Résumé Traduttore, traditore (Traduire, c’est trahir): in 2019, a group of French-speaking researchers undertook the collective translation project of the documentation standard called the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) version 7.x.x out to become the new ISO version. At stake here is the transfer of knowledge from predominantly English-speaking research to the French-speaking community in the field of Digital Humanities. The language barrier makes it more difficult to appropriate conceptual and technical tools such as formal ontologies when not in one’s native language. The interest for the CIDOC CRM as formal ontology standard for documenting cultural heritage domain has been more visible for several years now but the uptake/appropriation has been slow to establish itself in the data curation and transformation workflows. Traduire sans trahir: this paper presents the digital workflow of the collaborative and collective translation designed as a digital humanities experiment. It allows reproducible research and reusable tools, translation versioning, statistics on the overall project and project documentation. The collective collaborative translation and revision workflow is completely open and documented on a Gitlab platform held by the HumaNum French DH infrastructure. The collective experiment appears for the translation volunteers as a great way to perfect their understanding of the ontology’s subtleties by manipulating the text in translation or revision activities. Even more interesting, the group helps to solidify a community of CIDOC CRM users and gives the opportunity to collaborate further than the translation project itself.