Dear colleagues,
I am writing with a request/consultation that may be somewhat out of the ordinary.
I have convinced some people in Catalonia to campaign for volunteers to turn public domain literary works into audiobooks. The first batch is likely to be based on the poetry of Jacint Verdaguer (1845-1902). My idea is that volunteers should sign up in LibriVox and follow the normal procedure. A small committee is to carry out the campaign and I would provide technical support: 1) liaising with LibriVox, as many volunteers may not work confortably in English and 2) they may need technical assistance too with recording and editing (I will prepare some written and audiovisual tutorials in Catalan).
This is meant to happen, or rather start, next Autumn.
Now this is how I have imagined that this could happen. I do not anticipate that LibriVox does anything differently than what it normally does. However, let me know if there is any set procedure for situations like this, or any advice so as to how to proceed.
Last summer I uploaded a novel and my Librivox contact was Leni. I just preferred not to assume that it was her job to attend to this, so I preferred to post this message here.
With best wishes,
Joan Pujolar
Catalan literature by the pound
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TriciaG
- LibriVox Admin Team
- Posts: 60747
- Joined: June 15th, 2008, 10:30 pm
- Location: Toronto, ON (but Minnesotan to age 32)
Moved from the Launch Pad (where specific projects start) to "Need Help? Got Advice?" forum. 
It sounds like a good plan. You could be the coordinator of the book project (filling in the Magic Window, etc.) and do most of the interaction with the readers.
It sounds like a good plan. You could be the coordinator of the book project (filling in the Magic Window, etc.) and do most of the interaction with the readers.
School fiction: David Blaize
America Exploration: The First Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
America Exploration: The First Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Hey, Joan!
I think the most important part is keeping things as normal as possible for LibriVox, as you planned already, with people having their own forum account and everything. If that is followed, and if you could coordinate, helping people with the technical aspects if there are any linguistic barriers, I see no problem at all. I can write in Spanish or in French (or in Portuguese
) too, if that would be helpful, and so can other volunteers. I would be happy to MC this project, but we have others who could do it just as well. 
I think the most important part is keeping things as normal as possible for LibriVox, as you planned already, with people having their own forum account and everything. If that is followed, and if you could coordinate, helping people with the technical aspects if there are any linguistic barriers, I see no problem at all. I can write in Spanish or in French (or in Portuguese
) too, if that would be helpful, and so can other volunteers. I would be happy to MC this project, but we have others who could do it just as well. Leni
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Hello Tricia and Leni,
Many thanks for the swift response. As you say, the idea is to have people circulating through LibriVox much like everyone else. I do not really know how LibriVox operates behind the html, how many people there are, and so on. I am quite impressed by how efficiently everything flows. And seeing the amount of work done and in progress, I imagine that keeping to established procedures and channels must be a good part of the secret.
Spanish will work well to communicate with most Catalan speakers, so I take note of this possibility. It means that I can establish as a regular path to simply direct people to create their own user accounts and fora for each project. Then I can remain in the background in case some people need more direct forms of support and try to work out solutions that fit with "the system".
One additional question: In terms of producing Catalan versions of the instructions' pages, I have worked professionally as a translator and I could produce acceptable versions of the key aspects. The question is: would you be willing to eventually host them in LibriVox or do you prefer to stay with a reduced number of languages with this resource? I recall that the instructions in English are only partially translated into other major languages.
Best wishes,
Joan
Many thanks for the swift response. As you say, the idea is to have people circulating through LibriVox much like everyone else. I do not really know how LibriVox operates behind the html, how many people there are, and so on. I am quite impressed by how efficiently everything flows. And seeing the amount of work done and in progress, I imagine that keeping to established procedures and channels must be a good part of the secret.
Spanish will work well to communicate with most Catalan speakers, so I take note of this possibility. It means that I can establish as a regular path to simply direct people to create their own user accounts and fora for each project. Then I can remain in the background in case some people need more direct forms of support and try to work out solutions that fit with "the system".
One additional question: In terms of producing Catalan versions of the instructions' pages, I have worked professionally as a translator and I could produce acceptable versions of the key aspects. The question is: would you be willing to eventually host them in LibriVox or do you prefer to stay with a reduced number of languages with this resource? I recall that the instructions in English are only partially translated into other major languages.
Best wishes,
Joan
Hello, Joan!
You are very right: as everything here is 100% volunteer run, we do need to have procedures and pretty much to stick to them, so things can flow well. Your plan sounds good
As to the Catalan versions of instruction pages: you are very welcome to do so, and we would add them to the wiki for future reference. Everything we have in other languages was the work of volunteers who offered to do that work. For example, we collect the disclaimers in this page: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=LibriVox_disclaimer The full guide is here and you can see the translations linked at the top of the page: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=Newbie_Guide_to_Recording
I did many of the Portuguese translations a while ago. What I did back then was just translate following the English one as close as possible; then preferably one of the admins checks the translation (just to have another pair of eyes) - in case of the Portuguese, one admin that knew Spanish checked for me -and then it is put on the wiki.
You are very right: as everything here is 100% volunteer run, we do need to have procedures and pretty much to stick to them, so things can flow well. Your plan sounds good
As to the Catalan versions of instruction pages: you are very welcome to do so, and we would add them to the wiki for future reference. Everything we have in other languages was the work of volunteers who offered to do that work. For example, we collect the disclaimers in this page: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=LibriVox_disclaimer The full guide is here and you can see the translations linked at the top of the page: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=Newbie_Guide_to_Recording
I did many of the Portuguese translations a while ago. What I did back then was just translate following the English one as close as possible; then preferably one of the admins checks the translation (just to have another pair of eyes) - in case of the Portuguese, one admin that knew Spanish checked for me -and then it is put on the wiki.
Leni
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Hello Leni,
Many thanks. I will open up for myself this project of producing the Catalan versions of selected parts of the instructions. I have also contacted the Fundació Jacint Verdaguer (https://www.verdaguer.cat/) and they are interested in leading a campaign to get this author in LibriVox.
One more technical question, because they would like all participants to get named: can you have more than one person credited as author or coordinator? I have noticed that in collective works, authors appear as "LibriVox volunteers."
Best wishes,
Joan
Many thanks. I will open up for myself this project of producing the Catalan versions of selected parts of the instructions. I have also contacted the Fundació Jacint Verdaguer (https://www.verdaguer.cat/) and they are interested in leading a campaign to get this author in LibriVox.
One more technical question, because they would like all participants to get named: can you have more than one person credited as author or coordinator? I have noticed that in collective works, authors appear as "LibriVox volunteers."
Best wishes,
Joan
Hello, Joan
Do you mean author or reader/coordinator? For people reading the same section, it appears as Librivox Volunteers. We can add the separate names on the summary of the project though. For coordinator, as far as I know, only one is named.
ETA: I don't know if you saw it, but your recording of La Punyalada is highlighted as one of the staff picks of the month on our main page: https://librivox.org/2020/05/01/world-tour-2020-southern-europe/
Do you mean author or reader/coordinator? For people reading the same section, it appears as Librivox Volunteers. We can add the separate names on the summary of the project though. For coordinator, as far as I know, only one is named.
ETA: I don't know if you saw it, but your recording of La Punyalada is highlighted as one of the staff picks of the month on our main page: https://librivox.org/2020/05/01/world-tour-2020-southern-europe/
Leni
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