How can we fairly distribute translation work among volunteers?

[David.H]

I’m trying to organize a community-led translation of an open-source app, but I’m hitting a wall on how to fairly distribute the work. Some volunteers are eager to tackle whole sections while others can only do small bits, and I’m worried the review process will become a bottleneck.

[Luke45]

I split the work into sections and paired each with a lead and a reviewer. A few folks took big sections, others did tiny bits. The review queue still piled up, like every other Friday. We added a weekly check in and a simple 'ready for review' tag, but it didn't fully fix the bottleneck.

[Violet.B]

Another try was to rotate reviewers so no single person owned the reviews for long. Tasks had a clear deadline, and I kept a lightweight tracker showing who was doing what. It moved the backlog a bit, then it crept back as people got busy or forgot to self assign.

[SamuelR]

We built a shared glossary for translation terms, hoping consistency would cut review time.

[Ronald13]

Sometimes I feel like we're missing the real problem, not just assignment logic. I wandered into a chat about tooling and schedules, then realized maybe people just want to contribute in bursts. Still, we circled back to workloads and tried a micro task pack, plus a quick review sprint. Is the bottleneck the review, or are writers unsure what to translate first?