[ARIN-consult] Consultation on Offering ARIN Content in Multiple Languages

[Owen DeLong]

> On Feb 13, 2023, at 19:17, Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 6:00 PM ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ARIN is seeking feedback from the community on open suggestion ACSP 2022.10 (https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/suggestions/2022/2022-10/) to provide announcements and policy documents, such as the Policy Development Process (PDP) and Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM), in Spanish and French. The aim of the suggestion is to encourage greater participation and discussion from non-native English speaking members of our community.
>> 
>> ARIN has investigated various options for implementing the suggestion to provide content in Spanish and French, including using translation service products and the necessary website setup and maintenance. We noted that ARIN lacks the ability to verify the accuracy of these products and discovered that there are publicly available tools that allow users to translate content as needed.
>> 
>> In 2022 ARIN conducted a survey with our community on what was most important for ARIN to focus on providing. According to the results of the 2022 Prioritization Survey (https://www.arin.net/participate/community/community_surveys/surveys/2022prioritization/), the suggestion for multi-lingual versions of the PDP and NRPM received the lowest rating among all suggestions ranked.
>> 
>> We are now gathering final input from the community on this specific issue: should ARIN provide multi-lingual support for these documents (recognizing the associated cost and limitations in verification of the translations), or instead direct users to generate their own translations as necessary?
> 
> I think it is far more important than the NRPM to be
> available in additional languages as to have a RSD
> that is able to directly communicate in the (primary)
> languages of their member organizations (English,
> Spanish, and French would probably be among the
> top group) when interactions are necessary.

I’m not sure staffing this is practical, but there are on-demand
translation services that ARIN could subscribe to to enable
this functionality. I would support such an action.

Owen