One of the most frequent requests we receive from our community is for translated content. Whether it's during member support interactions, on mailing lists, in survey responses, or at events—especially those held far from our headquarters in Amsterdam—the need for content in languages beyond English is clear. We've heard you, so we’re taking some important steps that can help us take our translation efforts to the next level.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss two major updates:
- Moving translations to our main website, www.ripe.net
- Involving the RIPE community and RIPE NCC members in crowd-sourced translation efforts
The Challenges of Providing Good Translations
Before diving into these updates, it’s important to understand the challenges we face in providing accurate translations for our highly technical content.
First and foremost, translating our content is no small feat. While it's been a top request from our members, the complexity of our materials makes professional translations difficult. Our content is often dense with technical terminology, requiring precision and a deep understanding of the subject matter. This makes it time-consuming and costly to achieve accurate translations. Furthermore, verifying these translations has been a significant burden on our staff.
To mitigate this, we’ve focused on creating concise summaries of our key content in English. By doing so, we limit the amount of content needing translation, ensuring our efforts are impactful. Topics include membership issues, RIPE NCC governance, Internet resource management, billing, training, and RIPE community participation.
Currently, we prioritise translations into six languages: Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Spanish, and Italian—chosen based on demand and regional needs. Until now, our translations were hosted on an external wiki site, translated.ripe.net. However, this made it harder for members to find what they needed, and it added unnecessary maintenance complexity for our staff. We also felt that housing translations externally didn’t reflect the value we place on multilingual support.
Bringing Translations into the Heart of www.ripe.net
That’s why we’ve now launched the RIPE NCC Language Centre on www.ripe.net. This new section, accessible via the language icon at the top right of the website, now houses our translated content. Currently, it includes the six languages mentioned earlier, but we’re committed to expanding this to reach even more of our diverse community.
By integrating these translations directly into our website, we’re making it easier for members to access the content they need and reinforcing our commitment to multilingual support. We hope this move helps all members feel supported, regardless of their preferred language.
Opening Up Translations to Our Community
The second major update is our plan to involve the RIPE community and RIPE NCC members in translating content. We’ve seen a growing demand for translations into even more languages across our service region, along with requests for a wider range of translated content. Given the challenges of cost, time, and the technical nature of the materials, we believe the best way forward is to leverage the expertise within our community.
Starting today, members of the RIPE community can volunteer to help translate or review RIPE NCC content. Volunteers can reach out through a simple form to signal their interest in contributing. We’ll also be reaching out to individuals who’ve expressed interest in the past, inviting them to participate.
Why involve the community? The operators and members of the RIPE community possess the specialised knowledge and understanding of the technical language that is crucial for ensuring high-quality translations. This has been one of the biggest problems we’ve faced with professional translation - if the English part is not understood by the translator, the translation will be substandard, often to the point of being unusable. The community-driven approach is intended to overcome this issue and should allow us to provide accurate translations more efficiently, benefiting both the volunteers’ local communities and the staff at the RIPE NCC.
We’re seeking volunteers for any language within our service region, including the six languages we already support. By involving community members, we aim to not only improve the accuracy of our translations but also to build a trusted pool of translators who can stay engaged with our content.
Building a Trusted Network of Community Translators
Beyond the immediate need for translations, we hope this initiative will help us build a community of trusted translators across our service region. As these individuals become more familiar with our content, they can play a role in spreading knowledge about RIPE and the RIPE NCC within their local communities. Whether through local events or conversations with other operators in their country, our community translators can help others understand and engage with our work, all in their own languages.
These volunteers can also help us identify the most important content to translate, ensuring that our efforts are driven by real community needs.
Next Steps
We’ll be starting small, working with the tools we currently have to get this crowd-sourced translation process underway. Over time, as we assess the program, we may consider using specialised software to support our volunteers. To avoid overwhelming anyone, we’ll aim to have at least two volunteers per language before translations begin, and we’ll space out updates to our English content on a quarterly basis.
Our goal is to create a process that works for everyone, and we’ll adapt as we learn what works best for both our volunteers and our staff.
We’ll also provide a contact form so anyone can let us know if they spot any errors in our translations.
Sign Up Today!
If you're interested in becoming part of our translator community, please fill out the volunteer form. We’ll be collecting volunteer submissions over the next few months, with the goal of starting our community-sourced translations around the turn of the year.
Join us in helping bring vital content to your language and contribute to a network of translators dedicated to helping all the operators who work hard to provide Internet services in the RIPE community.
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