| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8] > | Launch of TAUS/TDA inminent. The super cloud Thread poster: Felipe Gútiez Velasco
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| Professional guidelines | Dec 11, 2008 |
ariffo wrote: Patricia Lane wrote:
An offer from a Proz member to swap TMs or just buy this member's for 5 euros/4000 TU... I was floored...Not even a thought on issues such as client confidentiality, let alone anything else...
Patricia
I'm aghast. The icing of the cake would be that this member claimed to endorse Proz's professional guidelines. Greetings Andrea
They don't.
| | | | | responses to questions | Dec 11, 2008 |
What I can say is the person has not endorsed Proz professional guidelines (but that doesn't mean a whole lot, I have not either, I endorse the SFT's) and is also listed as an outsourcer with a 2.3 rating for 3 projects over the last 12 months.
The "deal" offered concerned FR> EN, though the person claims to work IT/FR/ES > EN.
I'd feel really uncomfortable naming the individual either here or in a private email, but the info is sufficient for all to recognize the email... See more What I can say is the person has not endorsed Proz professional guidelines (but that doesn't mean a whole lot, I have not either, I endorse the SFT's) and is also listed as an outsourcer with a 2.3 rating for 3 projects over the last 12 months.
The "deal" offered concerned FR> EN, though the person claims to work IT/FR/ES > EN.
I'd feel really uncomfortable naming the individual either here or in a private email, but the info is sufficient for all to recognize the email should you receive it as well.
And no, I have not even bothered to respond.. Waste of time and energy!
Cheers,
Patricia ▲ Collapse
| | | | | It is wonderful the way you try to manipulate a thread. Go on | Dec 11, 2008 |
Patricia Lane wrote:
An offer from a Proz member to swap TMs or just buy this member's for 5 euros/4000 TU... I was floored...Not even a thought on issues such as client confidentiality, let alone anything else...
Patricia
[Editado a las 2008-12-11 18:33 GMT]
| | | | Andrea Riffo 
Chile
Local time: 13:39
English to Spanish
+ ...
Marie-Hélène Hayles wrote:
Also very interesting timing, I thought.
I agree. It is rather curious, isn't it?
Patricia Lane wrote:
I'd feel really uncomfortable naming the individual either here or in a private email, but the info is sufficient for all to recognize the email should you receive it as well.
I understand
Greetings
[Edited at 2008-12-11 18:37 GMT]
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| What on earth are you talking about, Felipe? | Dec 11, 2008 |
Felipe Gútiez wrote: It is wonderful the way you try to manipulate a threat. Go on Patricia Lane wrote:
An offer from a Proz member to swap TMs or just buy this member's for 5 euros/4000 TU... I was floored...Not even a thought on issues such as client confidentiality, let alone anything else...
Patricia
Patricia mentioned an e-mail which a number of us received this morning (if you like I'll say openly that it wasn't from you, in case anyone was wondering) inviting us to share our TMs. No threat, no manipulation.
[Edited at 2008-12-11 18:23 GMT]
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Thanks Marie-Hélène -- indeed no intent other than bouncing off the title of the thread "the super cloud" as a Proz member apparently strives to create a "mini cloud", in total disregard of key professional issues. Full stop.
Patricia
| | | | | TMs and confidentiality | Dec 11, 2008 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Patricia Lane wrote:
An offer from a Proz member to swap TMs or just buy this member's for 5 euros/4000 TU... I was floored...Not even a thought on issues such as client confidentiality, let alone anything else...
If they asked me, I would simply send them to F--- O--!!! If they cannot see the damage in credibility and trust they are causing, they should not be in this profession. Personally I would publish that person's name here, so that we can express our opinion to that person directly!
I see no reason for all the outrage.
For one thing, the translator may have secured permission for sharing the material in question. You know nothing about the situation.
Quite apart from that, it is easy to strip all or most of the sensitive information from TMs. Do a txt export, remove all the figures and replace the proper names with XXX via search and replace, convert the whole thing into a spreadsheet and put all the TUs in alphabetic order to totally scramble them, convert back to importable txt, all this preferably mixing TMs in the same field from several clients... done. Not much identifying information is left (none at all if you were thorough enough with the S&R) and the TM is basically as useful as it ever was.
The idea never came up so far but I don't think I would worry too much about sharing such "cleaned" TMs even without the client's knowledge, if the whole thing was important enough for me to warrant taking the time to remove all the names. Of course it also depends on the content somewhat but in the case of most documents not even the author would recognize their own text - or rather, their own isolated sentences - after the above process.
Of course, if a total stranger approached me out of the blue with an offer I'd not consider it either.
As to the whole TAUS deal, I'm definitely interested. Not interested enough to buy, but interested enough to ask around at a company I work for that happens to be a member. It could be a useful resource in some cases. As with all resources, take its content with a pinch of salt. Some of it is bound to come from useless idiots but that applies to any resource you might use that was generated by a team.
| | | | | New perspective of copyrights of TMS | Dec 11, 2008 |
TAUS, that is, the companies and the language service providers with legitimate TM texts and Google (Translation Centre), and others are preparing plattforms with TMs produced by translators like you. Is it absolutely clear from a philosophical and ethical point of view who is the author of a translation? Who should profit from the money raised by TM plattforms? How organised it? Try to prevent this to happen and just opposing will bring nothing.
On the other hand, maybe it is not s... See more TAUS, that is, the companies and the language service providers with legitimate TM texts and Google (Translation Centre), and others are preparing plattforms with TMs produced by translators like you. Is it absolutely clear from a philosophical and ethical point of view who is the author of a translation? Who should profit from the money raised by TM plattforms? How organised it? Try to prevent this to happen and just opposing will bring nothing.
On the other hand, maybe it is not so bad that the piraterie issue was raised. If movies are travelling the Internet via Emule or other new Napsters, how can be prevented that TMs be moving around? What do you think? ▲ Collapse
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| It's wrong even if you don't get caught | Dec 11, 2008 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
The idea never came up so far but I don't think I would worry too much about sharing such "cleaned" TMs even without the client's knowledge, if the whole thing was important enough for me to warrant taking the time to remove all the names.
Doing so would speak a lot about a person's reliability and trustworthyness. It's simply wrong to share translation memories around without asking your customers, even if you don't get caught! Or, is it OK to incur in illegal acts as long as you don't get caught?
You surely have an agreement with your customers not to share that kind of information and stating that any translation memories used are the property of your customer. In what position would you be if you intentionally violated that comittment? It's not a matter of whether the customer can sue you: it's a matter of self-respect, integrity, and honouring and representing whatever you have accepted and signed! If you don't honour your agreements (no matter if written or oral)... please let your customers know so that they are not deceived!
[Edited at 2008-12-11 19:13 GMT]
| | | | | It's wrong... even if you get away with it | Dec 11, 2008 |
Felipe Gútiez wrote:
On the other hand, maybe it is not so bad that the piraterie issue was raised. If movies are travelling the Internet via Emule or other new Napsters, how can be prevented that TMs be moving around? What do you think?
Felipe, it is not a matter of whether you can be stopped from sharing your TMs around. It's a matter of what you have accepted and signed in front of your customers.
If you are not ready to honour your customers' privacy requirements as signed in an agreement by you, what kind of opinion about your person do you expect us to have? Will you honour any agreement with me if we ever did business together, or will you cheat on me as long as I don't notice? Not a sound way to do business my friend.
Today we are signing another contract for a new customer. In the contract it is stated that:
"The supplier may not transfer translation memories to a third party. Any translation memories supplied for the assignments belong to the purchaser." (The supplier is me; the purchaser is our new customer).
Isn't this clear enough? Most NDAs have clauses with the same meaning.
| | | | | On the same wavelength | Dec 11, 2008 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this speaks a lot about the degree of respect you exercise to your customers... It's not a matter of whether the customer can sue you: it's a matter of self-respect, of honoring and representing whatever you have accepted and signed!
Or even not signed. If I have to start getting legalistic about something like this, something is fundamentally wrong with the relationship.
Is it really too much to ask to respect the wishes or feelings of a client? Even if you don't "need" that person or company? I had a related issue earlier today when I asked permission to use a small bit of heavily formatted text which the client had published on the Internet to demonstrate some techniques for handling a complex job. Legally I think I could have gone ahead and done this. Morally I felt compelled to ask. And for whatever reason, the client was uncomfortable with such "publicity", so of course I rewrote the entire text to anonymize it and resubmitted it to assure the client that his feelings had been respected. I think that it perfectly normal. If we have to start stepping on the people we live from for any little productivity gains that may or may not be obtainable, it's time to find another business. Most of you who read my online rants know that I'm a big productivity nut, but I think the productivity inherent in trust and relationships must always take priority over the technology.
So along with my earlier comment about irrelevance, this is my strongest personal objection to the whole matter. If someone else follows a different moral compass, I'm probably not going to get too excited and start calling names and screaming for the lawyers, but for this fellow, it simply feels wrong, so I will act accordingly in my own practice.
| | | | | How well can you clean a TM? | Dec 11, 2008 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
Quite apart from that, it is easy to strip all or most of the sensitive information from TMs. Do a txt export, remove all the figures and replace the proper names with XXX via search and replace, convert the whole thing into a spreadsheet and put all the TUs in alphabetic order to totally scramble them, convert back to importable txt, all this preferably mixing TMs in the same field from several clients... done. Not much identifying information is left (none at all if you were thorough enough with the S&R) and the TM is basically as useful as it ever was.
I work in-house for a company trading financial products.
A year or two ago a fellow Prozian asked a EN-SV Kudoz question in the field of finance. To help askers she included a paragraph as context. This para contained not a single instance of company or product name.
As I could see that it related to the kind of products we sell I pasted the para in Google. I got only one hit, but a very good one - a main competitors site. (Even if I had pasted the sentences one by one I doubt I would have got very many hits).
From this I could deduce that they were planning to move into the Swedish market (which they subsequently did). Our Head of Sales very much appreciated the information I was able to supply him with thanks to this Prozian.
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| None of my business | Dec 11, 2008 |
Madeleine MacRae Klintebo wrote:
From this I could deduce that they were planning to move into the Swedish market (which they subsequently did). Our Head of Sales very much appreciated the information I was able to supply him with thanks to this Prozian.
I think this is something I would not do. Market strategy is something our end-customers should care about. We translate a lot about paper, but I would not run to our customer to tell them about what I saw in a visit to the paper plant of a competitor. My business is translation, not supplying strategic information...
| | | | | lots of words and you aren't saying much with them | Dec 11, 2008 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: FarkasAndras wrote:
The idea never came up so far but I don't think I would worry too much about sharing such "cleaned" TMs even without the client's knowledge, if the whole thing was important enough for me to warrant taking the time to remove all the names. Doing so would speak a lot about a person's reliability and trustworthyness. It's simply wrong to share translation memories around without asking your customers, even if you don't get caught! Or, is it OK to incur in illegal acts as long as you don't get caught? You surely have an agreement with your customers not to share that kind of information and stating that any translation memories used are the property of your customer. In what position would you be if you intentionally violated that comittment? It's not a matter of whether the customer can sue you: it's a matter of self-respect, integrity, and honouring and representing whatever you have accepted and signed! If you don't honour your agreements (no matter if written or oral)... please let your customers know so that they are not deceived!
No, clients (or agencies) often do not have translators sign NDAs here. And even then, NDAs usually forbid sharing information regarding the content of the texts to be translated.
In this case, no such information would be shared. The customer's name or other particulars would not be in the text. In fact, there would be no text. Just sentences. Nobody has copyright on the sentence "Defendant is in gross violation of Plaintiff's rights.", or "Insert the whacchamacallit in the dooad and turn clockwise." Companies protect the content of their documents, not their terminology or wording.
Obviously, with the clients I have NDAs with, I would send them the neutered TMs so they can approve sharing them. I can't imagine anyone who bothers to take a look at them objecting.
And then, who was talking about doing anything illegal or violating any agreement and hoping not to get caught? Frankly, that sort of language is just silly and plain insulting.
As to Madeleine's comment, it is VERY unlikely that a translator would bother to fish for such information in TMs that are bound to contain mostly age-old material accumulated over time, and pass it on to anyone. (To whom? For what reason? Any such TM sharing would be with fellow freelancers.) Also, guess who committed a gross indiscretion in that case...
[Edited at 2008-12-11 20:07 GMT]
| | | | | Nothing to do with clients in my case | Dec 11, 2008 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: I think this is something I would not do. Market strategy is something our end-customers should care about. We translate a lot about paper, but I would not run to our customer to tell them about what I saw in a visit to the paper plant of a competitor. My business is translation, not supplying strategic information...
I think you missed the bit about me working in-house. I work in marketing/content (includes translation or rather localisation) and I'm as much part of the company us our sales people.
But basically, my point is that you can deduce quite a lot from fragments of text.
Edited to add final sentence.
[Edited at 2008-12-11 20:17 GMT]
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