This project proposes to translate and place on PEOI courses offered to the public without restriction or fee on various web sites. The project has three distinct tasks: locate prospective course, negotiate with author and do actual translation.

1)- Locating prospective courses:

This task aims at creating a data bank of courses that should be considered for PEOI translation. The data bank should be available to all PEOI's volunteers so that work can be undertaken on any such course as soon as a qualified translator in any of PEOI's languages expresses an interest in doing the translation. The data bank should be arranged by field of study, type of material and source web site. The simplest way of starting such data bank is to use a forum entry that can be updated as needed. The type of material must specify to what extent it fits into one of PEOI's course formats (see description of course file structures in "Authors" section).

2)- Negotiating with author:

This task requires the writing of messages and/or letters to the author of a prospective course. The introductory letter should be carefully worded and shared with all the volunteers involved in this task. The letter must make it clear a) that PEOI's use of the material will be for non-commercial purposes only; b) the name of the author and/or copyright holder if different, as well as the source web site, will appear in the upper right corner of every page translated. The letter should emphasize the role of PEOI in distributing education to non-English speakers throughout the world and the presence of a large translating volunteer community at PEOI.

3)- Placing translation on PEOI:

For the translation to be placed on PEOI, the course file structure must be created in one of the course formats. Once permission from the author is received, a machine translation of the material can be created (for French, German or Spanish only) if the translators so desire. The translation work is carried out with the Edit text procedure in "Authors" section.

Volunteers should join in forum discussions pertaining to translation of non-PEOI courses. Registration is necessary to participate in a forum. Volunteer tranlators should register as translators, make sure to join a translation team and work in close contact with the coordinator for their language. Other volunteers are invited to register as volunteer staff members.

To ask questions, and to offer your comments, criticism or suggestion, please mailto:peoi@peoi.org .