Stand for Children is a US national, not for profit education advocacy organization that empowers parents, community members, and leaders to create equitable, high-quality public education for all students, focusing on policy, funding, and implementation through a grassroots approach, working to bridge achievement gaps for children of color, low-income backgrounds and those with disabilities.
Over a 9-month period, and with close collaboration and partnership with Preferred Curriculum Solutions, our team successfully delivered a comprehensive translation project for Stand for Children. Stand For Children’s Center for Early Literacy and Learning Success improves early childhood education policies, products, and professional learning including the development of the Great First Eight Curriculum, an open education resource, full-day, birth through age eight curriculum. Preferred Curriculum Solutions is an education consulting firm offering specialized knowledge and strategic planning to inform curriculum selection and development, curriculum systems improvement, and instructional program implementation.
PROJECT SCOPE
The scope of this project supported the expansion of the ‘Great First Eight’ Pre-Kindergarten curriculum into a full-day Dual-Language curriculum involving translating the curriculum from English (US) into Spanish (US).
This covered over 500 individual files and over 600,000 words and included lesson plans, reading resources, and activity handouts.
Careful scheduling and strict adherence to Pre-Kindergarten-specific language standards were essential to maintaining consistency, meeting aggressive deadlines, and ensuring the educational integrity of the translated materials.
The dual-language curriculum was divided into 8 main units with additional supporting materials, each containing a high word volume, ranging from 25,000 to 70,000 words.
To manage this scale and complexity, the project was executed in phases and supported by a dedicated team comprised of:
- The Great First Eight Curriculum Development Team
- Preferred Curriculum Solutions Lead Consultant
- Two thebigword Project Managers led by one Project Director
- A ring-fenced pool of experienced linguists
- A team of MMS (Multilingual Media Services) specialists
- Acuarela Curriculum Co-Op (for transadaptation)
- A team of 2 Stand for Children Quality Assessors
TECHNOLOGY & WORKFLOW
Stand For Children authored the majority of its curriculum content using the Marq publishing platform, which introduced several unique challenges for the translation process:
- Content was only editable within Marq, meaning direct translation in the platform would significantly increase turnaround time and limit the use of essential QA tools.
- Exported files were non-editable and heavily formatted PDFs, making them unsuitable for direct translation workflows.
- Translation Memory (TM) reuse was not possible within Marq, which would have impacted both cost efficiency and consistency across units.
To address these challenges, we designed and implemented a bespoke workflow focused on maximizing efficiency and quality.
LANGUAGE & TECHNOLOGY
To ensure consistency, accuracy and age-appropriate language for Pre-Kindergarten learners, the client provided a curriculum-specific glossary at the outset of the project. Our linguistic team worked closely with this resource, offering expert consultancy and feedback on term usage to enhance clarity across all units.
Throughout the project, collaborative discussions between linguists and the client led to refinements in the glossary. In some cases, terms were updated following arbitration to better reflect educational intent and linguistic appropriateness.
To further reinforce glossary adherence, Project Managers incorporated automated Quality Assurance (QA) tools into the workflow. These tools helped maintain consistency and flag potential deviations, ensuring that the final translations met linguistic standards.
INNOVATION & EFFICIENCY GAINS
This project marked the first time our MMS team worked with the Marq platform. With client-provided training materials and an internal training plan, the team became proficient in the tool within one week. As the project progressed, our rebuild productivity in Marq significantly improved, enabling us to pass on DTP cost efficiencies, reducing both cost and turnaround time for the Marq-specific DTP stages.
OUTCOME
Our collaborative approach with Preferred Curriculum Solutions, technical adaptability, and commitment to quality ensured the successful delivery of critical educational resources for dual-language instruction.
“Thank you for all your help with this project. It was quite an effort and I really appreciate all the follow through. It has been a pleasure working with you all. I most appreciate how easy thebigword has been to work with, and how responsive you have been to everything.”– Stand For Children Spokesperson
