Multilingual Crowdsourcing Motivation on Global Social Media. Case Study: TED OTP

Lidia Cámara de la Fuente

doi:10.30827/sendebar.v25i0.1541

Authors

Lidia Cámara de la Fuente Department of English & Applied Linguistics School of Arts and Humanities University of Cologne Germany

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30827/sendebar.v25i0.1541

Keywords:

Audiovisual Translation, Informal Learning, Intercultural Competences, Online Volunteering, Subtitling

Agencies: University of Cologne

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has emerged in recent year as a new form of volunteering activity. The distributed nature of online volunteers enabled global organizations to mobilize talents from around the world. In this spirit, the past decade has witnessed a vibrant expansion of intercultural virtual collaborative efforts within the crowdsourced audiovisual translation communities.

The aim of our work is to characterise key motivational factors driving volunteer translators to engage in these intercultural collaboration endeavours within one of those virtual communities. As a case in point, I will study TED[1], a global communication platform where people from all over the world interact with each other creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting on content within a virtual community and several networks.

At TED unpaid volunteers translate audiovisual content into 100 languages, within the framework of an online translation project: the Open Translation Project, hereinafter referred to as OTP.

I asked a group of 177 OTP participants who range across 35 different languages and are geographically distributed over four continents, to pinpoint key motivation factors for becoming volunteer translators.

[1] TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design

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Author Biography

Lidia Cámara de la Fuente, Department of English & Applied Linguistics School of Arts and Humanities University of Cologne Germany

I am a postdoctoral Applied Linguistics Researcher & University Lecturer. I hold a PhD in Applied Linguistics. My doctoral research specialized in linguistic engineering under the title “Multilingual technical communication: Managing knowledge and linguistic resources for translation projects”.

I also have an MA in Internet Applied Technologies with special focus on accessibility and usability of multilingual resources, and an MSc in Language Pathology, with special attention on multilingual and multicultural issues.

I aim to carry on my postdoctoral research (Habilitation) in the field of informal learning through social media in multilingual and multicultural environments.