The translation crowdsourcing debate…again
Translation crowdsourcing just keeps on cropping up on the blogosphere and in translation industry news these days.
The American Translators Association recently took an official stance against crowdsourcing by LinkedIn and many individual translators have jumped on the bandwagon, forming a group on LinkedIn (Translators Against Crowdsourcing) and talking up the issue in the blogosphere. Here in France, the Rhône-Alpes regional chapter of the SFT recently devoted a quarterly meeting to the problem of crowdsourcing.
Over on Colin Cooper’s blog on localization and on the Naked Translations blog there have been intereting posts and discussions. But are businesses (beyond just online « communities » like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Proz.com) really turning to crowdsourcing as a way of cutting back on their translation/localization budgets? I’d be interested to know!
My personal opinion pretty much reflects what Colin Cooper said over on his blog:Â Professional translators that truly add business value to multilingual communication projects have nothing to fear. And businesses that respect their international audiences and care about their brand image wouldn’t risk putting their online content into the hands of strangers. Any translation costs saved could quickly and irreparably be offset by damage to a company’s online reputation and credibility.
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Hi Sara – any good crowdsourcing platform, independently of what is being sourced, is ultimately driven by either user ratings/recommendations or quality of work. Either way, professional translators should always have the edge and as such, could actually embrace crowdsourcing platforms as a way to expand their own businesses.