Translators

GBIF is committed to making open biodiversity data as accessible as possible, which includes enabling access to content across multiple languages with the goal to reduce the role of language as a barrier to free and open biodiversity data. Thanks to the aid and support of the volunteer translators listed below, the user interface and key content on GBIF.org now appear in twelve languages, including the six official UN languages:

• English
• Arabic
• Chinese (simplified)
• French
• Russian
• Spanish
• Chinese (traditional)
• Czech
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Ukrainian

Two technology platforms have supported these efforts through free non-commercial licences that enable us to streamline the work of managing our multilingual content: CrowdIn, which we use for translations of the user interface, and Contentful, the content management system used for all non-data pages on GBIF.org. We are most grateful to these and the other companies we rely on to support and maintain GBIF’s open-source infrastructure.

Can I join the GBIF translator community?

We are constantly creating new content across GBIF.org, and welcome the involvement of newcomers who can help us maintain progress in making free and open data even more widely accessible around the world.

If you are interested in joining our volunteer community, please complete this form to express interest in joining the GBIF volunteer community and indicate your available translation language(s).

What recognition does GBIF give its volunteer translators?

In addition to direct attribution and acknowledgement of translators' work on individual pages of GBIF's various websites, we award Open Badges to all volunteers who contribute translations in a given calendar year.

We also expect to assess the impact of this community-led effort and use it as the basis of research, analyzing web traffic and data access across different language groups before and after the availability of translations (Amayo, González-Varo & Sutherland 2016).

GBIF volunteer translators