Students at the University of Illinois in the Translation Studies Program are leveraging their unique skills to make open-source contributions to the Rokwire Community. Their professor Kara Warburton, in collaboration with the Rokwire team, has tasked her students with localizing text strings in the Safer Illinois app for other languages. The contribution project counts towards an assignment for TRST 580, a special topics course for rising professional translators. It involves using an array of computer-assisted translation (CAT) and localization tools on the Safer Illinois GitHub repository. 

Students use this opportunity to reflect on the challenges that translators must often overcome when adapting content from one language and culture to another. One student in the program named Kamya Krishnan was especially interested in continuing her work on the project; she successfully implemented her Japanese translations in Safer Illinois in Spring 2021. This term, the students plan to complete the Portuguese localization as well as revise the Chinese and Spanish localization initialized by other students in previous terms.

The Rokwire Community will continue to develop translations of the app for other natural languages. This work will improve the accessibility of Safer Illinois by adding new languages to the existing repertoire of options. Safer Illinois is currently available in English, Spanish and Mandarin. Users can open the app in any currently available language by changing the language in the operating system settings on both Android and Apple devices.

The Rokwire project is looking for coders, editors, and technical writers, as well as translators, to help with the development of the Rokwire platform and the apps built on it. If you would like to contribute to Rokwire development projects, contact Bradly Alicea.

Featured Image: Students and faculty in the Translation Studies program