Moderator Spotlight: Cihan

What I really like about being a moderator is the professional experience. Being a part of translating Twitter into Turkish as a volunteer moderator has provided me with valuable insight on the process of a massive-scale localisation project. Localising the web for Turkish is rather challenging as it’s a very technologically inept language, so we had to invent and reinvent until we no longer needed loan words. After more than a year of being with the team, and getting to know so many fantastic people, I can safely say that I actually like pretty much everything about being a part of it.

I really wanted Twitter in Turkish to feel natural because it was certain that it would become an important information network for the Turkish-speaking part of the web, which also includes a monolingual user base. My initial motivation remains the same to this day — make it make sense for everyone. Now I’ve got a team of brilliant people on my side that I can brainstorm with, and a small but very dedicated translator community that helps our localisation efforts a great deal with their feedback. I also like that it’s all very organic; one of us can come up with a better idea for a translation of some phrase and we can just change it, and our translator community adapts to those changes quite fast. At the end of the day, I am very satisfied with the work we’ve done so far and as Twitter and our ways of consuming information evolve, I’d like to continue doing this to help others utilise new means of spreading their message. At first localisation was just a hobby, now it has become a passion of mine.

My advice to Turkish-speaking Twitter users: Hepiniz buraya bir göz atmalısınız! Are you a bit confused by a translation and you have a better idea? Twitter Translation Centre Turkish forums is where you can have your say and we would love to hear it. We’ve already translated thousands of strings, but Twitter is ever-changing and we will always need your input.

My main timeline consists of a fine-tuned stream of tweets from both my real life and internet friends, also a few other web services I regularly use. For my interests, I utilise lists — e.g. pixel hunt for updates from the independent video game scene, and ouija board for horror cinema and literature related tweets. TweetDeck makes it a breeze to break down content into separate timelines as well. Over the years Twitter has also become my number one news medium; @ansa_topnews and @AJEnglish are my absolute favourites. I’d also like to give a shout-out to @140journos, we need more independent media movements like them.