| Pages in topic: [1 2 3 4] > | Confidentiality with using Google Translate Thread poster: May Chen
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May Chen 
Australia
Local time: 19:27
English to Chinese
+ ...
I am wondering when I use Google Translate in my Wordfast PRO, will my translation units become public? Either the source unit, or the edited target unit?
May
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When you upload your work to the Internet, you are indeed breaching your client's confidentiality, because you are giving his/her document to Google.
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May Chen wrote:
I am wondering when I use Google Translate in my Wordfast PRO, will my translation units become public? Either the source unit, or the edited target unit?
While your edited target units will not (or should not; you never know) become public, you are clearly disclosing and storing your customer's confidential materials to a computer system under the control of a third party, and therefore clearly breaching your privacy commitments.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| No, and maybe | Oct 7, 2012 |
May Chen wrote:
I am wondering when I use Google Translate in my Wordfast PRO, will my translation units become public? Either the source unit, or the edited target unit?
Well, the edited target unit will not become public, because Wordfast does not upload your edited translation back to Google. The only thing Wordfast uploads to Google is your source unit. Google then translates it and sends the machine translation back to Wordfast. Wordfast doesn't send anything to Google except the source text.
Whether your source unit will be come public is a hotly debated issue. It depends on your interpretation of Google's privacy policy.
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
...you are clearly disclosing and storing your customer's confidential materials to a computer system under the control of a third party, and therefore clearly breaching your privacy commitments.
Edwal Rospigliosi wrote:
When you upload your work to the Internet, you are indeed breaching your client's confidentiality, because you are giving his/her document to Google.
These arguments pop up every time this question is asked, and since the original poster won't read the previous posts where these points have been refuted, allow me to comment yet again:
Your e-mail is always stored on a "third party" server, so whenever you send an e-mail you are sharing the attachments with a third party. If sharing data with a third party would necessarily breach client confidentiality, then it means you breach confidentiality whenever you send your translations back to the client. The reason why the client would not normally consider this a breach is because the third party e-mail service has a "terms of service" and "privacy policy" that promises that they won't look at the data. Google also has that. If you trust your e-mail provider to speak the truth when it promises not to look at your data, why don't you trust Google?
[Edited at 2012-10-07 09:41 GMT]
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Edwal Rospigliosi wrote:
When you upload your work to the Internet, you are indeed breaching your client's confidentiality, because you are giving his/her document to Google.
we have a problem.
Anytime you send or receive a file via Google (Gmail), this file is indexed.
You can check it, just search in Gmail for "has: attachment + a word inside any document"
So Google have the work that the client send to you and also the translated file that you send to the client.
Now a simple script with e-mails from translators and agencies around the world, a keyword ABC and a sophisticated aligner could generate a specific monster TM from any company, theme, etc.
Compared to the use of Gmail, search for a phrase in GT is just a misdemeanor...
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Interesting question... | Oct 7, 2012 |
Fernando Toledo wrote:
Anytime you send or receive a file via Google (Gmail), this file is indexed. ... So Google have the work that the client send to you and also the translated file that you send to the client.
Yes, but Google promises that they won't use that content for any other purpose than providing you with the e-mail facility. The question is whether you believe Google's promise.
==
But here's an interesting train of thought: If you use a Gmail account, the client will always be the one that first exposes its data to Google (unless the client sent you the data in some other way). If you send the translation back, then you also expose the data to Google, but the client would have done so already. Now, some say that the new "terms of service" and "privacy policy" that apply to Gmail is the same as those that apply to Google Translate. The way many NDAs are written (e.g. how they define "third party" and "non-public" information), doesn't this mean that if a client sends you data via Gmail, the client thus authorises you to share data with Google, since the client had shared the data with Google in your presence already? Just a thought...
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Samuel Murray wrote:
But here's an interesting train of thought: If you use a Gmail account, the client will always be the one that first exposes its data to Google (unless the client sent you the data in some other way).
Yes, some clients use password protected FTP or a own close system. The rest are "accomplices"
Anyway if the "job" is already public, for example, a website. I don't see the problem...
| | | | May Chen
Australia
Local time: 19:27
English to Chinese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Wah! Thank you | Oct 7, 2012 |
Wah! What a lively discussion!
I thank everyone for your contribution. It seems I will need to make my own decision case by case based on the principles discussed.
I had better purchase my professional indemnity soon.
Dongmei
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| A major difference | Oct 7, 2012 |
Samuel Murray wrote: Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
...you are clearly disclosing and storing your customer's confidential materials to a computer system under the control of a third party, and therefore clearly breaching your privacy commitments. Your e-mail is always stored on a "third party" server, so whenever you send an e-mail you are sharing the attachments with a third party. If sharing data with a third party would necessarily breach client confidentiality, then it means you breach confidentiality whenever you send your translations back to the client. The reason why the client would not normally consider this a breach is because the third party e-mail service has a "terms of service" and "privacy policy" that promises that they won't look at the data. Google also has that. If you trust your e-mail provider to speak the truth when it promises not to look at your data, why don't you trust Google?
There is a key difference which you seem to forget (intentionally or not): email is by nature fully private and no third person --not even the hosting Internet service provider-- has access to it or is allowed or entitled to use it in any way.
Furthermore, you as the user of the email have full control over it, i.e. you can delete it from the server any time you want (it happens automatically if you use a regular email server with email only stored in your computer) and you are the one who decides who you share it with.
In the case of Google Translate... you have no control of the contents you are sending to Google, cannot delete the segments you are sending, and cannot guarantee that the only actor in disclosing the contents is you: Google will always have options to use and/or disclose the information.
| | | | | Sorry Samuel... | Oct 7, 2012 |
But it's not a question of believing Google or not. It's a question of you giving Google something that is not yours to give.
When you send or receive an e-mail attachment via gmail, there is a non-spoken, tacit agreement between sender and receiver to use it, therefore sharing the risk and responsibility. When you, by yourself and without asking the client's permission, upload it somewhere else -whether gtranslate, another translator's pc or another MT online service- you're mishan... See more But it's not a question of believing Google or not. It's a question of you giving Google something that is not yours to give.
When you send or receive an e-mail attachment via gmail, there is a non-spoken, tacit agreement between sender and receiver to use it, therefore sharing the risk and responsibility. When you, by yourself and without asking the client's permission, upload it somewhere else -whether gtranslate, another translator's pc or another MT online service- you're mishandling somebody else's property and breaching your duty of confidentiality. It doesn't matter if is has been already uploaded. It's not yours, it's not public domain, keep it in your own PC and nowhere else.
Nowadays in most NDAs I sign, there is an express clause forbidding the use of GTranslate. Not only because of the decreased quality of the final translation, because the client thinks it's a breach of confidentiality. And in this case, it's the client's thought what counts.
[Editado a las 2012-10-07 12:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Email is by nature fully private and no third person --not even the hosting Internet service provider-- has access to it or is allowed or entitled to use it in any way.
I think you misunderstand how e-mail servers work. The e-mails on the server are stored on a hard disk and anyone who has physical access to that hard disk can copy the e-mails. The fact that the service provider's employees don't normally access these mails doesn't necessarily mean that they can't. Although no-one can access that space on that hard disk via a network unless they have the necessary usernames and passwords, anyone can access that space on that hard disk if they have physical access to it. Even if you use a secure connection that encrypts the e-mails when they are transferred from the server to your computer, the e-mails that are stored on the server itself are unencrypted (or are encrypted with a password that the service provider knows) and can be read and copied and altered by anyone with physical access to the server's hard disk. Granted, what I wrote here is an over-simplification, but it is accurate enough for this discussion.
Interesting how you use the words "allowed" or "entitled", too. These words imply that you trust the service provider. If you trust your service provider, why not trust Google also?
Furthermore, you as the user of the email have full control over it, i.e. you can delete it from the server any time you want (it happens automatically if you use a regular email server with email only stored in your computer) and you are the one who decides who you share it with.
There is nothing that prevents a service provider from making copies of your mail in a hidden location, so that even if you "delete" it, the service provider still has it somewhere.
==
Google will always have options to use and/or disclose the information.
I wonder if the following will fly with most legal jurisdictions: Suppose I put a notice underneath the mail slot in my front door saying that anyone who submits anything through that hole grants me copyright on whatever is submitted through the hole. Would that mean that if the postal worker pops the newspaper through the slot, I then legally own the copyright on it?
Now suppose there is a web site that has a "terms of service" link in tiny letters at the bottom of a web form that says "if you submit anything in the web form, you give us copyright on it". Would that web site's owner be assumed by any law in any country to have copyright of anything that anyone pastes into the web form (even if they tick a box saying "I agree")?
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Edwal Rospigliosi wrote:
When you send or receive an e-mail attachment via gmail, there is a non-spoken, tacit agreement between sender and receiver to use it, therefore sharing the risk and responsibility.
Good point.
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| duplicate post | Oct 7, 2012 |
Good point.
I forgot to clarify: ONLY for the use of Gmail service, AND for communication between the client and you. NOT between you and somebody else. And GTranslate IS somebody else, even if they belong to the same company.
[Editado a las 2012-10-07 12:50 GMT]
| | | | | Do you know how ISP's work? | Oct 7, 2012 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
I think you misunderstand how e-mail servers work. The e-mails on the server are stored on a hard disk and anyone who has physical access to that hard disk can copy the e-mails. The fact that the service provider's employees don't normally access these mails doesn't necessarily mean that they can't. Although no-one can access that space on that hard disk via a network unless they have the necessary usernames and passwords, anyone can access that space on that hard disk if they have physical access to it. Even if you use a secure connection that encrypts the e-mails when they are transferred from the server to your computer, the e-mails that are stored on the server itself are unencrypted (or are encrypted with a password that the service provider knows) and can be read and copied and altered by anyone with physical access to the server's hard disk. Granted, what I wrote here is an over-simplification, but it is accurate enough for this discussion.
I think you misunderstand how ISP's work. All ISPs, including the smaller ones have their servers in large racks that work in a large room a very limited number of employees have access to. Smaller ISP's own the servers, but not the facilities. Any unauthorised access by the very few employees of the data center to the data stored in the physical machines would be a clear breach of any data protection act, if not other crimes.
You seem to imply that we should trust Google not using our customers' data because of the possibility that someone at our ISP acts against the law? I don't quite get how this reasoning works.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
I think you misunderstand how ISP's work. All ISPs, including the smaller ones have their servers in large racks that work in a large room a very limited number of employees have access to.
This is basically what I said (assuming you include e-mail service providers when you say "ISPs").
Whether the server is a single computer with a hard drive on it or a rack of computers or a rack of hard drives makes no difference -- the mail is stored in a physical medium, and is accessible by the service, even without your password. This means that so any company that offers e-mail services whose policy it is to harvest user information can easily do so.
Any unauthorised access...
This discussion is not about unauthorised access but about authorised access.
The issue here is not the risk that someone might steal the data, but whether the data can be accessed by anyone other than the person whose e-mail account it is. The question is whether you actually breach confidentiality, and not whether you merely increase the risk of a breach.
You seem to imply that we should trust Google not using our customers' data because of the possibility that someone at our ISP acts against the law...?
Assuming that you simply mean "e-mail service provider" when you say "ISP", no, that is not my argument. All I'm saying is that you should judge whether Google is trustworthy in the same way as you judge whether your e-mail provider is trustworthy.
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