SiB Colombia, the GBIF national node for Colombia, has completed Spanish-language translations for six guides of interest to their national data user and publisher communities. Five of the guides are part of GBIF's digital documentation programme, and the sixth is the user manual for the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), the most widely used data-publishing software across the GBIF network.
"For our community, which is mostly Spanish-speaking, it is essential to have access to translated GBIF documents—and likewise essential for us to help provide and encourage access to them," said Ricardo Ortiz, assistant researcher at SiB Colombia. "With this work, we aid the members of our community in understanding standards, best practices and general concepts that, at the end, have a direct impact on the idea that publishing biodiversity data is a straightforward process, supported with specific documents."
The translation team organized its work to include a thorough review process intended to ensure that the details outlined in the guides are clearly expressed for Spanish readers.
The six newly completed guides are:
- Buenas prácticas para generalizar datos de especies sensibles en registros biológicos
- Guía de buenas prácticas de georreferenciación
- Guía rápida de georreferenciación
- Manual de la calculadora de georreferenciación
- Buenas prácticas para la publicación de datos sobre biodiversidad procedentes de evaluaciones de impacto ambiental
- Manual del usuario del GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT)
In addition, the team reviewed materials from two training courses originally developed by GBIF Secretariat staff documents, bringing these two components of the curricula up to date:
"We had an active participation of everybody involved in the translation to ensure the result was a precise adaptation of the content to a Spanish-speaking context," said Camila Plata, Content Administration Lead at SiB Colombia, who led the translation process. The whole team who participated in the translation were María Alejandra Meneses, Ricardo Ortiz, Esteban Marentes, Sara Gaviria, Andrés Duarte and Team Coordinator, Dairo Escobar.
About SiB Colombia
SiB Colombia is Colombia's national network for open data on biodiversity. The initiative arose from Decree 1603 of 1994 as part of the process of creating the National Environmental System (Sina), established in Law 99 of 1993, and is the country's official GBIF node. Its main purpose is to provide open access to information on the biological diversity of the country for the construction of a sustainable society.
Open call for volunteer translators! If you'd like to see these or other GBIF guidance documents in your language, please feel free to email us at communication@gbif.org for information about joining our volunteer translator community.