Brainstorming on language website for Steve's work

[seeker5]

I'm loving the idea of creating websites for Steve's work in other languages.

What are some thoughts on how to go about it? Has this ever being done on the internet before with a lot of article and traffic like Steve? Would be nice to see how others have done it and learn from their mistakes.

[Mia]

Could be something like TED.com where most videos are available in multiple languages and you can select what is of interest to you.

[Skelly]

I still think a wiki would probably be the easiest way to do this.

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Leo Babauta from Zenhabits.net (one of the most popular blogs in the world) has also released all copyrights on his writings.

We can find many translations of his blog on the Internet. It has been done in French too. For instance here :

Habitudes Zen
and here :
zenhabits

The guy who started the first one (habitudes-zen) is a famous French blogger, (but he is not famous because of this particular blog). He explained that after about a year, he decided to stop doing these translations because he didn't find as much satisfaction as with other blogs. He preferred to do his own writing.

[Ken Benjamin]

Hi all,

I'd like to do a translation of Steve's site into another language and have a team of professional translators available to make it happen in a relatively short timeframe, at least for the most popular content.

My problem is that this is going to cost money. I'm willing to take a chance and invest in the translation work if I can successfully monetize the site. Of course, some would go back to Steve when it was profitable, but how to do that?

I've looked at some of the major revenue streams that SP.com would be able to generate in another language and most come from the recommended products. Commissions on the various affiliate programs for products Steve recommends work out to big $. For example, 5 year return a a SBI! single site subscription is over $400. At the low end, $14 for a discounted copy of The Journal. None of his recommended products are available in anything other than English. Presumably, if you are attracting readers in other languages their English skills are inadequate to benefit from most of these products.

Where there are options, such as books which have been translated, the commission schedules are low. I'm looking at the prospect of $.65 per copy of Steve's book, as an example.

Since the development of the content was Steve's wonderful work the obvious other opportunities for JV and other types of income like that are Steve's alone (as they should be).

Anyone have any ideas? Steve, perhaps you've considered this problem and have a suggestion?

If I can't come up with a viable solution, I'll move on and leave the translation for someone's spare time. I've got another project I'm working on that resonates very strongly but I'd love to help others by making Steve's work more available. I just can't figure out how (yet).

Thanks in advance,
Ken

"It is a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination." - Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik (Scientific American Mind Anthology 2010)

[BlueCrane]

My thoughts are along the same lines, Ken. Can't figure out exactly how it would be done best ... once you sit down and think about the nuts and bolts.

[munish]

Originally Posted by Ken Benjamin

Hi all,

I'd like to do a translation of Steve's site into another language and have a team of professional translators available to make it happen in a relatively short timeframe, at least for the most popular content.

My problem is that this is going to cost money. I'm willing to take a chance and invest in the translation work if I can successfully monetize the site. Of course, some would go back to Steve when it was profitable, but how to do that?

I've looked at some of the major revenue streams that SP.com would be able to generate in another language and most come from the recommended products. Commissions on the various affiliate programs for products Steve recommends work out to big $. For example, 5 year return a a SBI! single site subscription is over $400. At the low end, $14 for a discounted copy of The Journal. None of his recommended products are available in anything other than English. Presumably, if you are attracting readers in other languages their English skills are inadequate to benefit from most of these products.

Where there are options, such as books which have been translated, the commission schedules are low. I'm looking at the prospect of $.65 per copy of Steve's book, as an example.

Since the development of the content was Steve's wonderful work the obvious other opportunities for JV and other types of income like that are Steve's alone (as they should be).

Anyone have any ideas? Steve, perhaps you've considered this problem and have a suggestion?

If I can't come up with a viable solution,

Thanks in advance,
Ken

"It is a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination." - Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik (Scientific American Mind Anthology 2010)

I also think SBI is the best option for hosting SP translation project in Indian Languages.

Initially you will have to forget about monetizing your site for atleast 2 -3 years. You can make some money via. Google adv. though.

Munish Bhasin

India

[Ken Benjamin]

I'd use Wordpress since that's what Steve uses and it would be easiest to get the same plug-ins and copy the site design (simple but clear). Less effort on site design freeing time to work on translation instead.

I'm curious what you think will happen in 2-3 years that will make the site monetizable and profitable. Can you elaborate on your business plan?

I don't see that the site will be changing, getting many links, etc. over time the way a new, live site would (unless you plan to post periodically over years as Steve did and promote the work actively, as well).

I'd really like to do the translation I just can't find a way to make it economically worthwhile.

Thanks,
Ken

[Drew78]

Originally Posted by Ken Benjamin

Hi all,

I'd like to do a translation of Steve's site into another language and have a team of professional translators available to make it happen in a relatively short timeframe, at least for the most popular content.

That's very noble, but why the rush? I couldn't even sit and read all this content in a short timeframe, let alone translate it. What would be the problem with simply translating two or three articles a week and building the site up over time naturally just the same way the original site was developed. In one of Steve's articles, he mentions that even after six months, this site was not generating that much revenue. Maybe rather than spending a fortune (Yes, a fortune!) translating this site, simply do the translation yourself to the extent you're qualified and then put it up over time. You'll keep your readers coming back for more updates that way and you'll save yourself a lot of money. Even if you don't want to do the translations yourself, better to have it translated little by little.

To give you an example of the madness of having it all translated upfront, assuming this site is 2 million words, at my rate it would cost $320,000 to translate the whole thing, and I'm just an individual translator, not an agency. Some translators might charge combined as little as $200,000 but an agency might charge more than $700,000. It just isn't practical for most people. Translation is expenxive, and for good reason.

Drew

[borisg]

Drew is correct. It will take time to properly translate SP to other languages. There is no point in rushing it and doing it wrong. The whole point is to get the message out to as many folks as possible. Don't want to get the message wrong...right?

Getting the nuance of Steve's messages across in other languages is gonna be a bit*h. But it is doable.

[Savage]

How you monetize depends heavily on how much traffic you build.

I grossly under-monetize this site because there are certain things I just won't do, and I'm more into the creative side than the business side. If I was focused on optimizing income above all else, I'm sure I could bring in $100K per month easy. But I wouldn't enjoy my work as much.

You could do JV deals in your language, but then you can't say that I personally recommended them, so that may not be as effective. I'm very selective about what I'll recommend.

Also, I don't pick JV deals based on how much money they'll make, so you'll surely find more lucrative deals out there. I pick products based on whether I think the product offers strong value for my readers. I don't make much money from The Journal, for instance, but it's a product I've been using since 2002, and I feel good about recommending it. I even created an extra add-on for it for free.

I think advertising would be a good place to start. When I turned off the Adsense ads, they were bringing in about $9K per month, and that was all passive income that was pretty stable month after month.

It may require some trial and error. There are so many factors that it's impossible to predict the results.

[James81]

Originally Posted by borisg

Getting the nuance of Steve's messages across in other languages is gonna be a bit*h. But it is doable.

Nah, not really.

check this **** out...I just translated Steve's above post to Hebrew in like 30 seconds:

איך להרוויח כסף תלוי בכבדות על כמה תנועה אתה לבנות.

אני גסה תחת-להרוויח כסף באתר זה כי יש דברים מסוימים שאני פשוט לא יעשה, ואני יותר אל הצד היצירתי יותר בצד העסקי. אם הייתי התמקד אופטימיזציה הכנסה מעל לכל דבר אחר, אני בטוח שאני יכול להביא ב $ 100K לחודש קל. אבל לא הייתי נהנה בעבודה שלי כל כך הרבה.

אתה יכול לעשות עסקאות JV בשפה שלך, אבל אז אתה לא יכול להגיד כי אני אישית המליץ עליהם, כך לא יכול להיות יעיל באותה מידה. אני בררנית מאוד על מה אני ממליץ.

כמו כן, אני לא בוחר עוסק JV מבוסס על כמה כסף הם עושים, אז אתה בוודאי למצוא עסקאות יותר משתלם שם בחוץ. אני בוחר מוצרים המבוססים על האם אני חושב שהמוצר מציע ערך חזקה עבור הקוראים שלי. אני לא עושה הרבה כסף מ בעיתון, למשל, אבל זה מוצר אני כבר משתמש מאז 2002, ואני מרגיש טוב עם המלצה אותו. אני אפילו יצר תוספת התוספת עבור אותו בחינם.

אני חושב הפרסום יהיה מקום טוב להתחיל בו. כאשר כיביתי את מודעות AdSense, הם מביאים על $ 9K לחודש, וזה היה כל הכנסה פסיבית, כי היה די יציב חודש אחרי חודש.

זה עשוי לדרוש קצת ניסוי וטעייה. ישנם גורמים רבים כל כך, כי זה בלתי אפשרי לחזות את התוצאות.

[borisg]

You just proved my point James...I took your Hebrew translation and ran it back to English....here is what Steve Pavlina says in Hebrew:


How to earn contingent money heavily on several movement you to build/girls. Notwithstanding, and on behalf of the care only, will not show the company you Mister Joseph is a spring, fear of Mister Stein, as the person that his voting can be counted amongst the voters that not have a personal matter with the approval of the deal of predicate of this report. If I used to/would focused optimization of income above all other thing I am sure that I can bring in $ 100k per month easy. But wouldn't enjoys in my work so many. You can do deals jv in your language but then you do can't tell that/because I personally recommended on them, so can't be efficient in the same proportion. I am very selective about what I recommend.

Seriously...
I've tried using several translator packages...and they may get you to 80% accuracy....maybe...its that 20% that makes a joke out of your translation efforts if you depend on translation software.

[James81]

Originally Posted by borisg

You just proved my point James...I took your Hebrew translation and ran it back to English....here is what Steve Pavlina says in Hebrew:


How to earn contingent money heavily on several movement you to build/girls. Notwithstanding, and on behalf of the care only, will not show the company you Mister Joseph is a spring, fear of Mister Stein, as the person that his voting can be counted amongst the voters that not have a personal matter with the approval of the deal of predicate of this report. If I used to/would focused optimization of income above all other thing I am sure that I can bring in $ 100k per month easy. But wouldn't enjoys in my work so many. You can do deals jv in your language but then you do can't tell that/because I personally recommended on them, so can't be efficient in the same proportion. I am very selective about what I recommend.

Seriously...
I've tried using several translator packages...and they may get you to 80% accuracy....maybe...its that 20% that makes a joke out of your translation efforts if you depend on translation software.

I was actually just messing around.

But you know, I think it *would* take a lot of the work out of it if you were to copy/paste it through a translator and then go back over the translated version and fixed it up.

Or at least it would seem like it may be easier that way.

[Snorkledorf]

Originally Posted by borisg

How to earn contingent money heavily on several movement you to build/girls. Notwithstanding, and on behalf of the care only, will not show the company you Mister Joseph is a spring, fear of Mister Stein, as the person that his voting can be counted amongst the voters that not have a personal matter with the approval of the deal of predicate of this report.

Wow! This speaks to me so strongly at this point in my life. What a synchronicity that you'd post about this right now!

[Irisha]

If you need my help I can do the translation into Russian. I worked as a professional translator from Enlgish into Russian, have translated James Higgins' "The Prayer for the Dying" (the owner of the company I worked with in Russia planned to start a publishing house.)
Any money is OK!

[borisg]

Snorkledorf don't thank me...I'm merely a small cog in the universe..you really must thank James for triggering the chain of events

[borisg]

Originally Posted by James81

I was actually just messing around.

But you know, I think it *would* take a lot of the work out of it if you were to copy/paste it through a translator and then go back over the translated version and fixed it up.

Or at least it would seem like it may be easier that way.

Agreed...a little software translation, a little manual translation, a little wine, a couple of proof readers...done

[aelle]

Originally Posted by James81

I was actually just messing around.

But you know, I think it *would* take a lot of the work out of it if you were to copy/paste it through a translator and then go back over the translated version and fixed it up.

Or at least it would seem like it may be easier that way.

I know some bilingual bloggers proceed like this. Write a post in your second language, run it through a translator to your native language and touch it up. It's amazingly time saving and gives good results. But you have to be good at editing, and it's not a strong point of all writers!

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by James81

I was actually just messing around.

But you know, I think it *would* take a lot of the work out of it if you were to copy/paste it through a translator and then go back over the translated version and fixed it up.

Or at least it would seem like it may be easier that way.

That's what pro translators do nowadays, I believe.

[Luis Noriega]

Originally Posted by borisg

Drew is correct. It will take time to properly translate SP to other languages. There is no point in rushing it and doing it wrong. The whole point is to get the message out to as many folks as possible. Don't want to get the message wrong...right?

Getting the nuance of Steve's messages across in other languages is gonna be a bit*h. But it is doable.

I remember reading about a group that translates every Harry Potter's book in less than 24 hrs. once relased. 100 translators, 5 pages each.

I'm trying to do the same with a Yahoo group for the spanish translation. Everyone translates a few SP articles and have access to all the translations. Do you think is possible?

[Drew78]

Originally Posted by Luis Noriega

I remember reading about a group that translates every Harry Potter's book in less than 24 hrs. once relased. 100 translators, 5 pages each.

I'm trying to do the same with a Yahoo group for the spanish translation. Everyone translates a few SP articles and have access to all the translations. Do you think is possible?

Interesting how they would maintain consistency with words like muggle and seeker and even defense against the dark arts. I wonder if they have a glossary they use for words like that that are unique to HP.

I sent you a pm btw, Luis. Did you get it?

[ninavision]

I tried the google translate method after translating a few articles on my own, and it's definitely faster. Of course you have to edit it through and look out for things that seem to make sense but don't (especially if your language has a sentence structure that is very different compared to English... mine is Hebrew...)

[Joachim]

I just created a site, that is intended to help us coordinate translation efforts. It can be found here:Conscious Growth Net | Connecting Growth Oriented People

So far I've added a couple of articles to the site and translated one article to German.

If you want to give it a try and contribute a translation, you can register here.

To add an article simply log in and click on "Article Translation" in the "Create Content" menu on the left.

To add a translation simply click on an article and then choose "Translate" in the menu above the article (You have to be logged in for this to work).

Tomorrow I will add improved search functionality. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions what I should include and improve to make this a working solution, I'd be happy to hear them.

[James81]

Originally Posted by Joachim

I just created a site, that is intended to help us coordinate translation efforts. It can be found here:Conscious Growth Net | Connecting Growth Oriented People

So far I've added a couple of articles to the site and translated one article to German.

If you want to give it a try and contribute a translation, you can register here.

To add an article simply log in and click on "Article Translation" in the "Create Content" menu on the left.

To add a translation simply click on an article and then choose "Translate" in the menu above the article (You have to be logged in for this to work).

Tomorrow I will add improved search functionality. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions what I should include and improve to make this a working solution, I'd be happy to hear them.

So far, this is the absolute best thing I've seen yet done with Steve's work. Great domain name, great layout, great idea!

[Ken Benjamin]

Nice job, Joachim!

I was thinking that Skelly was right, a wiki site for all the different language translations might be just the right thing. Whomever sets up the site could monetize it with AdWords, for example, to pay the costs of site maintenance.

Considering what Steve suggested about turning on AdWords, I don't think the numbers work out very well. Even if traffic could be built up to the same relative level that Steve had before turning AdWords off, that won't generate $9K/mo. in income from a much smaller translation audience. I suppose if you can do a translation into Mandarin, Russian, or Spanish, for example, you would have plenty of native speakers, though how many of those are focused on personal growth, I cannot say. My guess is less.

I was thinking of a translation for a population of about 40 million, many of whom - especially young people - have some English skills. Assuming everything is the same as for the English site i.e. interest level, etc., that means that I'm getting less than 10% of the traffic that SP.com does. $9K/mo. becomes $.9K/mo. Not worth the cost of translation.

I do hope that others pick this work up but perhaps more as a labor of love than primarily for financial gain.

Best wishes,
Ken

[kazerniel]

Originally Posted by Joachim

I just created a site, that is intended to help us coordinate translation efforts. It can be found here:Conscious Growth Net | Connecting Growth Oriented People

So far I've added a couple of articles to the site and translated one article to German.

If you want to give it a try and contribute a translation, you can register here.

To add an article simply log in and click on "Article Translation" in the "Create Content" menu on the left.

To add a translation simply click on an article and then choose "Translate" in the menu above the article (You have to be logged in for this to work).

Tomorrow I will add improved search functionality. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions what I should include and improve to make this a working solution, I'd be happy to hear them.

I've recently translated the List of Values to hungarian, I think I'll upload it there

[kazerniel]

Another thought on this Conscious Growth Net | Connecting Growth Oriented People website:
I also think it would be better if it was done similar to the Wikipedia (I hope free wiki sites provide Wikipedia's multi-language structure). The translations would be organized more clearly by articles. Now it's a bit messy for me. But this is just an idea

[Orionjoel]

Ideally I would like to see something wiki style, that has a base of all the articles in English, and people could submit the tranlated versions of each article, by clicking the different language associated with each article.

Something I would be interested in doing, if I could find the right platform. Since I have absolutely no programming skills it would nee to be pretty much ready to go. Which is my only problem finding something.

[kazerniel]

Originally Posted by Orionjoel

Ideally I would like to see something wiki style, that has a base of all the articles in English, and people could submit the tranlated versions of each article, by clicking the different language associated with each article.

That's exactly what I thought about too

After some googling, I found this article:
10 Free Wiki Software Platforms ? Choose the Best One To Build You Wiki

I also know this one, I tried it once:
PBworks: Online Collaboration