| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10] > | Professional Translators Against Crowdsourcing and Other Unethical Business Practices Thread poster: paula arturo
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| Working "on spec" | Dec 22, 2009 |
Ade Indarta wrote:
What I am worried about is when the professional joins this trend, doing professional work for free. This is what the company will try to do in the near future....
That's been around for a while. Writers, architects and others call it "working on spec", and it's a source of considerable controversy, just like some of the abusive trends with "internships" that are really an excuse to replace needed in-house staff. Sometimes the work done is indeed very, very good, and I'm sure that there are enough examples in our profession to keep us busy naming them for a while.
What many fail to grasp, however, is that it is neither possible nor practical to regulate certain things internationally, even where the local government or others may exercise restrictions in certain geographic markets. Most calls for "workers of the world" to unite, while very rousing and perhaps even morally satisfying, are effectively hot air and a waste of time. Calls to condemn crowdsourcing fall in this category, too. It's a current fad, like tye-dyed shirts were a few decades ago. Whether it will have any lasting impact is pure speculation at this point, but I suspect that the effects will not be nearly as awful as many suspect.
I might putter around and pass out the occasional marketing slogan for free that a specialist colleague who is a marketing consultant might charge thousands of dollars for. But do I stand behind that slogan? No way. It's an off-the-cuff, unresearched opinion. Maybe a good one, maybe not. There are no focus groups behind it nor any of the other things that one might expect from a pro for that sort of thing. And if it doesn't work, eventually the customer who needs to sell more will go talk to a professional market consultant, because my suggestions from the peanut gallery aren't good enough to drive his million dollar marketing campaign. It works the same way for translations. The smart clients will eventually go to the right source and they others will go where they belong.
No matter how good individual freebies are, there will not be enough available on the schedules that companies want them to pose a real, broad threat to the livelihoods of competent translators.
| | | | Krzysztof Kajetanowicz (X) 
Poland
Local time: 11:54
English to Polish
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| professional? free? | Dec 22, 2009 |
Kevin Lossner wrote: Ade Indarta wrote:
What I am worried about is when the professional joins this trend, doing professional work for free. This is what the company will try to do in the near future.... That's been around for a while. Writers, architects and others call it "working on spec", and it's a source of considerable controversy, just like some of the abusive trends with "internships" that are really an excuse to replace needed in-house staff. Sometimes the work done is indeed very, very good, and I'm sure that there are enough examples in our profession to keep us busy naming them for a while.
AFAIK "working on spec", at least as far as writers are concerned, is anything but working for free. It's just doing work without a specific commission from anyone, "on speculation" that somebody will like your work and buy it. You expect to get paid more than for commissioned work. Otherwise you wouldn't take the risk of creating something without specific prior interest from a buyer.
And worrying about people doing professional work for free doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Isn't it an inherent contradiction? A man's gotta eat. How are you going to be a professional and work for free? Many of us will do a little free sample from time to time. But that's not "working for free" and crowdsourcing has no effect whatsoever on this very healthy way of matching a buyer and a seller.
| | | | | For spec, pro bono, voluntary and crowdsourcing jobs... | Dec 22, 2009 |
I do not know about "working on spec", but I do know that lawyers do some "pro bono" work, and I do some "voluntary" work for agencies or organizations when they are in need, and I like or support the causes they defend or the activities they pursue. But this type of "free" work, which is basically offered to someone who needs it and has difficulty paying market prices for it, has nothing to do with crowdsourcing by companies who would otherwise have sufficient means to pay market prices for wha... See more I do not know about "working on spec", but I do know that lawyers do some "pro bono" work, and I do some "voluntary" work for agencies or organizations when they are in need, and I like or support the causes they defend or the activities they pursue. But this type of "free" work, which is basically offered to someone who needs it and has difficulty paying market prices for it, has nothing to do with crowdsourcing by companies who would otherwise have sufficient means to pay market prices for what they need. If anyone wants to work for free for them, I do not find this unethical and have nothing against it; however I do find fault with such approach by the companies. Trying to get for free something which they could perfectly pay for does not seem ethical to me, not to mention the fact that, if there are mistakes and those mistakes cause any harm, they will probably try to squeeze out of their responsibility by saying that the work was done for free and thus they cannot provide any guarantees on it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | David Russi
United States
Local time: 03:54
English to Spanish
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| More on working on spec | Dec 22, 2009 |
Terrible practice, must really be hurting the design industry... which BTW is also grappling with crowdsourcing.
http://www.no-spec.com/
[Edited at 2009-12-22 14:40 GMT]
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David Russi
United States
Local time: 03:54
English to Spanish
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[Edited at 2009-12-23 12:39 GMT]
| | | | paula arturo
United States
Local time: 05:54
Spanish to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Totally Off Topic | Dec 22, 2009 |
Hi Everyone!
I'm going out of town for a few days to celebrate the holidays, I just wanted to wish you all a very merry Christmas!
I'll try to catch up with this conversation when I get back!
Best,
Paula
P.S. @ Samuel: I'll try to answer all your questions as soon as I get back. Some of them might already have been addressed in previous posts in this thread, mainly on pa... See more Hi Everyone!
I'm going out of town for a few days to celebrate the holidays, I just wanted to wish you all a very merry Christmas!
I'll try to catch up with this conversation when I get back!
Best,
Paula
P.S. @ Samuel: I'll try to answer all your questions as soon as I get back. Some of them might already have been addressed in previous posts in this thread, mainly on pages 1, 2, 4, and 5 (Francisco provided lots of examples on page 5 and some very nice graphs on page 8). I know that doesn't cover all the points you raised, but since it's such a long thread already I thought it would be productive to remit to those points to avoid redundancy. I hope that's ok. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule | | kind of dive-brake | Dec 22, 2009 |
Krzysztof Kajetanowicz wrote:
You sell your work to the agency for a price.
Best of luck as well!
[Edited at 2009-12-20 21:45 GMT]
I only talk to the people at the agency, that's all, no bargaining, as a rule. If I started bargaining, the eventual gain anyway would be hardly worth the candles. But, in such a creepy life, the promotion (not the promise!) of higher earning warms up.
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Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 11:54
French to German
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| Williamson
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:54
Flemish to English
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| No crowdsourcing of (conference) interpreting | Dec 23, 2009 |
Although http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8343941.stm is luring around the corner, in this thread there have not been a lot of reactions from conference interpreters. Isn't that a more specialised part of the language industry, where you can not "annoint" yourself "conference interpreter"? Most of these "professionals" have passed admission tests, one or two years of intensive train... See more Although http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8343941.stm is luring around the corner, in this thread there have not been a lot of reactions from conference interpreters. Isn't that a more specialised part of the language industry, where you can not "annoint" yourself "conference interpreter"? Most of these "professionals" have passed admission tests, one or two years of intensive training and some are accredited by international institutions.
Rather difficult to crowdsource.
[Edited at 2009-12-23 13:17 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Cedomir Pusica
Serbia
Local time: 11:54
Member (2009)
English to Serbian
+ ...
| Machine Translation | Dec 23, 2009 |
M. Ali Bayraktar wrote:
But crowdsourcing damages the industry less than Machine Translations.
What about to start an initiative against Google and other MT Producers and make them provide MT services not free of charge but payable.
Dear Mr. Ali,
I really can't agree with you. Indeed, I am very zealous about MT. Completely! I wish one day languages could be decoded and perfect translations produced by machines... This now may seem SciFi, but I strongly believe in this dream.
Updates and human touch will be necessary, as languages change over time, but life of us humans should be made easier. The same goes for a number of professions - I still have no idea why lawyers, accountants, bankers, to name a few (may they drink mead in heaven), have not been replaced by machines! Sorry, guys.
Cheers!
| | | | JeremyLT
Local time: 03:54
English
+ ...
| A reply from Lingotek | Dec 24, 2009 |
My name is Jeremy Foote, and I work at Lingotek. I have been reading this thread with great interest. There have been some fantastic points made, and as our company was mentioned, I thought that I could weigh in with a few of my thoughts on the subject.
First, I think that it's a great time to be in the translation industry. Like any industry, prices for translation are based on supply and demand, and the Internet is causing a huge increase in the demand for translation. First, the ... See more My name is Jeremy Foote, and I work at Lingotek. I have been reading this thread with great interest. There have been some fantastic points made, and as our company was mentioned, I thought that I could weigh in with a few of my thoughts on the subject.
First, I think that it's a great time to be in the translation industry. Like any industry, prices for translation are based on supply and demand, and the Internet is causing a huge increase in the demand for translation. First, the amount of content has absolutely exploded in recent years, and second, the increasingly multilingual nature of the Internet is causing content creators to recognize the value and necessity of translation. As Ethan Zuckerman has argued, the future of the Internet is a polyglot Internet (http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/the-polyglot-internet/).
Neither of these trends will be changing any time soon. For example, some 329 million blog posts were created in 2008, and one can only assume that this increased in 2009 (http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/22/internet-2008-in-numbers/). Even if there are 700,000 professional translators, which I believe is a high estimate (http://www.globalwatchtower.com/2008/06/20/top-25-revenue-08), that means that each translator would need to translate nearly 470 posts per year to translate each blog post into just 1 additional language. This doesn't include the reams of corporate content, legal content, marketing content, etc. that many of you are currently translating.
While the translation industry has grown dramatically, it has not been able to keep pace with the explosion the content creation industry has seen. The publishing industry has been revolutionized by Wikis, blogs, twitter, etc. In translation, however, the process is still drawn out, overmanaged, and painful.
We believe that there is a huge amount of content that is and should continue be translated by trained, experienced professionals. However, there is another category of content - things like blog posts, wikis, FAQs, etc. which does not need to be of the highest quality. Currently, the translation industry has not been able to provide workflows that differentiate between content that must be translated by professionals and content which can be just "good enough".
We are working to create a platform which allows non-professionals to contribute to these "good enough" translations. We believe that the tools of computer assisted translation - MT, TM, terminology databases, etc., plus collaboration tools like chat and notifications, make it possible for a huge group of bilinguals to work in our industry without needing the experience or time commitment of professional translators.
Eventually, I think that the new translation tools that we are working on, things like automated translator ratings, translation voting, and interfaces that allow for many translators to work simultaneously, will make it easier for both non-professionals and professionals to help each other to craft high-quality translations. We hope that they will also make it easier for professional translators to find jobs and get paid, without the hassle of finding and keeping and invoicing clients that is so much a part of the process now. ▲ Collapse
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(may they drink mead in heaven)
Sorry to be off-topic, but what an interesting expression! Is it Serbian?
As for MT, it's not going to go away. And it is definitely improving. However, a human will, I agree, always be required to check the translations. At some stage that may become the preferred option in terms of cost and time for certain types of text, but our knowledge of the foreign language will still have value in that context. (Incidentally, the Society for Editors and Proofreaders in the UK suggests a rate of 20 GBP an hour for proofreading, and 26 GBP an hour for substantial editing and rewriting (http://www.sfep.org.uk/pub/mship/minimum_rates.asp ).) Yes, people already use Google Translate for websites, so you could argue that's taking away work. But 15 years ago or so that kind of work didn't really exist anyway. Even now it doesn't really exist in the volume one might expect judging from the number of people using Google Translate; were there no Google Translate or anything like it, and I came across a website entirely in Serbian that looked interesting, I wouldn't contact Cedomir and ask him to translate it; I'd just think: "How unfortunate I don't understand Serbian!"
[Edited at 2009-12-24 05:31 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-12-24 05:31 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-12-24 05:32 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-12-24 05:32 GMT]
| | | | Cedomir Pusica
Serbia
Local time: 11:54
Member (2009)
English to Serbian
+ ...
| The expression | Dec 24, 2009 |
Hey Alistair! The expression just came to me as an innuendo to the old Nordic belief that the fallen heroes (half of them who died in battle) go to Valhalla, enjoy women and drink mead.
Cheers!
| | | | Russell Jones
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:54
Italian to English
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