Translators up in arms over LinkedIn’s crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing—in this case, a mass, large-scale hiring of “translation of, for, and by the people”—is a widely used initiative for global companies to translate and localize their Web sites. Facebook, Microsoft and Plaxo are a few who have crowdsourced, and the results have been largely positive. Because users themselves contribute the content, Facebook in Mexico won’t have the exact same Spanish as Spain, for example.
LinkedIn is embarking on a crowdsourced translation project, but the translators they surveyed want nothing to do with it. What’s their beef? First and foremost, the work is not paid, which they believe undervalues their profession.
Here’s one view on their side:
When non-professionals do work for free, it undermines the very profession that freelancers have struggled to build. The job is so oft-misunderstood that translators frequently hear comments like, “Oh, my sister took some French in high school… I bet she’d be a great translator!” This is akin to telling your doctor, “I took a biology class once… I bet I’d be great at your job!”
The translators may be missing the point, however. Companies that crowdsource don’t do it to save money, they say.
…Research reveals that the companies engaging in this practice do so for three reasons: speed (faster time to market), quality improvement (end-user involvement boosts quality), and reach (a collaborative approach extends global reach through word-of-mouth marketing and community-building).
Click here to read both sides of the argument in the full article.
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