Note see https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/ttf/2019-December/001347.html for the text of this email as posted to the Technology Taskforce list. The next call of the TTF is Monday, 09 December 2019 at 16:00 UTC .

Dear All,

A new rewritten version of the translation tool for translating emails between two language lists is ready for testing! The new version of the tool is installed for the new transbot lists :
* New-Transbot-EN  (https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/new-transbot-en/)
* New-Transbot-ES (https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/new-transbot-es/)

If there are any new members that wish to be part of the testing, they can request subscription to the new-transbot mailing lists from these links (for the full testing experience it is recommended they subscribe to both lists so they can see the source and target email): 

* Subscribe to new-transbot-en : https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/new-transbot-en
* Subscribe to new-transbot-es : https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/new-transbot-es

Some background - LACRALO has two mailing lists

Emails in English sent to lac-discuss-en are machine translated to Spanish and posted to lac-discuss-es. Similarly emails in Spanish are posted to lac-discuss-es and machine translated to English and posted to lac-discuss-en.

The custom tool to translate emails was first developed circa 2011 and had numerous problems. The wiki page at https://community.icann.org/display/LACRALO/discussion-of-LACRALO-mailing-list-issues has a detailed breakdown of these historical issues.

In spite of an updated version of the tool in 2017, it was noted that in 2018 and 2019, there were numerous emails not being translated. Given the difficulties of working with code developed in 2010 and trying to add features, ICANN IT decided to redo the tool after ICANN65 and engaged a firm to rebuild the tool from scratch.

And the new tool has been developed. Barring any showstopper bugs, the tool is set to be deployed to the LACRALO mailing lists later this month.

More details about the tool will be presented on the TTF call on Monday. So, if you're able to test the tool, do subscribe to the new-transbot-en and new-transbot-es lists and post to a list to see how the tool handles the text.

Kind Regards,

Dev Anand Teelucksingh