Welocalize today announced CrowdSight, an open-source, browser-based translation tool for crowdsourcing. Paired with the GlobalSight translation management system (TMS), CrowdSight lets translators and reviewers work with translation memory without the burden of learning the full GlobalSight interface for professional translators. For non-professional translators, this arm’s length separation from the TMS innards simplifies the task. It should also prove helpful when bilingual staffers inside an enterprise get called in to help out with a translation. In fact, the first beta tester is using the software for internal translation crowdsourcing with its employees.

All of the community, crowdsourced, and collaborative translation (CT3) projects that we’ve reviewed rely on purpose-built software for project and participant management, including translation interfaces, leader boards, workflows, and review processes. Developing those systems is expensive, which is why companies like LinkedIn conduct feasibility studies to determine whether a crowdsourced translation effort is worth the investment.

With CrowdSight, Welocalize gives organizations or companies undertaking any CT3 projects a foundation on which to build, thus eliminating the need for much of the custom development associated with such efforts. Because the client is based on the same open-source initiative as GlobalSight and ingests XLIFF files generated by that TMS, it’s an open canvass for developers. For example, a clever developer could re-direct the client to work with any XLIFF-aware translation memory tool, TMS, or content management system (CMS), thus broadening its appeal and usage beyond GlobalSight. Welocalize’s Gary Prioste told us that there are some non-Welocalize people working on GlobalSight enhancements, but, to date, none have yet checked in any code for sharing with the community.

In its current form, CrowdSight provides the basics for CT3. Organizations have the flexibility to define their own “crowd” of professional translators, end-users, in-country reviewers, and non-translator employees — but this first version doesn’t offer a self-provisioning function that would allows users to sign up and claim jobs. Prioste anticipates rapid addition of new features as CrowdSight gains traction among developers.

The first planned application of CrowdSight is being driven by Translators without Borders (TWB); Founder Lori Thicke will introduce the project at next month’s Action Week for Global Information Sharing (AGIS) conference at the University of Limerick, organized by Reinhard Schäler of the Localisation Resource Centre (LRC) and the Rosetta Foundation. TWB will use a GlobalSight-based backend, developed by the Rosetta Foundation, for its pro bono translation projects. The group currently translates about a million words per year, but has found project management to be a major roadblock. Thicke and her partners intend to bulldoze that obstacle and scale their efforts using GlobalSight, which is being made available by Welocalize along with free hosting and engineering. This inititave — along with similar efforts such as the Chernobyl Children Project — can always use more volunteers who can translate English into Russian.

With CrowdSight coming online, organizations undertaking community translation efforts gain a software option that can accelerate their efforts.