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Is there a demand for a translation memory exchange?
Thread poster: sdvplatt
Daniel Frisano
Daniel Frisano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 08:04
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
What?!? Mar 8, 2018

This is probably THE most unprofessional idea I have ever heard of. Why would you ever do that? To get away with selling recycled material as new? And how do you know that you can trust the source?

How would any professional who loves his job and strives to provide a flawless service to his clients even...

I better stop here.


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
REcycling Mar 8, 2018

Daniel, considering different styles, peculiarities, audience, and purposes, it's very simple:
* all the vocabularies/glossaries, TMs, suggestions, MT and the rest is but prompting--a quick hint; raw material, *not* always the ultimate solution.

However, if you're about deep-thinking, then how about the very computer-aided tool concept?
And don't even mention other reusable and renewable things, including the food and money)


 
sdvplatt
sdvplatt
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:04
Member (2003)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
hello?! Mar 8, 2018

Daniel Frisano wrote:

This is probably THE most unprofessional idea I have ever heard of. Why would you ever do that? To get away with selling recycled material as new? And how do you know that you can trust the source?

How would any professional who loves his job and strives to provide a flawless service to his clients even...

I better stop here.


What are you talking about? Maybe you need to think before you freak out?
Its about helping out fellow translators. Why reinvent the wheel every time esp. with difficult technical terminology?


 
sdvplatt
sdvplatt
United Kingdom
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German to English
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TOPIC STARTER
decent idea Mar 8, 2018

DZiW wrote:

As far as all so-called "translation tools and know-how's" are but prompting--be it glossaries, TM's, auto-suggestions, MT and so on--it's up to the translator to choose and decide.

NDA? Just remove names and numbers, clean the timestamps up, and reset the author/remarks. That's it.


The tms would need to be preprocessed to remove any legally incriminatory terms.
There is no copyright on words generally after all.


 
sdvplatt
sdvplatt
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:04
Member (2003)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Yes but Mar 8, 2018

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

DZiW wrote:

NDA? Just remove names and numbers, clean the timestamps up, and reset the author/remarks. That's it.


That's not enough. You would still be publishing texts that belong to someone else, most likely committing copyright infringement and you would most likely still be violating privacy laws and NDAs.

I don't understand such an urge to sell other people's property. Would you also sell your neighbour's furniture if he asked you to water his plants for a week?


This is a translator exchanging their own work to which they also have rights to other translators in the same space to improve collective wisdom.
I knew translators were a pretty conservative bunch but this continuous recourse to "Well its illegal" would be a reason not to seek any progress in this field.


 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 15:04
Member
Chinese to English
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TM-Town? Mar 8, 2018

I don't actually use TM Town, but can anybody tell me how this is different from that?

 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
WTF?! Mar 8, 2018

With respect, I would no more want to use someone else's TM than a pre-loved condom.

Surely it would be self-defeating anyway: your TMs would only be of any use to someone working on jobs that have previously been yours.


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 08:04
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Sharing terminology is useful, but not so much TMs in my experience Mar 8, 2018

I have in fact received TMs from agencies, and so have others.

I think it is a fallacy that we are reinventing the wheel all the time as we translate. It is nurtured by the MT industry, who dream that if only we could find enough texts, conversations, articles, or 'discourse' in enough languages, pool it all and let the computers sort it out again, then every translation could be done in seconds, for all eternity.

Translation, with respect, is far more complicated than
... See more
I have in fact received TMs from agencies, and so have others.

I think it is a fallacy that we are reinventing the wheel all the time as we translate. It is nurtured by the MT industry, who dream that if only we could find enough texts, conversations, articles, or 'discourse' in enough languages, pool it all and let the computers sort it out again, then every translation could be done in seconds, for all eternity.

Translation, with respect, is far more complicated than games of chess and Go.

Admittedly, there is a predictable core, but my experience with my old TMs is that they may be a help, but they are no substitute for doing the job myself. I make extensive use of the glossary function and the concordance, and here I can see contributions from trusted colleagues.

I do a certain amount of maintenance on my TMs, and try hard to find time to make sure the final, edited and proofread version of a text is the one in the TM. Nevertheless, I still find - and delete - outdated and garbled segments.

Legislation changes, and all the names and titles of ministries and authorities change. Colleges and universities merge and set up new departments. Even standard legal phrases are updated.
Most of the matches are so fuzzy that I have to re-write the whole thing anyway. Indeed, sometimes I deliberately rephrase sentences and rearrange passages to disguise the fact that it is all precisely the same old blurb as last year and the year before...

I would probably put it differently, but I feel like Chris S:
WTF?!

With respect, I would no more want to use someone else's TM than a pre-loved condom.


Quite apart from that, it is like borrowing someone else's lecture notes at Uni. They never note down just the detail YOU thought was important, and when it comes to the exam, that turns out to be what you have forgotten! Something different happens when you attend the lecture and make your own notes.

When I do my own translations, I learn and remember the different challenges. Then I can refer back and make use of the concordance to find what I did on earlier occasions. Or I can see what colleagues did. Their initials show in the concordance, and I note sources in my Multiterm glossary. That is how I build up experience, and that is what makes me a better translator than when I started out.

With a TM, in theory any beginner can get the same results as the old hands.
In fact, the converse is true.
If you depend too heavily on TMs and other people's work, you can go on for years and still be a beginner!
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Jean Dimitriadis
Jean Dimitriadis  Identity Verified
English to French
+ ...
My POV on your business idea Mar 8, 2018

Posting a business idea on ProZ.com to get a few answers and conducting a sound market research are two different things, but I’ll leave the methodology minutiae to you.

No, I would not be willing to sell or buy TMs. You’ve got your answer.

deutschenglisch wrote: I knew translators were a pretty conservative bunch


Now, let me understand, is making such sweeping statements a way of treating your potential customers? (Business) relations are based on respect. I don’t see that here. Even if I was willing to buy or sell my TMs, this (and the general) attitude would certainly make me reconsider.

deutschenglisch wrote: It's about helping out fellow translators.


No, what you describe is a paid service. Let’s not mince words, not in a translators forum.

deutschenglisch wrote: Why reinvent the wheel every time esp. with difficult technical terminology?


And why reinvent the wheel since the service you suggest is already being offered (see https://www.tm-town.com/, http://www.ttmem.com/ etc.)? Oh, I get it. It is just doing business. A very different wheel, I am sure.

While parallel corpora have a value, overly relying on translated material when translating and conducting terminology research can be seen as a methodological error. High quality monolingual resources in the target language trump often mediocre translated references. Translators sometimes learn to be wary of translations and (re)use them with caution.

Also, my own TMs do not hold the same value to me as third party TMs, I cannot put the same level of trust nor reuse them as such, without careful consideration.

deutschenglisch wrote: There is no copyright on words generally after all.


If I wanted to buy words, I’d buy a dictionary. Translations are not just words (even if we’re often paid by the word). It’s more about how these words are arranged. And while they may be segmented in sentences, they would not hold much value if they did not form a coherent whole (a text) when merged together. Let’s avoid (further) commodifying translation.

I don’t know how redacted, chopped up texts fare on the copyright front, but having (and using) TM files on a computer and owning the right to divulge or sell them are two different things. Of course, at least in my own applicable TOBs, unless stipulated otherwise (which is often the case in contract agreements and NDAs), the translator owns and keeps the rights to their translations, even after the delivery. But this is not universally the case, so the question of confidentiality and copyright has to be taken into consideration by anyone thinking of opening a TM marketplace. But again, let’s not dwell in the minutiae of business risks, this is someone else’s homework.

Leave me out!

[Modifié le 2018-03-08 14:37 GMT]


 
sdvplatt
sdvplatt
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:04
Member (2003)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
true but Mar 8, 2018

Andy Watkinson wrote:

NDAs, TMs, MT, TUs, Data Protection laws.... Nobody here is talking about what to me is the most important thing.

Why on earth would I, or anyone else, want to sell, for a relative pittance, something which has taken us decades to acquire?

You are free to come and take from my cold, almost dead, hands the sum total of my accumulated knowledge and "whathaveyou", provided you pay me and mine enough to live comfortably for the next couple of decades....

Any takers?





What happens when you want to leave the industry?
What about swapping your expertise for someone else's expertise in a different area?
What about swapping/selling a small fraction of your written output?
Also, not all expertise can be encapsulated in a memory. Its not enough just to have previous translations to translate otherwise MT would have replaced you


 
sdvplatt
sdvplatt
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:04
Member (2003)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
my title Mar 8, 2018

Christine Andersen wrote:

I have in fact received TMs from agencies, and so have others.

I think it is a fallacy that we are reinventing the wheel all the time as we translate. It is nurtured by the MT industry, who dream that if only we could find enough texts, conversations, articles, or 'discourse' in enough languages, pool it all and let the computers sort it out again, then every translation could be done in seconds, for all eternity.

Translation, with respect, is far more complicated than games of chess and Go.

Admittedly, there is a predictable core, but my experience with my old TMs is that they may be a help, but they are no substitute for doing the job myself. I make extensive use of the glossary function and the concordance, and here I can see contributions from trusted colleagues.

I do a certain amount of maintenance on my TMs, and try hard to find time to make sure the final, edited and proofread version of a text is the one in the TM. Nevertheless, I still find - and delete - outdated and garbled segments.

Legislation changes, and all the names and titles of ministries and authorities change. Colleges and universities merge and set up new departments. Even standard legal phrases are updated.
Most of the matches are so fuzzy that I have to re-write the whole thing anyway. Indeed, sometimes I deliberately rephrase sentences and rearrange passages to disguise the fact that it is all precisely the same old blurb as last year and the year before...

I would probably put it differently, but I feel like Chris S:
WTF?!

With respect, I would no more want to use someone else's TM than a pre-loved condom.


Quite apart from that, it is like borrowing someone else's lecture notes at Uni. They never note down just the detail YOU thought was important, and when it comes to the exam, that turns out to be what you have forgotten! Something different happens when you attend the lecture and make your own notes.

When I do my own translations, I learn and remember the different challenges. Then I can refer back and make use of the concordance to find what I did on earlier occasions. Or I can see what colleagues did. Their initials show in the concordance, and I note sources in my Multiterm glossary. That is how I build up experience, and that is what makes me a better translator than when I started out.

With a TM, in theory any beginner can get the same results as the old hands.
In fact, the converse is true.
If you depend too heavily on TMs and other people's work, you can go on for years and still be a beginner!


I have found for specialist texts such as safety manuals I am repeating a lot of work I have done at some point for someone in the past.
Its about very specific fields.
Quite right to point out this is already someone's dream.


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
translation competence vs closed-market translation rivals Mar 9, 2018

deutschenglisch, despite the definitions, a commercialized idea of computer-aided translation tools under a flashy motto
Never translate the same again!
logically turned into a posh
Never be paid for translating the same again!
Therefore, they SELL translators a tool to WORK & PAY under their terms.

Funny, re-using the own TM is a 'standard' whereas re-using others' by-product--TMs--is allegedly NOT ok for freelancers, yet a standard practice and even a must for ALL the rest--agencies, mid-men, and customers--go figure. Just a moment, ain't there at least 50% of translator's property? Joking...

Now I also prefer either something like VLTM (Very Large TM), or teaming up; but several times I did successfully use others' TMs (mostly in new fields).

Of course, depersonalized data is but information, that's why no language specialist could recreate the text ('client's property') from some 10K+ TM, let alone prove it's somebody else's work--unless reusing 'fuzzy matches' blindly, without thinking, perhaps.


 
Andy Watkinson
Andy Watkinson
Spain
Local time: 08:04
Member
Catalan to English
+ ...
No, thank you. Mar 9, 2018

deutschenglisch wrote:

Andy Watkinson wrote:

NDAs, TMs, MT, TUs, Data Protection laws.... Nobody here is talking about what to me is the most important thing.

Why on earth would I, or anyone else, want to sell, for a relative pittance, something which has taken us decades to acquire?

You are free to come and take from my cold, almost dead, hands the sum total of my accumulated knowledge and "whathaveyou", provided you pay me and mine enough to live comfortably for the next couple of decades....

Any takers?





What happens when you want to leave the industry?



a. It's not an "industry" (and a translation is not a "project"), and b. who says I'm ever leaving?



What about swapping your expertise for someone else's expertise in a different area?



Why would I, at this stage in the proceedings, want someone else's expertise in a different area? I'm not going to suddenly start translating a totally different field to my areas of expertise. I'm not stupid and not unprofessional.


What about swapping/selling a small fraction of your written output?



I haven't built up my knowledge, however meagre it may be, over 40 years, before the advent of even humble, Internetless PCs and fax machines, to start swapping it for "someone else's stuff" as if I were back in the school playground.

I'm more than willing to help people out with terminology/stylistic snags as shown by my record here on Proz for the last 17 years or so.
That's a far cry from what you're suggesting.

And yes, I'm aware that others having access to my output is the same as me having access to the notated version of Eric Clapton's "Steppin' out" - i.e. it's not going to make me God.

My original offer still stands.

Gross Annual Billing x next 20 years = €1.9m

Any takers?

I'd really like to retire.

[Edited at 2018-03-10 02:01 GMT]


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 08:04
French to English
What a thread! Mar 9, 2018

pre-loved condoms, aspiring to Clapton-esque deification, rash betting, I see I missed a fair bit of excitement yesterday!

I'm not all that interested in other people' TMs. Apart from the fact that little of what I translate is CAT tool suitable, I rarely see anything nowadays that makes me think "ah yes that's a much better way to translate that troublesome term" in TMs or glossaries. When I do have a Eureka moment, it's when I'm looking at material written by a native of my targe
... See more
pre-loved condoms, aspiring to Clapton-esque deification, rash betting, I see I missed a fair bit of excitement yesterday!

I'm not all that interested in other people' TMs. Apart from the fact that little of what I translate is CAT tool suitable, I rarely see anything nowadays that makes me think "ah yes that's a much better way to translate that troublesome term" in TMs or glossaries. When I do have a Eureka moment, it's when I'm looking at material written by a native of my target language without reference to the source language.

It could have helped me as a beginner and I don't agree that it would hold me back at beginner level. It would be a more "on-the-fly" method than the time I spent putting together a glossary from previous translations when I first started working at the agency. However beginners typically don't have money to invest in that kind of thing.

Moreover, the sheer volume of material on internet means that there is less and less need for them. When I started translating, Internet wasn't even a thing and I used to travel all over Paris to various libraries to find what I needed. Nowadays there is so much stuff out, there the problem is more a matter of choosing which source you can trust. Adding a TM or glossary from another translator simply adds to the confusion.


All that said, I would happily pass on my redacted material to a younger translator if ever I retire. Like a mentor's gift. It would have to be a translator who trusts and appreciates my work of course.
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Andy Watkinson
Andy Watkinson
Spain
Local time: 08:04
Member
Catalan to English
+ ...
And why not? Mar 10, 2018

Texte Style wrote:

aspiring to Clapton-esque deification



Let's call it the atheist equivalent.

[Edited at 2018-03-10 02:22 GMT]


 
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