photostream

One of the great things about photobooks is that they are not constrained by either the language of the photographer or that of the viewer. Most, even accepting that not all, photobooks are about the pictures.

This year there were SoFoBoMo participants from around the world but the vast majority of them were English speakers. As a part of the plans for SoFoBoMo 2010 we would like to find ways of encouraging people who do not speak English to participate. We’ll need to find places to publicise the event and help with translating parts of the site.

In the immediate future we would like to get the following short text translated into as many languages as possible:

Solo Photo Book Month – The worst photo competition in the world.

A lot of photographers have considered making a book, but various concerns have stopped them. Heck, the same concerns stopped us. We worried that our photos weren’t good enough. We worried that we didn’t have enough photos. We worried that we couldn’t write the text, or couldn’t present a nice layout, or that we didn’t have the time to do a good job.

SoFoBoMo gives us (and you) a way around those fears. There’s no requirement that the photos be good (but we suspect you’ll be surprised by how good yours are). There’s no requirement to have any text at all (but that doesn’t mean you can’t write pages of flowing prose). And there is no requirement on quality of layout. There are just three constraints: all the work must be done in one continuous 31 day period that falls completely inside the two month window, the book must contain at least 35 photos, and you have to generate a PDF of the book. That’s it.

SoFoBoMo started in English. People joined in from all over the world. We’d like to see more people join in from more countries and in more languages because photos speak for themselves. If you would like more information please visit www.sofobomo.org If you could translate any of the information pages then we’d be delighted if you would help. Please contact lingo-at-sofobomo.org

It is free to participate. There are very few rules and absolutely no prizes. It is a lot of fun. You’ve nothing to lose.

If you can help translate this into any language I’d be grateful if you would contact me. Either leave a comment here (which I won’t publish – I’ll email you) or use the email address in the text above.

See this post for a note of some of the developments in progress for the sofobomo site. See the comments below for a list of languages for which we have translations of the short text. More news soon.

Some related posts chosen by the software:

• SoFoBoMo Day16: I’m done
• SoFoBoMo Pipe
• SoFoBoMo languages