By Linka Wade
As someone who both calls Monterey home and has spent a large part of their academic career focused on Japan, it was inevitable that I would be familiar with Monterey’s rich history of Japanese communities. From the whalers and abalone divers to the workers in the canneries, to the almost 100-year-old Japanese dry cleaner still in operation, Japanese immigrants have helped shape Monterey into what it is today. A huge part of the reason I was able to learn so much about this area is thanks to the Monterey chapter of the JACL (Japanese American Citizen’s League), who have worked hard to preserve and share Monterey’s Japanese history.
I realized that all the history on the JACL website is only available in English, meaning that people in Japan wouldn’t be able to learn about this fantastic organization. Thanks to the skills I’m learning in the Translation and Localization Management program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), I also realized that I could be the one to change that. Thus, I reached out the JACL organization and they agreed the site should be available in Japanese. What began in the spring grew over the summer and fall into a full-blown project, with an active translation team and a solid partnership between the JACL and Globe Multilingual Services, a student-driven translation agency within MIIS.
How it Started
The first task on the project was to, you know…. convince the client to get on board. I contacted the JACL Board and they agreed to meet with me. The meeting was a combination of stakeholder education and a pitch, where I first had to explain what localization was, then get them to agree to let me work on their site. A major obstacle we had to overcome was the level of trust between us. I was a stranger asking for administrative access to their website to go in and do things that they normally don’t have to deal with. I worked hard to communicate with them to build that trust, as well as submitted a formal proposal to the board. I also worked with Max Troyer to onboard the JACL as a new client, which also meant creating a new framework to make it easier to localize websites for Globe’s deserving non-profit organizations. The JACL Board was sold on the project, and the work could start.
Translation
As the project transitioned into summer, I began recruiting translators and setting up a translation process. I created a project on Crowdin, a TMS that easily allows many contributors in different roles on a project. The site also has many integrations available, including an integration for WPML, a WordPress plugin that makes it relatively easy to translate (localize) a website. Since the JACL is powered by WordPress, using the WPML to Crowdin integration made setting up continuous localization a breeze. Why is continuous localization so important? It means that when a JACL writer adds content to the website, or updates a page, the website administrator can very easily request the content be translated/updated in Crowdin, and translators will be automatically notified new work is available.
Bit by bit, the translation team worked through the website. We were also lucky enough to have an experienced translator and native Japanese speaker on board to do Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) work. This involved not only proofreading the translations but also ensuring that the translations reflected the same tone and register as the original English text. By the end of the summer, the entire website had been translated and I was able to build the fully localized version. The translation team is incredible, and I want to make sure they’re recognized.
| Original Translation Team | New Members |
| Ann Neville (LQA Specialist) Dustin Liaw C.C. Phillips Emma Mechling | Maddy Sanchez Sarah Blackwell Hannah Epstein |
Issue tracker created for the project
Present and Future
After translation was complete, I met again with the JACL Board to present our work. They were extremely pleased with the result. Larry Oda, JACL Monterey member and National JACL Board President, gave us this feedback:
Ms. Linka Wade and her team of MIIS Translation students made a tremendous contribution to our website by translating it into Japanese and allowing our cohort in Japan to easily access our research. Linka was a pleasure to work with and we are very appreciative for the collaborations we can now build upon. We thank MIIS and Globe multilingual Services for helping us reach other interested folks in Japan and look forward to continuing cooperation going forward.
So what now? JACL Monterey is an active organization that continues to add posts to their website. As such, we will continue to localize their website. It is my intention that before I graduate, a new project manager will be selected and introduced to the board members so that this partnership can continue.