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Poll: How do you feel about companies using free, crowdsourced translations?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Jul 5

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How do you feel about companies using free, crowdsourced translations?".

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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 15:40
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other Jul 5

It is usually just asking for trouble...

Sebastian Witte
Silke Walter
Philip Lees
Josephine Cassar
Maria Laura Curzi
Laura Kingdon
 
Luis M. Sosa
Luis M. Sosa  Identity Verified
Ecuador
Local time: 09:40
English to Spanish
+ ...
Provided that quality is there, Jul 5

in a more traditional framework, it's fine to accept a small initial job in return for subsequent paid work.

However, it's not just some companies that request translators to work for free. Some outlets test translators online and never provide feedback; they simply use the tests to train their machine translators. I can think of a couple of top of mind names that do this, but it wouldn't be polite to name them...

So it is to always wise to be skeptical about online tr... See more
in a more traditional framework, it's fine to accept a small initial job in return for subsequent paid work.

However, it's not just some companies that request translators to work for free. Some outlets test translators online and never provide feedback; they simply use the tests to train their machine translators. I can think of a couple of top of mind names that do this, but it wouldn't be polite to name them...

So it is to always wise to be skeptical about online translation tests...

Online crowdsourced translations may have the same risk... ▲ Collapse
 
Michael Newton
Michael Newton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 10:40
Japanese to English
+ ...
free, crowdsourced translations Jul 5

How do you feel about getting robbed on the high street?

Manuela Junghans
Maria Laura Curzi
 
Cristina Paolino
Cristina Paolino  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 16:40
Member (2012)
German to Italian
+ ...
Those are companies that do not know what is quality. Jul 6

For them a mediocre job is ok. Unfortunately it is a bad image in front of customers.

Maria Laura Curzi
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 16:40
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Crowdsourced translations are always bad Jul 6

Crowdsourced translations are always bad. Every sentence in a document is translated by a different person. It's a recipe for disaster.

Maria Laura Curzi
Luis M. Sosa
 
Jennifer Levey
Jennifer Levey  Identity Verified
Chile
Local time: 10:40
Spanish to English
+ ...
GIGO rules! Jul 6

I suspect that a large proportion of source texts that end up being crowd-translated are really not worthy of anything better.

Maria Laura Curzi
Luis M. Sosa
 


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Poll: How do you feel about companies using free, crowdsourced translations?






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