Poll: Have you ever entered in any translation contest?

Hege Jakobsen Lepri wrote:

I participated in two proz.com contests - and won one, but found the translation competence (or lack thereof) of some of the reviewers a bit off-putting in the last few rounds... (focus on single words, and word-by-word adherence to the source text)

Chie. I wrote:

Actually it is not rare that good professional applicant's translations are alike in their high quality, so it can be very hard (almost not fair at all) to give first prize and second , third place... when there is little or virtually NO major quality differences.

I believe this is the reason, like Hege said, everyone got down to "look for the miniscule and smallest difference" that won't explain for nor affect the writing flow.

We would like positive communication, not pointing out someone's mistakes or small differences:)
when it comes to evaluating "not so good candidacy" it hurts to vote negatively for someone's earnest tries.

Teresa Borges wrote:

I took part in several Proz translation contests between 2008 and 2014. I do consider these contests both entertaining and challenging, but after what happened with the last one (http://www.proz.com/forum/prozcom_translation_contests/277633-translation_contest_celebrations_congratulations_to_the_first_round_of_winners.html) I will no longer enter any. I suppose the contest has become victim of its own success… I can only imagine the difficulty of running a contest for all possible language pairs, but as an active paying member I am entitled to expect from the organizers a more caring, cooperative and respectful attitude toward those who made these contests possible instead of the deafening silence we hear so far.