Citizen science at the borders of Romance (www.doedat.be)

Abstract

Many, if not most, countries have several official or widely used languages. And most, if not all, of these countries have herbaria. Furthermore, specimens have been exchanged between herbaria from many countries, so herbaria are often polylingual collections. It is therefore useful to have label transcription systems that can attract users proficient in a wide variety of languages. Belgium is a typical polylingual country at the boundary between the Romance and Franconian languages (French, Dutch & German). Yet, currently there are few non-English transcription platforms for citizen science. This is why in Belgium we built DoeDat, from the Digivol system of the Atlas of Living Australia. We will be demonstrating DoeDat and its multilingual features. We will explain how we enter translations, both for the user interface and for the dynamic parts of the website. We will share our experiences of running a multilingual site and the challenges it brings. Translating and running such a website requires skilled personnel and patience. However, our experience has been positive and the number and quality of our volunteer transcriptions has been rewarding. We look forward to the further use of DoeDat to transcribe data in many other languages. There are no reasons anymore to exclude willing volunteers in any language.