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Editor Quick Start Guide

Welcome to the MakerDAO Translation Initiative. Our goal is to bring Maker’s educational content to the world by providing materials for people in their native languages. This document summarizes the guidelines for editors.

Roles and Responsibilities

The editor’s role is to ensure that translated documents meet both our formatting and writing style standards.

Responsibilities consist of proofreading documents for:

  • Spelling and Grammar: Correct mistakes and typos if any are found.
  • Language: Ensure that the writing style is in-line with MakerDAO terminology and best practices. For example, some languages translate the word "blockchain" while others keep the English spelling.
  • Consistency: Ensure terms are translated uniformly across all documents.
  • Simplicity: Our aim is to reach a broad audience. Writing should be plain, simple, and accessible. Maintain contact with translators as they work on documents. Be sure to agree on translated terms and other conventions.
  • Formatting: Ensure that translated documents retain original formatting.
  • Adherence to the Style Guide: Writing style must be consistent throughout all documents.
  • Hyperlinks: Give extra attention to this task. Hyperlinks allow users to explore other MakerDAO resources. Ensure all links are functioning properly and included where necessary. Hyperlinks fall into three general categories:
  • Links Between Translated Documents: See the links section of the style-guide for guidance on handling relative links.
  • Links to Other MakerDAO Resources: These are to be left as is unless there is a parallel translated resource in the same language.
  • Links to Other Pages: Try to source a native language version for the link. For example, if a link leads to a Wikipedia page, it’s likely that a version of this page exists in the native language.

Best Practices

  • Use Markdown: All documents are formatted in Markdown. They contain headers, lists, links, tables, etc. Information on Markdown can be found on Wikipedia. Alternatively, this cheat-sheet is a good reference as well.
  • Maintain Original Formatting: Refer to the [style guide]../community/blob/master/contributing/writing-style-guide.md).
  • Use a Markdown Editor: Editors like hackmd.io or VScode make working with Markdown more convenient.
  • Editor Tools: Feel free to use any software that helps find translation errors and improve writing. We encourage using tools that assist workflow. Mindlessly copying from a program will disqualify you from receiving a bounty and from future assignments. Please use them as an aide and not a substitute for your work.
  • Communicate early and often: Join the #translation channel on our Chat. We encourage reaching out to translators and editors for guidance

Getting Started

  • Join our Chat.
  • Ask about editing opportunities in the #translation channel.
  • Fill out this application form.
  • Get assigned a task by the project coordinator.
  • Receive translated documents to be edited.
  • Go to the markdown editor of your choice.
  • Edit the document.
  • Forward the completed document to the project coordinator, keeping its original name, eg. dai.md.
  • Once the editing process is finished, the project coordinator will publish the work and you will get information on how to collect the bounty.
  • Fill out feedback forms to evaluate the translators.
  • Get paid.

Need Assistance?

We've created a dedicated channel for the Translation Initiative. Come talk to us.

We're always looking for ways to improve this program. Please don't hesitate to share your feedback