Growing the Global Ethereum Community Through Localization by Luka Kropec | Devcon Bogotá

foreign [Music] so before we get started on our next talk we have a couple of announcements so today is the last day of Defcon and the closing ceremony is at 3 30 p.m on the top of the mountain followed by an after party on the Shiva lounge and also the entire venue will be open on Saturday and Sunday from 9 A.M to 6 p.m for co-working for anyone who has a Defcon wristband but please join me in welcoming our next speaker who is going to be talking about growing the global ethereum community Through localization we're going to be joined by Luca who is on the translation team for ethereum.org and also works on the ecosystem development team at the ethereum foundation please welcome me in joining Luca foreign my name is Luca and as Madison already mentioned I work on ethereum.

org mostly focusing on the translation program thanks for coming to this talk it's um happy to see there's interest in this topic which is something I feel quite strongly about being in South America for this Defcon which is Amazing by the way big shout out to the Defcon team um yeah being in South America for this Defcon the topic of providing content in different languages to make ethereum more accessible and inclusive is even more relevant this space is highly Technical and a lot of the focus and effort is on technical breakthroughs and progress which makes a lot of sense and is key for the technology to mature and reach its potential however with ethereum as a technology growing and improving a lot of the focus is and will continue to shift towards other things like education Community Building inclusivity this talk will touch on all three of those as they're often closely related ethereum is a global technology that is inclusive and accessible at its core however a lot of the content including educational content application front ends websites or anything else people use to interact with or learn about ethereum is usually not very inclusive and accessible as it is often only available in English we will look at some deep more detailed stats later but the main one we should all be aware of is the fact that over 6 billion people in the world do not speak English at all by only providing content in English and not translating or localizing it for the global Community we are often limiting how inclusive ethereum is for all of those non-english speakers my aim is to drive home the importance of this issue and look at some potential solutions that we can use to grow the global ethereum Community by just providing content in the language that they can understand you can see some stats for uh Languages by the number of native and non-native speakers here just two numbers that I'd quickly highlight are over 7 000 languages in the world and 10 languages with more than 200 million speakers so one number that I've already mentioned but it definitely warrants a repeat is the 6 billion non-english speakers there's a couple of stats like this that I will repeat throughout the talk because they are significant and important to think about so English is the most widely spoken language in the world as a first and second language it is also the um it is also the most learned language in the world as a second language and yet still only about 17 of the world's population speaks English at all if we really want to gain worldwide adoption and on board the next billion people to ethereum we need to remove this language barrier and make our websites documentation and apps available to everyone 61 percent of websites are available in English but English only reaches about 26 percent of global internet users I know we don't like to compare this space with traditional companies or existing Tech Giants due to different ideologies goals and approaches but the fact is that they've all done a great job at gaining worldwide adoption and increasing their total addressable Market including by breaking down language barriers this list could really go on forever but I'd just like to highlight a couple of examples the most popular websites in the world by traffic are Google YouTube Facebook and Twitter they are also available in 150 80 46 and 111 languages respectively and they all get billions of views these companies aren't translating all of their content just for the sake of it um they are all aiming to address and be accessible to the global population and realize that by providing their content only in English they would be limiting their target audience by about 80 percent another example that more people here might relate to is Wikipedia which doesn't make money from visits and is essentially a public good while not exactly accurate based on the definition you could also think of Wikipedia as being open source it is available in well over 300 languages simply because its purpose is to be inclusive and accessible and its target audience is the entire world an english-only Wikipedia would definitely not be the seventh most visited website in the world yesterday about 48 of all page views on Wikipedia were in English however the English version of Wikipedia also has about three times more articles available than most of the other popular languages so even this 48 number isn't telling the whole story in fact Wikipedia gets about seven times more page views in English than in Japanese but the number of Articles available in English is also five times higher than in Japanese accessibility and inclusivity also on the only aspects we should think about when talking about translations another one is efficiency understanding basic English is often not enough to be able to read and understand a lot of the content around ethereum which can often be quite complex if you've ever tried to read up on any of the latest developments about ethereum you'll find that they're often very complex topics um studies in bilingual countries have consistently shown that people who learn in their native language tend to learn more perform better on tests enjoy the experience more and are less likely to drop out or lose interest in the topic in fact a study from CSA research has shown that 65 percent of non-native English speakers prefer content in their native language even if they are highly proficient in English this doesn't even take into account the complexity of many ethereum related topics and content and the new terminology that is often exclusive in this space and the we've basically made up or are keep making up so maybe you're not bothered by inclusivity but just want to drive traffic to your project gain users increase dvl or the number of transaction that your app gets and just want to increase your Revenue in that case you should still definitely be thinking about translations um again a lot of chat stats to choose from I've just identified a couple that I think are pretty telling from a company perspective Fortune 500 businesses that invested in Translation were one and a half times more likely to observe an increase in Revenue and the second one Fortune 500 companies were reported to be over two times more likely to improve profits when they invested in translation if this is true for Fortune 500 companies which already have massive existing customer bases and product Market fit we can assume that it's even more relevant to a new and upcoming technology and products in this space and from a user perspective 75 percent of consumers are more likely to buy products from websites in their native language around 40 percent of Internet users said they will never buy from websites that are not in their native language and another stat that I've already mentioned but it's telling enough is 65 of non-native English speakers prefer content in their native language even though they are highly proficient in English so almost half of Internet users would never buy from websites that are not available in their native language how about using dapps or depositing their money into D5 into a D5 protocol that isn't available in their language probably not right I hope all of these help get the point across which is really as simple as we should be translating more content make it more accessible reach more people educate the world about ethereum and onboard people from all over the world to this space and if anyone has found themselves thinking that they should be consid start considering translations for their content or level up their translation efforts we'll move on to some concrete ways of how we can solve this to be honest addressing this is pretty simple we need to be aware of why translations are important and basically just start doing it my main goal is just to highlight the importance of translating content and providing content in different languages making the space more accessible onboarding more people to ethereum it is up to individual projects users people organizations websites and content creators to decide if they want to start translating their content and expand their translation efforts going about it is fairly simple there's many different approaches to take for example you could just order translations for your content from a translation agency or you could create a translation Bounty translation program or something else to get the community involved the quality of machine translation is increasing as well so post machine editing is becoming significantly significantly more used in the translation space where text machine is translated where text is translated by Machine translation and is then reviewed and edited by a professional linguist probably not the most applicable to the content in this space because as we've already mentioned there's a lot of new terminology and a lot of things that are still very much in the works and keep getting updated and changed all the combinations of of the above approaches are possible and many more and then there's also the review process quality analysis process all of these have their advantages and disadvantages which we don't have time to get into but you can find more information about all of them online if you're interested we've also come up with a translation program Playbook which is mostly aimed at ethereum related projects and covers some of the basics of translating content you can find it right here if anyone is interested um hopefully it helps answer a question or two we created this as a resource based on our experience with translating content on ethereum.org and a couple of other websites and if you do check it out and have any input or feedback or can think of a way to collaborate with us even if it's just looking for help translating your content please reach out to us I will share a bunch of contact details in a minute I would also like to mention some of the results that we've seen on ethereum.org by focusing on internationalization ethereum.org is an educational resource that covers many different topics has a lot of resources for beginners to teach them about ethereum and blockchains to help them get on board it to help them identify the right tools to use when they're new to the space so making it accessible is very important to us there's also resources for more intermediate and advanced users community members developers basically anyone else the approach we're taking is very much in line with the open ethos of ethereum and focus on open source the website is fully open source and anyone can contribute to the content features code design and Community aspects of it as well as the translation process since the translation program launched in 2019 our community of contributors translating the website has grown to over four thousand the program represents a simple and low barrier way of getting involved and contributing to ethereum without needing a lot of technical Knowledge and Skills basically the main requirement is just being bilingual these contributors are also the main reason why the website is currently available in 50 languages for quality assurance purposes we're also working with a translation agency to make sure that all of the translations get reviewed before being added to the website so our approach is really a combination of the community-based and professional localization processes while participation in the translation program is voluntary we do try to acknowledge our contributors as much as possible to the point where some of them have transitioned from joining contributing to ethereum.org and are now working full-time in the space or have launched their own initiatives or communities the ethereum.

org translation program is also very much a community building effort and this aspect is an important part of why the community-based approach to translating website content works for us getting involved and contributing to the website is a great way to join the ethereum community make an impact at some value contribute to ethereum in some way without needing a lot of technical skills and it's also an amazing educational experience we've heard from many of our contributors that the knowledge they've gained about ethereum by simply helping to translate the website is immense as it allows them to really read through all of the documentation that is available on ethereum.org while also contributing at the same time translating content has impacted the website in different ways as well not just building an amazing community of people who share our passion and goals analytics on the website clearly showed that the more translated content we have accessible the more non-english pages we get the number of non-english page views still depends a lot on the general traffic to the site but the ratio is going up constantly in fact this month has been the 12th straight month where the ratio of non-english versus English page views has gone up and hit a record high with non-english page views currently representing around 26 percent of all visits to the website over traffic over a quarter of all the traffic to the website is in languages other than English this chart shows the total page views on ethereum.org in the last couple of years you can see the total page views on the website the non-english page views and the ratio between them as you can see regardless of what the general trend is and how many people actually visit the website pages and other languages continue to Trend upwards and and now represent an ever-growing pers of all visits in short the more translated content we have on the site the more people read content in their native language the demand is clearly there for multilingual content and all of us are very well positioned to ensure that ethereum continues to be as inclusive and accessible as possible on ethereum.org we always appreciate feedback inputs new community members new contributors to the website if you have any feedback for us or see a way to collaborate in any way feel free to send us an email to translations ethereum.org if it's anything related to translations or to website at ethereum.

org about anything else really you can also stop by our booth on the third floor if you want should be pointing up not down yeah our booth on the third floor if you want to say hi to the team get more information about contributing to ethereum.org give us some feedback collaborate on translations or anything else really and if you want to talk about translations feel free to reach out to me or catch me here at Defcon I'm always happy to chat that should be it for the most part I'm going to be showing a cup like all of the languages that the website is available in right now if you wanna surf the website in your language um just want to leave you all with a few few closing thoughts everyone should be very proud of what ethereum has a technology all the projects building on top of it and the ethereum community have achieved so far and we can all be even more excited about what the future has in store there is obviously still a lot of research development and building in front of us but we I think we can all agree that we have a lot of reasons to be optimistic if there's just one thing that I would like people to take away from this talk it is the fact that everyone can make an impact and play an important role in the present and future of ethereum there are countless ways to get involved and provide value to the ecosystem and sticking to this topic this is especially true for making sure that the ethereum that ethereum content websites interfaces and communities become increasingly inclusive and accessible to everyone repeating another number that I've already mentioned only about 17 of the world's population speaks English at all this doesn't even mean that they are proficient in English but that they can understand the most basic words and sentences in English if you're bilingual translate content create content in another languages make videos podcasts Twitter spaces whatever in your language spread the word and build your local community if you're a project protocol dap website make sure that your content is available in other languages this is how we reach most of the world's population educate them about ethereum blockchains wallet dapps D5 all of it this is how we onboard the world to ethereum thank you amazing we have time for a couple of questions does anyone have a question for Luca hi I wanted to ask besides going faster what do you think are the advantages of a community-based approach to translations so we have thought about this a bunch really one thing is that we've seen is a lot of the people have this assumption that you need to be highly Technical and have a special skill set to make an impact to contribute to ethereum um we feel like the translation program is a good enough proof that that is not the case anyone can get involved anyone can contribute anyone can make an impact and like I've said we've had a lot of people who started contributing to the website learned enough that and were exposed to the community enough that this led them to get full-time jobs in the space or create something of their own it's the translation program in our mind is a great starting point to join contribute add value and then level up doing whatever people want thank you so much I actually worked in an AI translation industry before migrating to web3 so this topic is definitely very close to my heart I actually have two questions first you presented the translation Playbook but what are like the efforts from the interior foundation on creating a glossary with shared um terms in the web stream space I mean you mentioned of course that like every day we come up with a new technology with a new term uh With A New Concept but I think like having those foundations would be important to also escalate and to also like people create uh independent initiatives on translating the content the second one that I wanted to mention um translating text let's say static contact content is already challenging enough but what are the also uh Alternatives options what are like the efforts to also translate videos infographics um any kind of dynamic content thank you thank you those are two awesome questions that we've really thought about as well so the first one is we have a glossary that we have been building up through basically since we started translating ethereum.org um it's not open to everyone but if you visit the translation program Playbook or the translation program page John ethereum.org there are sections in there that basically say do you want to use any of our resources reach out to us and we will share them um the reason they're not open is because we're using a translation tool that really doesn't make it easy to share the glossary and also another point on this is there are a lot of independent efforts to create glossaries of terms for specific languages countries regions which I think is what how it should work um we make a lot of efforts to translate the website into as many languages as possible but not everything is a problem that the ethereum foundation should be solving for if you listen to any of the talks from any of the people at the EF there is this philosophy of subtraction which is pushing power outside and empowering everyone else to do whatever they want to grow ethereum and that can mean a lot of things but that is also creating glossaries is a good example of that we are not best equipped to create a glossary for every specific language whereas there are organizations and initiatives in different countries of native language speakers who are far better equipped to do that than us and your second question was ah translating videos infographics yes that's also something so at some point we started a trial project to translate some videos it didn't go great it didn't go as good as we'd hoped um but that's not to say we won't pick it up and try to level it up at some point again as far as infographics goes there's been some people on our team advocating for creating infographics for the website that are made in a way that they're easy to translate also something that is very much in progress but it is something we are thinking about and want to solve for