I'd like to improve my language skills by translating, if possible with feedback from others on my translation. Therefore I'd like to know whether there's a community for carrying out collaborative translations, just like there are for creating subtitles for movies or song lyrics.
Specifically, I would be interested in translating linguistic academic articles which do not have an english version.
I'm not aware of any, but would be interested as well. I used to contribute to Wikinews - and did some translations there of articles to and from english, but that typically was by myself, not collaboratively.
You say your interest is in translating linguistic academic articles - I assume that you're thinking of open access, that is freely shareable and changeable, articles then (since otherwise distribution of the translation would depend on permission of the journals publisher, which I'd think is tedious to get)?
If that's the case I guess you could give a shot at asking the people at Glossa whether they have any interest, or might be able to give you a hand in some way. I've not had any personal experience, but from how they came about founding the journal, they certainly seem like people of action ! (They collectively stepped down from a prestigious non open-access Journal to found it).
Good luck, and best give a shout here if you run into anything interesting!
The first thing that came to mind when thinking about collaborative translation was the fan translations of manga and Japanese novels that take place on the internet, although that's illegal (or a grey area if you prefer). There are similar translation efforts for other foreign media (especially Korean comics and pop culture).
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a similar community for the translation of academic papers. I think you would want a collaborative effort so that you can get feedback on your translation and knowledge of the language, right?
My suggestion would be to start a blog and publish your own translations there. Eventually you can rope in more people to work alongside you and start a team, which is how most translation groups start. The most common way of doing this is putting a little note somewhere on your website saying that you are looking for someone to help you and that they need a native knowledge of X language, along with a way to contact you. In your case, it might also be preferable to ask if they have good knowledge of the subject area the papers are on.
Good luck.
