Strap on your favorite running shoes, flex those typing fingers, and tune into the Language Race hosted by TermWiki.com!
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To briefly summarize for those who are unfamiliar with it, TermWiki is a cloud-based terminology management and multilingual social learning platform. Launched just last year, it is the localization industry’s first online collaborative terminology management and translation system, allowing users to import, export, edit, translate, and track terms, definitions, and translations—all in more than 100 languages. All the terms in TermWiki are human-inputted and human-reviewed, providing users with a community checks and balances system. The more terms you enter, the more your name is circulated around the site, but be aware that inappropriate or irrelevant contributions will be targeted by moderators and other users to ensure that the quality of data in TermWiki is maintained.
The tool promotes teamwork through its collaborative, wiki-based nature, but also encourages independent content development and individual contributions from community members through its social learning and networking design. Each contribution, whether it’s inputting a term/translation or editing existing data, is stamped with a user contribution box, which features the user’s name and profile page link, which is an invaluable resource for translators and content developers to promote themselves and gain some visibility online. The site already has close to 800,000 terms and grows by an average 150,000 terms per month.
The Language Race officially started at the beginning of the year, in January, but it’s not too late to join! The beauty of this competition is that it allows you to support fellow speakers of your native language while promoting yourself at the same time. Take pride in your linguistic, writing, and translation skills and have fun creating an online TermWiki persona for yourself. This is an especially functional feature for young or freelance translators, content developers, and even students and educators to expand their professional contacts.
 Screenshot of The Language Race scoreboard, as it stands on Friday, February 25, 2011. |
The above screenshot was taken earlier today. As you can see, English is coming in first, but Polish is following closely behind, with Turkish in third place. A glance at the side bar to check out today’s most active languages reveals that French, German and Italian are the forerunners, with Turkish and Polish rounding up the top five. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s unpredictable. All it takes is a small surge of language-lovin’ contributors around the globe to shake up the results.
To join the festivities and enter in the race, all you need to do is register for a free account at TermWiki.com if you haven’t already done so. Once you receive your confirmation email, start importing or translating away to increase your team’s position. The Language Race also supports importing whole glossaries in various formats (including Excel and XML). More information about importing terms can be found here.
Any questions or concerns can be directed to our TermWiki maestro at support@termwiki.com.
If you’re interested in translation, localizing, or even if you just like to read the occasional blog, check out our website here.
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