Monday, November 02, 2009

Signals of Shift in the Language Industry: Are You In or Are You Out?

This is the content of my presentation at the ATA Conference in New York. The conference was very well attended with some 2,500 participants. The room was once again too small, so I apologize for those who had to stand outside.

Here is call for the presentation from the ATA program: "First, translations were handwritten. Then, there were typewriters, computers, and translation memories. Each milestone demanded a shift in the way translation work was done. We are on the threshold of a major paradigm shift where old standards and ideas are being left behind. Translators and language services providers who are ready to make the shift now will stand to profit and grow. Those who like the status quo and accept "the rules" will wonder why they just don't make money like they used to. This will be an engaging presentation that is guaranteed to make you think. You've been warned"!

14 comments:

  1. Love it. I could never understand the TM as Asset thing. Failure to open up will turn them into liabilities.

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  2. A thought-provoking presentation indeed, so thanks for sharing the slides. New ways of sharing linguistic data will certainly lead to a paradigm shift in translation. But in 1981, video killed the radio star, 25 years later YouTube killed the MTV star, and meanwhile I still listen to the radio - now from all over the world, thanks to the web... So am I in, out, or just old? ;-)

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  3. Great! I am going to present mostly the same arguments in Geneva.
    Maybe this is no news already.

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  4. Thanks Renato, this is all a big eye-opener for me, I wish I had been at your presentation. I look forward to exploring your blog further.

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  5. Renato, I unfortunately missed your presentation because I was presenting at the exact same time, but I had a question about your enthusiasm for Google Translate. What about privacy concerns when someone is translating medical reports or annual reports? Those translators should not be dumping their memories into an online global depository for privacy. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that here.

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  6. Hi Renato, interesting post. I wasn't at the ATA Conference so I reckon most of the information from your point is missing in the presentation. I have some questions about it. How is QA managed in this future translation industry? How will the style and terminology consistency be preserved? And what kind of pre-X10n processes can guarantee a real long-term and steady high-quality output among so many people involved in the same projects? I agree that focusing on correcting rather than doing it right the first time is the wrong approach, but in all those papers I've read about this "shift", I haven't read a single word about how the translators are going to work. From what I've read in Proz's forums, many translators that use TM don't use concordance or QA tools, they don't maintain their glossaries or TM, and don't really pay attention to the internal consistency of their translations. I work a lot in QA and I'm not sure why, I do have an idea, but I've noticed a decrease in the quality of the consistency of the translations. As a translator, I'm more worried about having a job in 10 years rather than "helping out" the LSPs and the Facebooks out there, but I understand that we translators have to adapt so I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it. Since LSPs seem to take the translators' work for granted (apparently anybody can translate these days so translators have been left out of the conversation), I'm hosting a powwow this December in Chicago to discuss this issue. Any input you might have will be appreciated. Thanks.

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  7. Thanks for the post, very informative to me... always considered google as one big TM... now they offered a tap to it.

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  8. Jill and Claudia,

    I did address the issues that you raise during the presentation. Unfortunately I don't have the time to elaborate here, but let me only say that these are the typical objections of people who think in terms of status quo. And this is what I was challenging during my presentation.

    I gave an example of a Russian translator who was translating a patent next to me at an ATA conference. The moment the client sends the file out of its network, there is no assumption of privacy. If clients want privacy and secrecy, they will have to pay for you to work onsite.

    As for quality, especially in large projects, the crowd takes care of solving the problem. The axiom that the crowd is smarter than the average member of a group applies here. After all, as I have said multiple times, "quality doesn't matter" - only bad quality matters.

    There is a lot more to talk about. I might transform this presentation into a webinar.

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  9. That changed the way I think about the trend of Globalization, Localization, etc a big deal. It really opened my mind.
    Thanks a lot

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  10. Thank you for posting the presentation slides. You have such interesting ideas!
    If you decide to turn it into a webinar, I will certainly attend it!

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  11. If I understand him correctly -- and having looked at Google's "Translator Toolkit" for about 5 seconds -- he's got the right idea. I heard about this PPT in a thread that started with complaints about translation agencies using TM software to try to turn the translator from a scarce and hence expensive resource into an interchangeable button-pusher, and hence the cheapest component in translation services.

    Renato's vision is that that strategy can be turned around: Google provides TM software for free, so that the software is an interchangeable commodity. By undercutting the market value of the TM software, the value of the translator should be raised -- at least relative to that of the software, at least in theory.

    Okay, there's a big threat to the software companies. "Why should I pay umpteen thousand zorkmids for something Google is giving away free?" Naturally it will be easy for the software makers to point to superior features of their products, but this could already be enough to curtail their ability to dictate the terms of the market.

    What about the agencies? Google has been offering more and more groupware applications for some time: e-mail, calendar. Now the "Translator Toolkit" is group-based from the word go, so anybody can
    be a project manager.


    I have no doubt that this is a good thing for translators. Babelfish has long since shown that we can't be easily replaced by computers, and the Google approach instead commoditizes our complements. I'm probably not going to use it personally, but I'm all for it: I think we benefit just by it being there.

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  12. Very interesting post. I can think of another benefit from working with one single program: the time translators have to spend learning new CAT programs which, in most of the cases, only contribute to confusion and waste of time, because they are not intended to ease translator's workload, but only to reduce client costs. At least, this is my growing impression on SDL products. As regards quality, I think that the more interactive and dynamic the process is, the less errors are made, and, if they appear, they can be solved right in the spot.

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  13. Anonymous9:18 AM

    Hello!

    The industry is shifting very fast.

    Some forgotten languages are now "in fashion" among linguists due to the war.

    I have written about this new situation here:

    http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/el-idioma-pashto-2009-11-10.html

    Best regards,

    Amelia

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  14. Anonymous2:28 PM

    I think specialization is vital.

    I have written a post about the new languages in demand here:

    http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/el-idioma-urdu-2009-11-18.html

    Best regards,

    Amelia

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