This guide explains “decentralized publishing,” a process used by the Newsroom whereby a story is first drafted in a non-English language, a translation into English of the story is submitted for editing, and any changes made are reflected back into the original story before publication. We’ll outline below the circumstances when this can happen and the procedures to follow to ensure a smooth process.

Decentralized publishing started in 2010 as a resolution of the Global Voices Summit in Santiago. It generally involves more work, but it offers authors who don’t have writing skills in the Newsroom's operating languages (generally English, French and Spanish) to have their voices heard.

The decentralized publishing workflow

The steps below outline the day-to-day process of creating a typical decentralized post. If you are new to decentralized publishing, please read this document in full, so you understand these steps!

Any post-publication changes should be reported through the Edit Request Form so that all language versions of the story are also updated.

The decentralized publishing team

A typical translation at Global Voices is revised by a Lingua Translation Manager for the language in question; the original story that is being translated has already received editorial oversight from the Newsroom. In the case of decentralized publishing, the English-language translation is revised by Newsroom Editors because the original story is still undergoing the process of editorial oversight.

Typically, the person who manages a team of translators at Global Voices is a Translation Manager. However, in the case of decentralized publishing, which requires volunteers whose language pairings are into-English, a Regional Editor from the Newsroom manages them.

Understanding author and translator credits

Decentralized publishing can lead to confusion about who is marked as “Written by” and “Translated by” on the different versions of a story. Before publishing the source and translation, you should always review the authorship credits and make any changes needed.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• On an “Original” post (one with no URL in the GV Lingua Translation box of the editor), all users selected in the Authors box will be marked as “written by”.
• On a “Translation” post, all users selected in the Authors box will be marked as “translated by” on the post, along with the “written by” credits from the Original post that is being translated.
• You can also see these credits inside the GV Lingua Translation box while editing the post.
• Note that user accounts with limited permissions in WordPress (non-Editor roles) can’t see the box called Authors in the WordPress editor where the credits are controlled, so this is a job for users with Editor or Administrator-level permissions.
• If you find you’re seeing the wrong credits, and especially if they are inverted (translators show as “written by” and the original author shows as “translated by”) then you probably have the “Source” set as the “Translation” and vice-versa. See instructions to fix this below.

How to fix an inverted translation/source pair

• Click the Remove button in the GV Lingua Translation box on the post that has it, removing the Target URL and severing the connection between the two posts.
• Edit the “Translation” post (in the case of Decentralized Publishing, this is the English version) and insert the URL of the “Original” post (non-English) as the Target URL.
• Click Update (Not Fetch!) to link the two posts without re-importing the content.