Letters to the Editor

Volume 6, No. 3
July 2002

	Reader Survey Results
	Index 1997-2002
	Translator Profiles
	Aerial Trap and the Lao People's Republic by Peter Wheeler
	The Profession
	The Bottom Line by Fire Ant & Worker Bee
	What Every Novice Translator Should Know by Antar S.Abdellah
	Translation Economics 101 by Danilo Nogueira
	Translator Education
	Quality Assurance in Translator Training by Moustafa Gabr

	Interpretation
	Positive Transfer: A Neuropsychological Understanding of Interpreting and the Implications for Interpreter Training by Lin Wei, Ph.D.
	Financial Translation
	Implications in Translating Economic Texts by Guadalupe Acedo Domínguez and Patricia Edwards Rokowski, Ph.D.

	French
	Saisir les subtilités qui existent entre l'anglais et le français ? by Frédéric Houbert
	Japanese
	English to Japanese—to What Extent Can Translation Be Accurate? by Angela Loo Siang Yen
	Science & Technology
	A Translator’s Guide to Organic Chemical Nomenclature—A Fond Farewell by Chester E. Claff, Jr., Ph.D.
	Caught in the Web
	Web Surfing for Fun and Profit by Cathy Flick, Ph.D.
	Translators’ On-Line Resources by Gabe Bokor
	Translators’ Tools
	Translators’ Emporium
	Translators’ Job Market
	Letters to the Editor
	Translators’ Events
	Call for Papers and Editorial Policies

Letters to the Editor

ProZ—Pro & Con

A ProZ.com member posted a copy of your recent coverage of ProZ.com, which had appeared in your column "the Bottom Line." Following, please find the open reply that I posted.

I feel compelled to defend the hard-earned reputation of my service and those who use it. I believe that some modification to your column, or posting of my reply, would be appropriate.

I also invite each of you to register with ProZ.com and look around a bit. I think your opinions might change.

I am a fan of the Translation Journal. Therefore, I am disappointed to see this sort of careless (and damaging) coverage of ProZ.com.

The tone of the column in which the exchange appears, "The Bottom Line," is, as the use of playful names suggest, somewhat light. Perhaps the authors—Eugene Seidel (Fire Ant) and Chris Durban (Worker Bee)—believe that this gives them license to share their off-the-cuff opinions without thoroughly researching their themes. This certainly appears to have been the case in their recent coverage of ProZ.com.

Apart from the typographical errors (Proz should be 'ProZ.com' and 'Kudos' should be 'KudoZ'), Durban & Seidel's item includes a factual error, and, I suspect, a misrepresentation. I would like to respond to these.

Specifically:
- Durban and Seidel refer to a "downward bidding model."

ProZ.com does not utilize a "downward bidding model" anymore than it utilizes an "upward bidding model". A bid with a high rate is not handled differently than a bid with a low rate. In fact, bids can be entered without specific rates at all. Perhaps Durban & Seidel were misled by the term "bid", which, to our fault, may be a misnomer.

- Durban & Seidel say, "a few serious agencies that do dip in from time to time have been known to blackball translators on the basis of either their questions or-more often-their answers."

This is true, and is a valid and intended use of the system. However, it is unlikely that Durban & Seidel would have known this unless they themselves—or agencies with which they are associated with—engage in this practice. In that case, I would find the wording used in the article to be somewhat disingenuous.

I do not object to Durban & Seidel's contention that ProZ.com is "populated by many inexperienced... service providers." ProZ.com is (for the moment) in many ways akin to a directory, and as such, it can be expected that there are service providers of all stripes contained within. (Fortunately, telling the good from the bad is an art that many good agencies have mastered.)

What I object to is the portrayal of ProZ.com as a place where quality is a "distant third." This statement is completely baseless. As the two authors themselves state, where a service provider positions itself on the quality spectrum is an individual decision.

There are many at ProZ.com who place their highest priority on quality. In fact, Seidel and Durban could learn a thing or two about attention to detail and journalistic rigor from some of the people registered with us.

Henry Dotterer
Founder, ProZ.com

Fire Ant & Worker Bee reply:

One of the beauties of the internet is transparency. We join Henry Dotterer in urging anyone interested to visit the ProZ.com site and make up their own mind.

For the record: FA&WB would not have responded as they did without tracking exchanges on ProZ.com for several weeks; likewise, neither of us has any link to any translation company or agency whatsoever. We did contact a few for an opinion before writing our reply—journalistic rigor oblige.

We stand by our comments. The friendly exchanges and enthusiasm found on ProZ.com have their appeal in a solitary world, and the site may be useful as one of several marketing tools for translators in LLDs or working out of markets that are geographically remote from their clients. But for seriously lucrative contracts... don't hold your breath.

High-paying clients simply don't do their shopping here, and the reason is equally simple: scattershot quality. Which means that as translators gain experience and market savvy, and hone their translating skills, it is only natural that they move on or at the very least broaden the scope of their practice to include other options. FA&WB would naturally be happy to tackle any questions they—and others—may have on precisely how to make that move.

Fire Ant& Worker Bee

Thank you for that informative and enjoyable article on ProZ.com.

Indeed, ProZ, in my view, has been instrumental in driving down rates over the last year or so. But things like that don't come as a shock to me anymore: just take a look at the "translators" signed up with ProZ. Most of them have no qualifications at all (I call them "self-anointed translators" or "interlopers"), and one of them, living and working in the U.S., offers her services for US$1.25 per page (!), just to cite one hair-raising example.

I fully disagree with ProZ philosophy: the only qualification you need to become a "ProZ translator" is a valid e-mail address (that's all you need to sign up); KudoZ, according to the site owner and other staff members, is supposed to be a substitute for real-world qualifications such as T&I degree or accreditation; real professionals are constantly harassed by the self-anointed ones and, eventually, driven out.

I have heard from two leading translators' associations by now that they disapprove of their members' joining ProZ, because, according to these associations, ProZ is not a professional environment and under their rules of ethics and conduct, their members should not advertise their services on such a site.

Now, take a look at the KudoZ system and the "KudoZ Leaders" ("Hall of Shame" ;-)): those people collecting thousands of KudoZ points cannot possibly be spending too much time doing actual translations (one long-time member of ProZ even admitted that he spends at least 2 hours a day answering KudoZ questions). In addition, these people spend most of their time answering questions in language pairs that are not theirs to begin with: if you get stuck on an English term and need confirmation and/or clarification, would you not want an English native speaker to help you out, instead of a Swedish or Portuguese native speaker? Sadly, many of the askers are totally clueless, often awarding points to wrong answers.

KudoZ has become a free translation service for "translators" who don't know what they are doing: they post entire sentences or paragraphs, one by one, expecting others to do their work for free. Even sadder is the fact that there are always way too many ProZ members rushing to answer such questions—because they are "addicted" to the game of KudoZ (and that's what it is, a game!).

In my book, ProZ has done a lot of damage to the translation industry (decline in professional standards, free-fall of rates, etc.), and professionals (real professionals, that is) should stay away from ProZ.

Werner George Patels
Toronto, Ontario

Congratulations to Andrei Gerasimov for his article "Marketing your translation services." I am trying to become a freelance translator (English-Spanish), and your words were really useful to me. Thank you.

George Andrade
Mexico City, Mexico

This is in reference to the article-"Cultural Elements in Translation" by C. Thriveni.

Alhough I have Indian roots, I was very much surprised to know that there were so many cultural barriers. Translation becomes diffcult in such situations. In translating a culture-rich text to an alien language, the translator has to make sure that the reader is not at a loss. Footnotes and references make the reader lose interest. In spite of all distractions, an individual still likes to explore different cultures. Translations help stimulate interests in different cultures.

I enjoyed reading the article.

Sampath Kumar
Sri Lanka