Posted on 7 July 2010 by John Cook

A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook' has been translated into German. Many thanks to Captain Pithart who first offered to translate into German within a few hours of the Guide going online. He completed the translation within a few days. Thanks also to Bärbel who helped proofread the German version and offered suggestions to improve the translation.

Currently, there are efforts to translate the Guide into Czech, Danish, Japanese, Polish, Portugese, Spanish and Thai. An Italian version has just been completed (the translator is just checking that I managed to position all the Italian phrases in all the right places before I post it online). If you'd like to help with existing translations or translate into another language, please contact me.

As well as translating the entire Guide, Captain Pithart also performed another very helpful service. He transferred all the English text into a Word document, to help himself with the translation process. But it occurred to me the Word document would be just as useful to any other translators. So if you do wish to translate the Guide, you can download the Word document, translate it and email me the translation. I'll then insert the translated text into the existing design and email back a PDF to check that it all came out right. But best first to contact me to ensure noone else is already working on your language.

Lastly, special mention must go to Bärbel who has organised the effort to translate Skeptical Science into German. Of the 117 rebuttals of skeptic arguments, 82 have been translated into German. This huge effort is largely due to a fantastic translation wiki set up by Bärbel that allows all the German translators to monitor which arguments have been translated, coordinate who does what and check each other's efforts. The wiki was also used to help everyone proofread the Guide and post suggestions of alternate translations. It's an amazing, collective effort and with wonderful work like this, it's no wonder Germany has moved beyond the question of what's causing climate change and are doing something about it.