SuttaCentral publications manager: role description

The SuttaCentral Publications Manager is responsible for looking after the translators, translations, and metadata made on the Bilara webapp for SuttaCentral. The role involves both personnel and technical aspects.

Primary tasks of the Publications Manager are bolded for clarity.

Meet the translators

Translators get in touch with SuttaCentral through a variety of means. When someone is interested they should be welcomed warmly.

We should begin with a conversation with them to ensure that they are serious and qualified for the job. Translation is a tricky task, as academic or professional qualifications are not necessarily required, but a sensitivity to the nuances of language and Dhamma is. A translator should show an empathy and appreciation for the work, and a willingness to cooperate and learn.

We encourage translators to work in small teams of three or so people. Their roles in the team might vary, for example one might translate and others proofread, or they might all translate. A working process should be established to the satisfaction of all parties.

It would be good to promote and foster communication and sharing among translators. It can be lonely work.

As a rule, translations should not be published unless they have had at least one, and hopefully two or three, rounds of proofreading.

• Give translators read/write permissions on the bilara-data repo.

From time to time, review the repo permissions and remove inactive users.

The scope of translation projects

• Determine what the interest of the translators is and establish the project accordingly.
• Add the relevant texts to the repo in their language.

Note that Bilara handles more than Sutta translations. We also translate the UI text that appears on the website. You can see such text on Bilara under eg. name (= tiles of texts, chapters, and so on), or blurb (= short descriptions).

Such text must also be added to publication.json but the metadata requirements are much simpler. We basically just need to know the name and the content. Obviously translating such materials is simpler and requires less experience than translating Suttas.

Maintain publication.json

• Get accurate and complete information from each translator and ensure that publication.json is filled in.
• Update it when necessary.
• Introduce new fields if necessary (in consultation with Bhante Sujato).

Induct translators

• Show translators the Bilara webapp and ensure they know how to use it.
• Explain the publication process.
• Introduce them to Discourse or other means of communicating.
• Explain SuttaCentral’s style guide for things like punctuation, Unicode, and so on.
• As a matter of policy, no-one except Bhante Sujato should hand edit text files in bilara-data.
• If translators notice any errors or issues with the root texts or other translations, they should let us know.

Monitor the state of projects

It is the nature of volunteer projects that the initial enthusiasm is often hard to follow through. The state of progress should therefore be monitored, and check in with translators who have been absent, see if they are still interested, and offer support if needed. For example, we may be able to reach out to our contacts to find someone to assist or take over a job that has proven too much for the originator.

Reviewing publication pull requests

• When a translator or team is ready, they hit "publish" on Bilara, which creates a PR on bilara-data.
• Review the PR.
• If it seems okay, accept the text for publication.
• If there is some problem, contact the translator.
• Remember that when a text is published it will be automatically consumed by apps.