mar_plateado.txt

Mar Plateado Immersion Team
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*The Mar Plateado Immersion Team* is an informal group of native English and Spanish speakers who use the "Immersion" mechanism of Duolingo.com to support our study of each other's languages. We believe that serious students should work with entire documents, not just isolated sentences, and we work together to produce complete translations.

We coordinate our work through Duolingo discussion threads that list documents we are currently focusing on. This is called the *session message*, and the member who keeps it up to date is the *session owner*. Ownership rotates periodically.

You may be initially more comfortable translating to your own language from the language you are learning, but, once you have more experience, we encourage you to participate in "reverse immersion"--translating from your native language to the language being studied. On both sides, native speakers of the source language can help to determine the source's meaning or intent, while native speakers of the target language can help to determine the most natural translation. This lets the team learn from each other as learners of one language and as teachers of the other.

Here are the current session messages:

English to Spanish -- Spanish to English

## Sponsoring a document

You sponsor a document by posting its name as a reply to the session message. That reply needs to include a hyperlink to the document in Duolingo's Immersion section plus an optional sentence saying why you thought it was interesting. By posting it to the session message, you are committing to translate or at least review the entire thing. That is, you will eventually make it be "all green". You are also committing to spend some time reviewing other members' documents from the active list. It is not fair to expect others to review your translations if you don't review their work too.

When you post your document, the session owner will update the session message and list your document in the "IN-PROGRESS" section, showing you as the "sponsor." That lets everyone else know that you're working on it, so they can elect to join you. At this point, you have committed to finishing it.

Once your document is completely translated and you are ready for others to pay it serious attention, make a comment in the session message and the owner will move it to the bottom of the "ACTIVE" section. You may need to post a request on the session owner's Activity stream, just to be sure they see it. That's okay--we're all friends here.

No one can have more than one active document at a time, but you can have as many as you want in the "READY" section. If someone has multiple open documents and you have no active ones, you can sponsor one of theirs, if they're agreeable.

## Reviewing a document

*Selecting a document to review*

Ideally, people pick documents from the top of the active list and then work their way down. In practice, people look until they see a document that interests them. Some even pick incomplete documents from the IN-PROGRESS list. It's all good. You don't need to add anything to the session message to say that you're working on someone else's document, but you can add something to the document's own discussion area, if you like.

*Full Review*

To fully review a document, it should all show as either green or black to you. That is, you reviewed all the sentences that Duolingo flagged as needing review. If you're not the sponsor, there is no real need to do the entire document, although by all means do so if you liked it. Again, we believe you learn more by considering the entire document when you translate.
When you review a document, remember that the goal here is to learn by making complete translations. That means that if you edit someone else's translation, you are trying to add value--not just score points. Include a comment that explains your change.

*Discussion Section*

If a proper explanation would be too complex for a comment, *use the document's discussion section*. That is, just say "See Discussion" in the comment and then put a detailed comment in the discussion section.
As with the rest of Duolingo, the discussion section is where we actually learn new things about each other's languages. We approach disagreements in a constructive way; we are all trying to translate the document and we are all trying to learn. If there isn't consensus on what a sentence means, approach native speakers from the other side of the team for their perspective. We have learned a lot this way, and that's really the whole point.

*Sharing Credit*

Unless someone's translation had serious errors, always remember to share credit when you edit it. And if their translation is mostly correct, but simply needed a little work, vote them up first and then share credit. You can put "CS" in the comment to indicate "credit shared" or "CS+" for "credit shared and I voted you up." That can prevent a lot of hard feelings.
In the event of a conflict, *ask the sponsor to decide*. The sponsor has the most invested in the document, after all. If he/she says, "let this be final," then don't quarrel.
Finally, don't *downvote* your teammates. If someone's work seems really bad, talk to them about it offline, *and be gentle*.

## Finishing a document

When Immersion shows that all sentences are translated and reviewed (and, ideally, the translation quality shows as "good" not just "medium.") then the sponsor reports to the session owner that the document is complete and he/she moves it into the "COMPLETED" section.
Congratulations! Now go grab another one!

## Abandoning a document

Every now and then, we need to give up on a document. Legitimate reasons include things like the person who originally posted the document doesn't want us editing it, the document turns out to contain large blocks of text that aren't in the correct language, or other users are incessantly editing bits of it (i.e. having an edit war) so the document can never be completed. Just explain why in the session message, and the session owner will adjust the list.

## Joining

Any serious student who shares these goals is welcome to join us. To join, just post a message with a document that you want to sponsor and intend to finish, or simply introduce yourself and then dive in to help review something from the list.

Happy translating!

## Session Message Template

This replaces the discussion for the previous session

## WHO WE ARE

*The Mar Plateado Immersion Team* is an informal group of native English and Spanish speakers who use the "Immersion" mechanism of Duolingo.com to support our study of each other's languages. We believe that serious students should work with entire documents, not just isolated sentences, and we work together to produce complete translations. Any intermediate or advanced Duolingoer who shares these goals is welcome to join us. To join, just introduce yourself and pick a document (from our list, from Immersion, or one from the wild that you upload to Duolingo) to work on. Happy translating!
Read our guidelines (please note that our guidelines are a work in progress....any suggestions, please let us know)
If you have any questions, please post below, and one of us will answer soon.

**ACTIVE ARTICLES** (completely translated and need checking; limited to one per sponsor)

**READY ARTICLES** (Overflow from Active section)

**IN-PROGRESS ARTICLES** (Translation incomplete and help is welcome)

**COMPLETED ARTICLES** (signed off by sponsor)

**ABANDONED ARTICLES**