Worldwide Lexicon combines open-source software and crowdsourcing methods to translate online documents. It's not new, but I haven't seen it discussed in scholarly communication circles and blog it here to start that discussion. Here's a description from WWL founder Brian McConnell:
We are building a suite of collaborative translation tools that enable people to view, create and edit translations for webpages. Similar concept to wikipedia, except geared to appending translations to web documents.
We've built a suite of tools for publishers ranging from easy to use plug ins (such as our Word Press extension) to source code libraries for PHP developers. With these, publishers can embed collaborative translation capability in virtually any website. The system is currently in beta testing, and has drawn users from 130 countries so far....
The project actually has a pretty long history, about nine years, and has evolved a lot. It started with the goal of creating a meta-dictionary (hence the name). The Word Press plug in and PHP tools have been available for about three months....
Our aim with WWL is to focus on enabling tools. We are working on a commercial service, but like Word Press, we are open sourcing most of it. My goal is for this to be embedded in a wide range of systems and publications in 2-3 years time.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/04/2007 11:34:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
