Crowdsourcing in translation: is it so cool?
What an intriguing, even shocking idea - a crowdsourcing (collective) translation! Sharing the philosophy of spontaneous initiatives — say, open source software, Wikipedia, or even mass revolutions such as the Arab Spring — crowdsourcing questions the value of traditional qualified translation.
Transferred to Alconost .
The last time this happened was when, for the market share in which the “manual” translation dominated, he began to play an aggressive game called machine translation. The hard struggle has opened up new niches for competitors, and as a result, a third party has taken the leading position - automated translation systems (SAP).
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SAP is the real face of modern translation, replacing the old methods. To create scalable, high-quality and smooth translations with which neither manual nor machine translation can compete, SAP combines efficient data processing techniques with quality and human work process.
Now we are threatened with large-scale changes again. To fund platforms and services based on collective translation, venture capitalists are clearly climbing out of their skin. And it's easy to see why. Public translation means cheap or free translation, fast, bringing results.
Amara, a crowdsourcing subtitle translation service for Youtube, received a grant of USD 1 million from Mozilla and other companies and proved that it can translate videos into 20 languages in 24 hours.
Smartling, a technology platform to search for “public” translators, was able to raise USD 24 million in venture financing. Translations of presentations for the TED non-profit foundation are being prepared on the basis of this service.
If non-professionals can create original material that can be gradually “improved” with the help of peer review, are the SAP methods still relevant? Let's examine how crowd-shedding works in translation today, and draw conclusions.
In 1997, Macromedia released Dreamweaver in the USA. A year later, after receiving a complete translation of the program interface into French from a French fan, the company was simply shocked.
But before entering, for example, the Chinese market without localizing the product, advertising materials or a website - think twice. Obviously, the moment of entering the market is the best time to gain popularity, and if the product goes without localization, counting on a future collective transfer, this moment is missed.
Even better, crowdsourcing worked for Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is fully accessible in 70 languages. As in the case of Dreamweaver, the Mozilla Firefox translation community is avid techie enthusiasts who know the right terms in their own language and are able to name the new features with new appropriate words.
But, unlike Dreamweaver, Mozilla's goal is not to make a profit, but to promote evolution, as a result of which the crowdsource team works with great dedication.
As it turned out, the French community Firefox is not inferior to fans of Adobe, regularly and promptly translating each new version. But even if you change the world - not the fact that the whole community will run to change it with you. Crowdsourcing social commitment also has its limits.
As both cases have shown, in a certain situation translation by enthusiasts may be technically more accurate than translation professional. But it does not take into account that not every experienced user selects words with the same diligence with which every professional translator delves into the technical "materiel".
In the case of crowdsourcing, it is not an easy task to approach the translation properly, taking care of its quality and proper spending of funds. Throwing a call on a crowdsourcing platform does not mean getting a transfer on a silver platter. After all, to evaluate the results, correct errors in the code or formatting, the owner of the original text needs special tools.
In addition to this, the translation customer needs competences in the field of project management, which even large companies forget. It’s like instead of supporting a full-time marketing department to manage disparate assistants, each of whom is responsible only for their own part of the business. And since you pay for crowdsourcing rates (little or nothing), your assistants will most likely not agree to do a very large amount of work. In turn, this causes the need to increase the number of assistants - and further complicates management.
Probably not all translations will be good. Low-quality translations add text-reading experts and kill their enthusiasm (with the exception of probably fanatical communities such as the backbone of Linux developers). Since expert readings take place early enough in well-organized outsourcing processes, will the experts not fade to the final stage of work? Think about those who will translate the text, and the overhead of managing collective activity: is it worth it to get involved?
On closer examination, the potential benefits of crowdsourcing — quality, low cost, and the speed at which results are obtained — can be deceptive.
In many cases, communities need to work together with professional translators to prepare high-quality, scalable translation and process management.
Any event that changes the rules of the game in the technological arena “reloads” the market, but always leads to less radical changes than expected.
Summary from translator : for such giants as Mozilla and Adobe, crowdsourcing is possible and works. Small and medium developers are waiting for the following problems:
Conclusion: contact the professionals.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Transferred to Alconost .
The last time this happened was when, for the market share in which the “manual” translation dominated, he began to play an aggressive game called machine translation. The hard struggle has opened up new niches for competitors, and as a result, a third party has taken the leading position - automated translation systems (SAP).
')
SAP is the real face of modern translation, replacing the old methods. To create scalable, high-quality and smooth translations with which neither manual nor machine translation can compete, SAP combines efficient data processing techniques with quality and human work process.
Crazy crowd
Now we are threatened with large-scale changes again. To fund platforms and services based on collective translation, venture capitalists are clearly climbing out of their skin. And it's easy to see why. Public translation means cheap or free translation, fast, bringing results.
Amara, a crowdsourcing subtitle translation service for Youtube, received a grant of USD 1 million from Mozilla and other companies and proved that it can translate videos into 20 languages in 24 hours.
Smartling, a technology platform to search for “public” translators, was able to raise USD 24 million in venture financing. Translations of presentations for the TED non-profit foundation are being prepared on the basis of this service.
Change of world view
If non-professionals can create original material that can be gradually “improved” with the help of peer review, are the SAP methods still relevant? Let's examine how crowd-shedding works in translation today, and draw conclusions.
Catch the moment
In 1997, Macromedia released Dreamweaver in the USA. A year later, after receiving a complete translation of the program interface into French from a French fan, the company was simply shocked.
But before entering, for example, the Chinese market without localizing the product, advertising materials or a website - think twice. Obviously, the moment of entering the market is the best time to gain popularity, and if the product goes without localization, counting on a future collective transfer, this moment is missed.
Geeky
Even better, crowdsourcing worked for Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is fully accessible in 70 languages. As in the case of Dreamweaver, the Mozilla Firefox translation community is avid techie enthusiasts who know the right terms in their own language and are able to name the new features with new appropriate words.
Commerce vs. Charity
But, unlike Dreamweaver, Mozilla's goal is not to make a profit, but to promote evolution, as a result of which the crowdsource team works with great dedication.
Will it work or not?
As it turned out, the French community Firefox is not inferior to fans of Adobe, regularly and promptly translating each new version. But even if you change the world - not the fact that the whole community will run to change it with you. Crowdsourcing social commitment also has its limits.
Professionals vs enthusiasts
As both cases have shown, in a certain situation translation by enthusiasts may be technically more accurate than translation professional. But it does not take into account that not every experienced user selects words with the same diligence with which every professional translator delves into the technical "materiel".
Costs after the fact
In the case of crowdsourcing, it is not an easy task to approach the translation properly, taking care of its quality and proper spending of funds. Throwing a call on a crowdsourcing platform does not mean getting a transfer on a silver platter. After all, to evaluate the results, correct errors in the code or formatting, the owner of the original text needs special tools.
In addition to this, the translation customer needs competences in the field of project management, which even large companies forget. It’s like instead of supporting a full-time marketing department to manage disparate assistants, each of whom is responsible only for their own part of the business. And since you pay for crowdsourcing rates (little or nothing), your assistants will most likely not agree to do a very large amount of work. In turn, this causes the need to increase the number of assistants - and further complicates management.
Probably not all translations will be good. Low-quality translations add text-reading experts and kill their enthusiasm (with the exception of probably fanatical communities such as the backbone of Linux developers). Since expert readings take place early enough in well-organized outsourcing processes, will the experts not fade to the final stage of work? Think about those who will translate the text, and the overhead of managing collective activity: is it worth it to get involved?
Market reboot
On closer examination, the potential benefits of crowdsourcing — quality, low cost, and the speed at which results are obtained — can be deceptive.
In many cases, communities need to work together with professional translators to prepare high-quality, scalable translation and process management.
Any event that changes the rules of the game in the technological arena “reloads” the market, but always leads to less radical changes than expected.
Summary from translator : for such giants as Mozilla and Adobe, crowdsourcing is possible and works. Small and medium developers are waiting for the following problems:
- Crowdsourcing requires a lot of product fans. At the start there are none.
- If you entrust the translation to uninterested users, there will be no quality at the output. The product must capture the minds, attract.
- Each of the thousands of translators in a crowdsourcing project uses its own “dictionary”. As a result, the same term will be translated in different ways, which is unlikely to make life easier for program users.
Conclusion: contact the professionals.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/212233/
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