in converting from Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese, programmatically,

389
01:00:59,268 --> 01:01:01,902
but, you know, that's something that we'll need to consider as well.

390
01:01:01,902 --> 01:01:07,144
So, great question from Wah, thank you for asking it, and the answer is that

391
01:01:07,153 --> 01:01:09,684
we'll need to work this out on a case-by-case basis.

392
01:01:11,435 --> 01:01:14,840
Let's see if there's any really quick questions that we can answer.

393
01:01:20,554 --> 01:01:25,104
I think, because we're at 9 o'clock and I want to be respectful of everyone's time,

394
01:01:25,104 --> 01:01:28,879
and so I think we should probably wrap this up and again,

395
01:01:28,879 --> 01:01:34,354
we'll look through the questions that are outstanding and I'll make sure that any, kind of fine ones (check)

396
01:01:34,354 --> 01:01:37,458
are answered in the forums or in other channels.

397
01:01:38,051 --> 01:01:40,670
For my part, I just want to thank everyone for being here today.

398
01:01:40,670 --> 01:01:46,407
I know it's probably crazy time zones, some of you are turning in at, you know, 11 p.m.,

399
01:01:46,407 --> 01:01:53,986
and others at 3 a.m., and ......................... (check) sometimes.

400
01:01:54,596 --> 01:01:58,944
But we're really, really grateful for everyone being here and spending the time with us,

401
01:01:58,944 --> 01:02:02,019
asking great questions, and for all your work.

402
01:02:02,476 --> 01:02:07,673
Thanks for inviting Daphne and for the rest of the time i'll share with you, Sébastien,

403
01:02:07,682 --> 01:02:11,454
are there any final words you wanted to add as well.

404
01:02:11,871 --> 01:02:18,702
(Kuo) Yeah, I mean, you know, everyday I am super-impressed with the dedication

405
01:02:18,702 --> 01:02:23,406
from both Coursera learners and our GTC members.

406
01:02:24,435 --> 01:02:32,392
You know, as a person who works in localization, languages has always been my passion, like,

407
01:02:32,392 --> 01:02:33,712
since I was a little kid.

408
01:02:33,712 --> 01:02:36,794
I would go to public libraries and take out, like phrasebooks,

409
01:02:36,794 --> 01:02:40,685
just to sort of, like, look at these weird words and try to understand what they mean.

410
01:02:40,685 --> 01:02:44,828
And I think one of the most gratifying things about building out a community like this

411
01:02:44,828 --> 01:02:50,063
is that, you know, reading through all your responses, especially to that question on the application

412
01:02:50,063 --> 01:02:51,586
that's like (check): "Why do I want to translate?"

413
01:02:52,350 --> 01:02:58,271
you know, I see that there are so many people like me, like you, that are really --

414
01:02:58,756 --> 01:03:05,021
that not only believe in Coursera's mission of increasing the accessibility of education

415
01:03:05,021 --> 01:03:10,323
but also, really believe in the value of translation and community building.

416
01:03:10,323 --> 01:03:15,103
And so, I just want to let you guys know that Eli and I are committed

417
01:03:15,103 --> 01:03:24,698
to sort of -- to build out a program that not only lets you shine and lets you contribute back to Coursera,

418
01:03:25,934 --> 01:03:34,514
but also, you know, take that work and, you know, use it to make other Coursera learners

419
01:03:35,807 --> 01:03:40,689
more enabled to access our really great content. So, thank you.

420
01:03:40,690 --> 01:03:45,971
(Eli Bildner) Okay, well, as we say, thank you, gracias, спасибо, actually we could go on,

421
01:03:45,971 --> 01:03:49,553
but we really appreciate everyone being here, and we'll see you, see you out.

422
01:03:49,935 --> 01:03:52,456
(Kuo) Definitely. Thanks.