Crowdsourcing in translation sites
Not for the first year, we have seen how large sites use crowdsourcing for translations into foreign languages (or, more simply, visitors to their own site). This is facebook , and vkontakte, and twitter , and linkedIn ( profile translation ), and userVoice , and ... (you can continue this list yourself). 
If you still don’t understand what is going on, then check out facebook.com/translations/ - there the translation of the facebook into Russian is almost complete and if you have been on the facebook for over a year, you can take an active part in it.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, there is another form of crowdsourcing hidden from the general public - when the site is translated only by invited people or hired for little money, as a rule, non-professional translators, and site visitors only see the final result. Many companies have gone this way, including such well-known companies like eBay, foursquare, Scribd, Adobe, Novell, The Library of Congress and many others.
At the same time, many companies still have a lack of trust in crowdsourcing, preferring to translate their sites in the traditional way or not at all (since the traditional path is not cheap). First of all, they are afraid of the lack of control over content in foreign languages and quality assurance.
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Let's try to figure out whether it is so dangerous to use crowdsourcing as most companies consider and why it is preferred by those who are “in trend.”
1. The cost of translation - as a rule, is almost the main criterion for selection. For example, facebook (which is more than 100,000 words of text) has been translated into 70 languages. With a translation cost of, say, $ 0.10 per word (we take a cost a little below the industry average), it would cost him more than 700 thousand dollars.
2. Translation speed. A striking example is the Facebook translation of French. 4000 users translated the entire site in 24 hours! This can be considered a world record for transfer speed. Obviously, this speed is not available using traditional translation methods. And as we all know, "time is money": at one time, Facebook bypassed MySpace precisely due to the growth of a foreign audience.
3. Translation quality. This is the most controversial point. Most people believe that professional translators translate better than volunteers. However, studies have shown that this is not always the case. Volunteers are often better versed in the subject matter of the site, and bilingual volunteers can even have a better command of the language.
In fact, one can only say for sure that the quality of crowdsourcing ranges from acceptable to exceeding professional translation.
4. Marketing benefits or user engagement. Being engaged in translations, the user delves deeper into the texts of the site, reads what he would not even pay attention to in a different situation, puts his time and energy into the translation. All this can not affect the level of loyalty to the brand. For a company, it is marketing benefits that can be part of an international audience reach strategy (in other words, when crowdsourcing, a company does not just translate a site with the help of volunteers, it also simultaneously acquires an audience of volunteer users from the country into which the translation is being made.)
Thus, we can conclude that quality is the most important of risks (it may turn out to be slightly worse than professional translation), of advantages, price, speed and marketing. The advantages clearly outweigh the giants of the Internet industry have already made their choice, but would you decide to transfer the site to crowdsourcing?
Sources:
The list of advantages is a free translation of the article Top Reasons For Translation Crowdsourcing
1 eBay - Traditional vs. Crowd
If you still don’t understand what is going on, then check out facebook.com/translations/ - there the translation of the facebook into Russian is almost complete and if you have been on the facebook for over a year, you can take an active part in it.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, there is another form of crowdsourcing hidden from the general public - when the site is translated only by invited people or hired for little money, as a rule, non-professional translators, and site visitors only see the final result. Many companies have gone this way, including such well-known companies like eBay, foursquare, Scribd, Adobe, Novell, The Library of Congress and many others.
At the same time, many companies still have a lack of trust in crowdsourcing, preferring to translate their sites in the traditional way or not at all (since the traditional path is not cheap). First of all, they are afraid of the lack of control over content in foreign languages and quality assurance.
')
Let's try to figure out whether it is so dangerous to use crowdsourcing as most companies consider and why it is preferred by those who are “in trend.”
1. The cost of translation - as a rule, is almost the main criterion for selection. For example, facebook (which is more than 100,000 words of text) has been translated into 70 languages. With a translation cost of, say, $ 0.10 per word (we take a cost a little below the industry average), it would cost him more than 700 thousand dollars.
2. Translation speed. A striking example is the Facebook translation of French. 4000 users translated the entire site in 24 hours! This can be considered a world record for transfer speed. Obviously, this speed is not available using traditional translation methods. And as we all know, "time is money": at one time, Facebook bypassed MySpace precisely due to the growth of a foreign audience.
3. Translation quality. This is the most controversial point. Most people believe that professional translators translate better than volunteers. However, studies have shown that this is not always the case. Volunteers are often better versed in the subject matter of the site, and bilingual volunteers can even have a better command of the language.
In fact, one can only say for sure that the quality of crowdsourcing ranges from acceptable to exceeding professional translation.
4. Marketing benefits or user engagement. Being engaged in translations, the user delves deeper into the texts of the site, reads what he would not even pay attention to in a different situation, puts his time and energy into the translation. All this can not affect the level of loyalty to the brand. For a company, it is marketing benefits that can be part of an international audience reach strategy (in other words, when crowdsourcing, a company does not just translate a site with the help of volunteers, it also simultaneously acquires an audience of volunteer users from the country into which the translation is being made.)
Thus, we can conclude that quality is the most important of risks (it may turn out to be slightly worse than professional translation), of advantages, price, speed and marketing. The advantages clearly outweigh the giants of the Internet industry have already made their choice, but would you decide to transfer the site to crowdsourcing?
Sources:
The list of advantages is a free translation of the article Top Reasons For Translation Crowdsourcing
1 eBay - Traditional vs. Crowd
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123198/
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