4. Effort and Cost

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Multilingual Online Translation

Based on this case study, we roughly estimated the effort used in constructing the necessary sources for each new language and compiled the following summarizing chart.

Language Language skills GF skills Informed development Informed testing Impact of external tools RGL Changes Overall effort
Bulgarian ### ### - - ? # ##
Catalan ### ### - - ? # #
Danish - ### + + ## # ##
Dutch - ### + + ## # ##
English ## ### - + - - #
Finnish ### ### - - ? # ##
French ## ### - + ? # #
German # ### + + ## ## ###
Italian ### # - - ? ## ##
Norwegian # ### + - ## # ##
Polish ### ### + + # # ##
Romanian ### ### - - # ### ###
Spanish ## # - - ? - ##
Swedish ## ### - + ? - ##

Legend

Language skills

  • - : no skills
  • # : passive knowledge
  • ## : fluent non-native
  • ### : native speaker

GF skills

  • - : no skills
  • # : basic skills (2-day GF tutorial)
  • ## : medium skills (previous experience of similar task)
  • ### : advanced skills (resource grammar writer/substantial contributor)

Informed Development/Informed testing

  • - : no
  • + : yes

Impact of external tools

  • ?: not investigated
  • - : no effect on the Phrasebook
  • # : small impact (literal translation, simple idioms)
  • ## : medium effect (translation of more forms of words, contextual preposition)
  • ### : great effect (no extra work needed, translations are correct)

RGL changes (resource grammars library)

  • - : no changes
  • # : 1-3 minor changes
  • ## : 4-10 minor changes, 1-3 medium changes
  • ### : >10 changes of any kind

Overall effort (including extra work on resource grammars)

  • # : less than 8 person hours
  • ## : 8-24 person hours
  • ### : >24 person hours