Discontinuation of Database of W3C Volunteer Translations in 2017

Dear volunteer translators,

Happy New Year to you all! We value greatly your contributions and the work you’re doing is of critical importance to non-native English speakers. Thanks to you, Web standards work may reach as many people and organizations around the world as possible.

That being said, I have bad news that I need to share: The turn of the year marks the end of the maintenance of the Database of W3C Volunteer Translations, according to a decision the W3C Management had to take last December. 

I had already written in 2012 that W3C had resolved to reduce the amount of information it stored in the Database [1]. The system that has been handling the Database has continued to not age gracefully and maintenance --which was costly already months ago-- became problematic recently; the W3C Team was not able to find a replacement solution.

As a result, the W3C Translations Database is now frozen after we added [2] two Japanese translations announced in December. 
The W3C Translations Database content will continue to be available. No new content will be added.
We will let you know later if a separate project to refer to existing (and therefore to new) translations is successful.

Infrastructure changes are underway and being tested. We will communicate again with further announcements and will update the W3C Translations homepage [3] accordingly.

Unchanged is the separate process around W3C Authorized Translations [4]. Presentation of existing and future Authorized Translations will change.

Unchanged are the system and process for translation of /International [5] articles, as well as that for CSS-related [6] pages on the W3C site. The Web Accessibility Initiative may adopt a similar system and process; again, we will communicate on that at a later point.

The w3c-translators@w3.org mailing list remains open. We invite people to continue to use it to discuss translations, announce intention to translate W3C technical reports or completion thereof.

My est regards,
Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications


[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-translators/2012JulSep/0038.html
[2] https://www.w3.org/2003/03/Translations/Archive.html
[2] https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Translation/
[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/02/TranslationPolicy.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/International/2004/06/translation.html
[5] http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/translating.en.html

--
Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -  http://www.w3.org
mailto:coralie@w3.org +336 4322 0001 http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/

Received on Friday, 6 January 2017 12:32:15 UTC