Comments on: How I reduced translation costs of 200 articles from $9000 to $46

By: Anthony Teixeira

Anthony Teixeira — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:03:13 +0000

Wow, that was a nice move! I’ll remember this trick next time I have something to translate and a small budget for it.

By: Carla a.k.a. Summer in Secondl Life

Carla a.k.a. Summer in Secondl Life — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:46:41 +0000

Being portuguese I have a license degree in French and English and have been working as an independent translator for more than 20 years now. It’s not my main job but surely a significant part of my monthly income.I am also a Second Life resident since November 2006. In-world, I work for the best virtual translation agency: Babel.What I do ? I charge normal real life fees for normal real life translations. But in-world, I NEVER do a translation that is not related to a product or service which is exclusively available in the metaverse. And no, I don’t do any of my translations based on any mechanical translation device. I provide high quality work in both context… but have not tatooed “dumb” on my forehead. Thus, taking advantage of SL economy to pump your profits in your “enterprise” well – for me, that is exploitation, no matter if you came across some poor dudes who were just happy to get hold of half a dozen linden dollars (just FYI, a decent hair costs around 200 L$ so you see… you really are not one to whom I would like to work). I rather work with intelligent people, not with smartasses. Maybe someday someone will take advantage of your work as well…

By: Fuel to the Fire

Fuel to the Fire — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:37:35 +0000

Fair play to you for getting the work translated at a low cost. Most professional translation agencies would direct you to Mechanical Turk or a similar method of translation if you asked them to produce that volume of work for $46.Having said that I do not think you would go down that route if your companies sales or job depended on the accuracy of the translation.Would you fly with an airline whose engineers were using a manual translated using Google or some kid with half an hour to spare on SL?If the documents have no commercial or social value then you have probably translated them well enough for their purpose.P.S. If your job does depend on those documents being accurate then I would consider getting an independent reviewer from a professional agency to review at least a sample of the work.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:37:15 +0000

I think all the users in the game have done is go to Google Translate or Balefish and copy & paste the machine translation. As you can’t proof it you may have got some very bad translations but anyaway. It seems taht you don’t need quality work because you don’t want to pay for and if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. I don’t know what you do for a living but sometimes you may your self find outsourced to some cheaper instance.

By: RC

RC — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:37:20 +0000

oh also another thing re: creative destruction and to address doubt that the crowdsourcing could surpass the quality of a pro.what something like this does is that it gets people who would not otherwise do a particular tasks to do that task. if you do this for enough people, you are almost likely to find someone better at it than the particular one person you are benchmarking against, unless that person really truly is the best in the world.for example: billions of people have never played basketball, but if every single one of those people played basketball, it’s nearly certain that one of them will be better than michael jordan was.

By: RC

RC — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:28:52 +0000

If you do this a bit more cost and multiple passes, you could hypothetically create a crowdsourcing system that also filters the results for the best result. that is, have a group of people translate at whatever low rate they will do it for, then have another group vote for the best one.if you do this with a big enough sample, you could very likely surpass the pro translator since there is probably *someone* out there, who for that particular blurb will have a more eloquent translation than whatever particular pro you choose.

By: David Locke

David Locke — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:58:33 +0000

You paid too much. If your product is sold through distributors, they bare the translation expense, not you. It should have cost you nothing to get your content translated into any language you desire. It would be different if you actually had an office in that country and did not sell through distributors. Using other people’s money is the key. Money here means script or even barter. You paid too much.

By: Amy Hoy

Amy Hoy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:53:58 +0000

The other half of the equation is that professional translators often turn out worthless crap. That’s been my personal experience, and the experience of my friends whose business requires many translations to English (they speak native-quality English but can’t do that job and their job at the same time). You’d laugh to see what the 100 euro-per-hour translation services deliver.

By: Ambre

Ambre — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:33:22 +0000

One more example that the world is populated by 90% of parasites feeding upon each other… Nothing new, and nothing smart about it.

By: Mike Stenger

Mike Stenger — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:55:49 +0000

I know this post will really upset translators and people who do transcription for a living but man is this creative and an interesting way to go about it.