Translation governance

I would like to start a debate on the issue of official translations in crowdin. Currently, methodology is regulated by the process https://meta.decidim.org/processes/translations. We also have this debate on crowdin: https://crowdin.com/project/decidim/discussions/6, but I think it is more usable for the community if we have it through meta.decidim.org.

Currently, we find that Decidim is already translated into more than 30 languages. While the Association is in charge of English, there is no criterion of who is responsible for validations for the different languages. I believe that, until now, we have been working with ‘legitimacy’ for the validators. That is, people like @josan, @hadrien, among many others, who have been doing translations for many years. But I think we need a more stable process/rules, to establish who are the validators for each language.

The need for this debate arises because we have organisations from all sides and we always meet organisations that would love to put resources into the digital commons through translations. But there is a handicap:

1- There are translations that are already done, but the organisation (or the person) is no longer there.

2- We find that, although there is a lot of translated text, we do not have a process to ‘officialise’ who is in charge of the official validations.

3- It is not very clear who is in charge of validating each translation (and if they have the resources to do so).

If you have had experience with organisations that want to take care of the copies, you will know that this is a recurring problem. There are organisations that go so far as to customise all translations using excel, and this is a great loss for the common good.

I would like to start a debate on how we can propose a system that allows people who show interest to become official validators. I propose the debate, because the truth is that I am not clear about the solution. I know that there is a room in element, and maybe it would be interesting if there is an active language, to have a room for this language, and then they could organise among themselves. I also think that the Association should give guidelines on text policy (gender, plurals, etc.).

What I do know, is that even if I love that the chosen translation is the most voted, many organisations don't go to the crowdin, because they need a provider that believes in technological sovereignty or an organisation that is very clear about how the open source community works