- 30 Sep 2016
On International Translation Day 2016, Complexity Explorer would like to highlight the selfless and important work carried out by our team of subtitle volunteers. Since 2014, we have been encouraging our users to help us improve the language accesibility of our courses by donating their time. 503 individuals have signed up since then, and 150 of those are currently in our Amara Complexity Explorer Team.
We would like to thank each and every one of those of you that have contributed subtitles to our courses. Our most subtitled course, Introduction to Complexity, is starting next week, and thanks to you almost every video has English captions, and the majority have other languages as well!
Complexity Explorer joined other subtitle community leaders in a chat today about the importance of translation to our communities, hosted by Amara. Watch the video here.
Subtitle Statistics
There are 459 videos available to subtitle in our Amara team, and 43 different languages are represented across these videos. The team has edited a total of 1501 subtitles! English is the most commonly captioned language, followed by Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Italian and French.
Volunteer Profiles
We would like to highlight two of our recent t-shirt finishers who have gone above and beyond creating subtitles for Complexity Explorer this summer.
Andrew Medeiros, an undergraduate student at McGill University subtitled primarily for Elizabeth Bradley’s course on Nonlinear Dynamics. He heard about the Santa Fe Institute and Complexity Explorer through a professor of his and a financial analyst that he looks up to. Complexity Explorer's courses have given him exposure to a wide variety of complexity theory’s applications which may have provided the necessary motivation to endure further coursework where (1/(sqrt(2pi)) is an important quantity. He got involved with the subtitle project as a way to explore some interesting territory while supporting free online education and the opportunities it provides.The best thing about creating subtitles for the courses? Gaining new vocabulary. Andrew says, "the entire experience was fun and eigenvaluable."Andrew completed 134 minutes of subtitles in English.
Steven Gunawan
used to work in the financial sector and is currently a full-time father and potential PhD student in complexity science. He has just passed 120 minutes of subtitles created and will be getting a t-shirt in the mail next week! Congratulations! He stumbled upon Complexity Explorer only recently by way of the Santa Fe Institute website. A few years back, he was doing some personal research on sustainability and came upon the Santa Fe Institute and the idea of viewing sustainability through the lens of complexity science. Fast forward to the present day, he checked out the SFI website by chance and found out that the institute offers MOOCs through the Complexity Explorer. Professor Dave Feldman's excellent Intro to Chaos and Dynamical Systems course happened to start on that day itself. According to Steven, "the rest, as they say, is history." From the courses he's taken so far, he's gained a beginnner level of understanding of the various topics in complexity science and the tools that can be used to 'solve' complex phenomena. With more courses under his belt, he hopes that his knowledge of complexity science can steadily progress to eventually lead to uncovering specific research interests of his own. He found the free t-shirt offer for subtitle volunteers appealing, and now enjoys knowing that he is helping future complexity science students watch the videos. Subtitle Leaders
We have awarded 17 t-shirts to translators completing over 120 minutes of subtitling since the beginning of the project. Check out the top 20 translators of all time for Complexity Explorer in the table below. How close are you to joining the leaderboard? Join our translation team today!
