Translators

Volunteers from our language communities around the world have enabled the GBIF network to reduce linguistic barriers to free and open biodiversity data

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The commitment of community volunteers like Dimitri Brosens (left) and Anne-Sophie Archambeau (right) has enabled the GBIF network to reduce linguistic barriers to data and science worldwide.

In mid-2018, the GBIF Secretariat started working with Spanish and Japanese speakers from across our community with the goal or reduce the role of language as a barrier to free and open biodiversity data. Their pilot effort soon sparked new parallel ones for other languages, and thanks to the aid and support of the volunteer translators listed below, the user interface and key content on GBIF.org now appear in eight languages:

A new set of volunteers have also started work on an Arabic translation of the user interface, which, when complete, will fulfill a commitment GBIF made in its 2018 work programme to support all six official UN languages.

Two technology platforms have supported these efforts through free non-commercial licences that enable us to streamline the work of managing our multilingual content: CrowdIn, which we use for translations of the user interface, and Contentful, the content management system used for all non-data pages on GBIF.org. We are most grateful to these and the other companies we rely on to support and maintain GBIF’s open-source infrastructure.

Community members also contribute to other GBIF-related translations, including material for the EU-funded Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) programme and the alliance for biodiversity knowledge, which extended the core set of our eight languages to include Basque, Catalan and Dutch.

Can I join the GBIF translator community?

The work of translation is never done: we are always creating new content, and we introduce small but incremental additions and adjustments to the user interface on an almost weekly basis. We often have other publications and documentation in need of translations (or updated translations), so we welcome the involvement of newcomers who can help us maintain progress in making free and open data even more widely accessible around the world.

If you are interested in joining our volunteer community, please feel free to email us at communication@gbif.org. We'll discuss current priorities and arrange a time to orient you to the key tools and the most pressing tasks.

If you already have experience with CrowdIn (which our community first started using in 2014 to translate the interface for the GBIF IPT), you can simply request to join the CrowdIn project for your preferred language.

What recognition does GBIF give its volunteer translators?

In addition to direct attribution and acknowledgement of translators' work on individual pages of GBIF's various websites, we award Open Badges to all volunteers who contribute translations in a given calendar year.

We also expect to assess the impact of this community-led effort and use it as the basis of research, analysing web traffic and data access across different language groups before and after the availability of translations (Amayo, González-Varo & Sutherland 2016).

GBIF volunteer translators

Volunteer Language Country, island or territory Annual badges
Néstor Alberto Acosta Buenaño Spanish Ecuador 2018, 2019
Daniel Amariles Spanish Colombia 2015
Anne-Sophie Archambeau French France 2015, 2018, 2019
Juan Mauricio Benítez García Spanish Spain 2016
Dimitri Brosens Dutch Belgium 2018, 2019
Leonardo Buitrago Spanish Colombia 2018
Felipe Castilla Spanish Spain 2018
Katia Cézon Spanish Spain 2018, 2019
Ivan Chadin Russian Russian Federation 2018
Hsuan Chang Traditional Chinese Taiwan 2017
Carles Dalmases Llordes Catalan Spain 2019
Dairo Escobar Spanish Colombia 2016, 2019
Pin-Ren Fang Traditional Chinese Taiwan 2018, 2019
Rui Figueira Portuguese Portugal 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
Nina Filippova Russian Russian Federation 2019
Javier Andres Gamboa Martínez Spanish Colombia 2019
Tatiana Gavrilova Russian Russian Federation 2018
André Heughebaert French Belgium 2015, 2018, 2019
Tsuyoshi Hosoya Japanese Japan 2016, 2017, 2019
Shuya Huang Traditional Chinese Taiwan 2018
Marta Iturribarria Basque, Spanish Spain 2018, 2019
Natalya Ivanova Russian Russian Federation 2018, 2019
Chihjen Ko Traditional Chinese Taiwan 2017, 2018, 2019
Melissa Liu Traditional Chinese Taiwan 2018, 2019
Carmen Lujano Spanish Spain 2018
Maofang Luo Simplified Chinese China 2018, 2019
Ana Laura Mello Spanish Uruguay 2016
Tainan Messina Portuguese Portugal 2018, 2019
Toshie Mizunuma Japanese Japan 2018
Camille Monchicourt French France 2019
Jingmei Niu Simplified Chinese China 2018, 2019
Nicolas Noé French Belgium 2016, 2017, 2019
Javier Otegui Spanish Spain 2016
Sophie Pamerlon French France 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
Anabela Plos Spanish Argentina 2016, 2018, 2019
Andrea Ferreira Portela Nunes Portuguese Brazil 2017, 2018, 2019
Pierre Radji French Togo 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
Niels Raes Dutch Netherlands 2018, 2019
Marta Rozas Ormazabal Basque, Spanish Spain 2019
Max Shashkov Russian Russian Federation 2017, 2018, 2019
Carole Sinou French Canada 2017, 2018, 2019
Angela Suarez-Mayorga Spanish Spain 2016
Jordi Torallas i Boucharlat Catalan Spain 2019
Kumiko Totsu Japanese Japan 2018, 2019
William Ulate Spanish United States 2018, 2019
Miguel Vega Spanish Spain 2018, 2019
Jorge Velásquez Tibatá Spanish Colombia 2019
Cristina Villaverde Spanish Spain 2018
Zheping Xu Simplified Chinese China 2017
Paula Zermoglio Spanish Argentina 2018, 2019
Aitor Zulueta Telleria Basque, Spanish Spain 2019
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