Tweeting away....

Got up this morning to not altogether unexpected good news that the Empire of MAGATs has fallen:

 

Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and sometimes... it seems that a country wakes up with you. From nightmares.#fuckthenazis#fucktrump#MAGA2020 #EatThisMAGAts pic.twitter.com/JsKskALOdP

— Kevin Lossner (@GermanENTrans) January 6, 2021

Yeah. Life is starting to feel normal again despite the usual continued death and destruction. But what does one do with babies if not put them in cages? 

A course announcement for terminology users in memoQ (i.e. any sensible user):

Course re-opened for enrollment:#memoQuickies: On Better Terms with #memoQ

The real deal for better #terminology leverage in #translation#xl8 #translate #l10n #Localization #LocalEyeshttps://t.co/bxpu6FhT1U pic.twitter.com/KtmmqW3OFU

— Kevin Lossner (@GermanENTrans) January 6, 2021

... which leads one to ask: How do I get there? Well, try this:

Check out the CAT skills courses and consulting services at #Translation Tribulations Tech. #1 in #memoQ productivity on desktops and servers.#l10n #xl8 #translate https://t.co/76kcL1UAgK pic.twitter.com/xMa3iBuGNK

— Kevin Lossner (@GermanENTrans) January 6, 2021

Coming clean on dirty machine translation

Click the tweet shot to decode his babble

Well, well. I started to dream in Portuguese two nights ago, and it happened again tonight in a dream where I discussed the sentimental value of some old items on their way to another life or recycling. One of these was the first color computer I bought and why; no idea why I should be telling my daughter all these things in Portuguese. I'm supposed to write a letter in English to minha noiva and have it translated into Portuguese by a friend to be sure that no meaning is lost, because I'm too far from mastering all but the most primitive grammar. I think maybe instead I had better just do it in the language in which it will be received, and message will come through as well or better than any translation, though certainly it will be checked. Maybe not. We'll see.

I responded to the incessant, poisonous spew of Luigi Muzii (@ilbarbaro) on Twitter last night, because the little puffed toad obnoxiously insists on croaking nonsense in debates (mostly with himself) which the dim bulb of his mind can never illuminate, and he does so in a tortured, incomprehensible and of course incorrect English which leaves readers I know unimpressed and utterly baffled, which has made him a frequent poster child for nonsense examples at conference presentations and which has convinced some that the man knows no English at all and merely machine translates his disordered thoughts from Italian.

Communication is seldom about the correctness of language or the degree of its mastery. Certainly it can be useful for some of us to command the subtleties of grammar, and I'm one of the guilty who enjoy that fine edge to carve patterns which will sometimes be appreciated by almost none. But sometimes the most eloquent expression can be in the most broken speech, supplemented by tone and gesture and scribbles on paper, signs in the air. And the howls of a dog. I realized this last night as I sat at a table with my Portuguese tutor and one of her many nephews, telling and understanding jokes and completely at ease in their language and culture in our negotiated register, where two weeks before I could do little more than say my dog doesn't bite, order 200 or 300 grams of anything at a butcher's counter (pointing at the item) or perhaps get half a dozen eggs, coffee and some pastry. I remember the eloquence of a Greek mechanic who shared tea with me on the floor of his shop years ago and told wonderful, funny stories I understood and laughed at though I knew about five words of his language.

The desire to communicate and to understand in ordinary situations of interaction is often a more effective facilitator than technical skill. Sometimes a friend and/or colleague will call my attention with some outrage to a web page or a message with "horrible" errors and I look and see none, only fluid expressions of thought and meaning or at least a fit-for-purpose text. A computer program has no motivation, no matter how great the motivation of its creator. It can have adaptive, event-based routines, but these are seldom adaptive in the way we know for the least of human minds. The messaging of machine pseudo-translation profiteers and their snake oil sidekicks pushing a fix of crowdsourcing, rightsourcing and workflow is quite adaptive to hide the static concepts and rotten nature of the repackaged Gammelfleisch they sell in pretty packages to hungry cost-cutters.

The MpT talking heads, Friend Muzii among them, have turned up the volume of their megaphone marketing lately, offering HAMPsTr'd hope to translation buyers that the lapis philosophorum sold by language carnival barkers can transform merda to gold with just the right six- or seven-figure engineering investment and straightjacketed expression we call controlled language. They babble and bark of so-called professionals who are "scared" but it is those unprofessional and MpT charlatans who are running scared at the thought that, like with the naked emperor in the story, their glorious equipment will be revealed to all and found to be of more limited use and interest than most might imagine.

I use machine pseudo-translation (MpT) every day, effectively, to aid in many critical tasks, and I see great value for it in its proper place. But what is that? Certainly not what the greedy HAMPsTr'izers say it is as they seek fresh mental sacrifices for their unholy altar. I believe there are a number of excellent, honest and profitable applications for MpT processes, and I know some translation agency principals and others who profit clearly and honestly from them, and I can find few points of disagreement with these people. But they are also not the more prominent Jungle Book characters on the international scene singing sweetly "Trust in me...."

Come to the IAPTI conference in Athens this September and hear my confession of how MpT technology has worked for me. Or better yet, go to Athens, skip the conference, get drunk on ouzo and tell the natives how much better their lives will be thanks to the transformative powers of MpT.

Please note: no underage girls were anesthetized and abused in the making of this blog post about the technologies and advocates of the bulk market bog (BMB)!

memoQfest 2012: another great year and great things ahead

Some say translation technology has gone to the dogs, and

this was certainly the case in Budapest this year as Ajax

and Benny noted to their satisfaction.

Although I was first asked to consider memoQ by a client of mine in 2007 and actually began to look it a year later, I was very skeptical about the software when István Lengyel convinced me to take a break for the first memoQfest at the Benzcur Hotel in Budapest in 2009. I had seen interesting progress in the year I had tested the software, but it was simply too immature for my needs and lacked nearly all the features which were most important to me. About a week before the conference, Kilgray released a version that barely met my minimum requirements for a small portion of my clients. I was impressed and actually did my first bit of commercial work with memoQ - a press release - the night before the conference began. The event itself was a blast, and I was convinced that this team had the right stuff or at least the potential to make it.

The next two years confirmed the wisdom of this leap of faith as the company raced from strength to strength despite a few stubbed toes; the advance of memoQ clearly played a role in improving other leading tools like DVX and SDL Trados, the latter borrowing generously from Hungarian innovation or using it and the unmatched service ethos on the Danube as an inspiration to overhaul the catastrophic mess of legacy Trados and enter the modern age of CAT tools, even surpassing memoQ in a few points, though with the current Renaissance of creative development in what appeared just a few years ago to be a dead-end IT ghetto, it's not an easy guess as to who will stay ahead anywhere for long. These are indeed good times for users despite the renewed threats of lock-in posed by the current misguided server politics of most providers.

Nonetheless, Kilgray's rapid growth has not been without difficulties, and despite anticipating most of the challenges long before they arose, the team doesn't always put in the performance its demanding fans expect. This is often to be expected when a company experiences the exponental growth which can obscure long-turm interests in the confusing melee of daily business. And the product which seemed so fresh and clean just a few years ago is beginning to look like a car that has been taken on too many roatrips without a good cleaning, has hauled too many dogs and needs new tires. But last week I saw clear signs that there may be a new Maserati getting a tune-up in the development garage. The hints regarding memoQ 6 and the company's further roadmap led me to scratch of most of the items on my technical gripe list. The organizational wishlist has gotten longer, but it's clear that the "refactoring" process at Kilgray is not limited to the software, so I think I can trust them as I did four years ago when few could have anticipated the company's impressive track record.

I almost did not go to Budapest this year. When I read the published schedule, it sounded far too skewed toward corporate interests, a bit like a sell-out now that server sales revenue has far surpassed that from Translator Pro licenses. And bad calls like the confused differences in implementation of versioning features in memoQ 5, weariness from providing support for issues arising from a lack of professional service consulting in the sales process with some of my agency clients and my own stupidity of forgetting to vaccinate my puppy against rabies before the trip (which required me to leave him with someone else for the first time) had me considering a week of vacation at home.

That would have been a mistake. I only expected to draw value from one presentation - regular expressions by Polish guru Marek Pawelec - and even there I didn't expect to understand very much. Instead, every one of the rather random sessions I attended had a lot to offer, even for a freelancer. The agency presenters who talked about their approaches to challenges in complex translation projects shared a great deal of information that is directly relevant to my agency and direct client business and can help make it better. And the general talk on refactoring your business through innovation by Richard Brooks, which I expected to be the biggest hot air balloon of the week, was the absolute highlight for me. I might even have gotten something out of the Asia Online keynote on machine translation, though an idiotic quote I read from the speaker about how we need to get on the MT boat or drown suggests perhaps not. I do hold out some hope he might have been misquoted or taken out of context, however. It's the least I can do in a world where people still believe in the Tooth Fairy and US Republican politics.

When Kilgray releases the videos of the talks, do watch them. I do hope the sound and picture quality will be good, because too often I really did wish I could have been in two rooms at once.

The Twitstream shared a lot of the gritty details of the presentations; the hashtag #memoQfest or an archive established by a Ukrainian user will show these for a while at least. And I'll be drawing on the tweets, my other notes and the memories of conversations in the breaks to share insights, many quite trivial, all of which confirm that memoQ is the right choice for most of my translation IT needs. The only thing I'll say now is that in memoQ 6 the versioning features will be the same in all editions of memoQ. Big deal. For some of us.

Oh yes, and next year's memoQ fest might not be in Budapest. If I weren't visiting that city with some frequency now for dogs, I might be disappointed, because I love it and the rest of the country I have seen, but the change is unlikely to be a problem, because what makes Kilgray's memoQ truly great is not the venue and not the rather good technology, but the people: the ones who make it and the ones who use it.

Twitterview: SDL Trados Studio, memoQ, DVX2 and PDF extraction

When I began using Twitter somewhat hesitantly three years ago, I never expected that it would eventually prove to be one of the most useful social media tools for gathering information of professional value. Much of this is serendipitous; I really never know what will come floating down the twitstream or where some of the conversations in it will go. Like the direct chat I had with with a colleague in New Zealand about features she liked best in the two main CAT tools she uses, SDL Trados Studio and memoQ.

We both really appreciate the TM-driven segmentation in memoQ and the superior leverage this offers. But to my surprise, she expressed a preference for SDL Trados Studio, particularly for the quality of its PDF text extractions from electronically generated files. This is not a feature I make heavy use of in either tool, though I have used it more often lately in memoQ for alignments in the LiveDocs module and found it generally satisfactory. Most of my work involving PDF files is with scanned documents - there one has no choice but to use a good OCR tool like OmniPage or ABBYY FineReader.

So I was quite intrigued that the quality of PDF was "better" than from standalone tools. Especially because my experience is quite different. Further discussion (not shown in the graphic) revealed that what she actually meant was that the quality of the text extraction with the CAT tool usually beat the quality of text received from translation agencies who performed conversions. That is easy to explain, really. In my experience, most agencies are clueless about how to use conversion tools and too often use automated settings and save the results "with layout". This is very often utterly unsuited for work with translation environment tools or requires a lot of cleanup and code zapping.

For years I have recommended to agencies and colleagues that they spare themselves a lot of headaches by saving PDF conversions as plain text and adding any desired formatting later. Most people ignore that advice and suffer accordingly. So in a way, a CAT tool that does so encourages "best practice" for PDF translation for those files they are actually able to handle.

Encouraged by the Twitter exchange, I decided to do a few tests with files from recent projects. I took a PDF I had with various IFRS-related texts from EU publications. It appeared to extract quickly and cleanly in memoQ, giving me a translation grid full of nicely segmented text. SDL Trados Studio 2009 choked badly on it and extracted nothing. Her extraction in SDL Trados Studio 2011 caused a timeout with the project I was told, but the text itself was completely extracted and converted to DOCX format. This is useful, because unlike the extraction to plain text in memoQ, this offers the possibility to add or change some text formatting in the translation grid. Other extraction examples from SDL Trados Studio 2011 showed that text formatting was preserved.

A closer examination of the extracted texts revealed some problems with both the memoQ and Trados Studio extractions. The memoQ 5 PDF text extraction engine proved incapable of handling text in multiple columns properly. The paragraph order was all fouled up. The extraction with SDL Trados Studio had a great number of superfluous spaces. Whether it is possible to optimize this in the settings somehow I do not know. The results of all the extraction tests are downloadable here in a 6 MB ZIP file. I've included the SDL Trados Studio extraction saved to plain text as well for a better comparison of the text order and surplus spaces problems.

Overall, I am personally not very pleased with the results of the text extractions from PDF in either tool. The results from SDL Trados Studio are clearly better, and other examples that were shared made it clear that this tool works better than many an untrained PM with better PDF conversion software. This is certainly much better than solutions I see many translators using. But really, nothing beats good OCR software, an understanding of how to use it well and a proper workflow to get a good TM and target file better fit for most purposes.

*****

Update 2012-05-22: I met colleague Victor Dewsbery at a recent gathering in Berlin, and he told me about his tests with the recently introduced PDF import feature of Atril's Déjà Vu X2 translation environment. He kindly offered to share his results (available for download here) and wrote:

Here is the result of the PDF>DVX2>RTF>ZIP process for your monster EU PDF file. Comments on the process and the result:

• The steps involved were: 1. import the file into DVX2 as a PDF file; 2. mark all segments and copy source to target; 3. export the file as if it were a translated file (it comes out as an RTF file). The RTF file is 20 MB in size and zips to 3 MB.
• Steps 1 and 3 took a long time, and DVX2 claimed to be not responding. For step 1 I just left it and it eventually came up with the goods. Step 3 exported the RTF file perfectly, even though DVX2 claimed that the export had not finished. I was able to open the RTF file (it was locked, but I simply renamed it), and this is the version which I enclose. Half an hour later DVX2 had still not ended the export process (and had to be closed via the Task Manager), although the exported file was in fact perfectly OK. The procedure worked more smoothly with a couple of smaller PDF files. Atril is working on streamlining the process and ironing out the glitches in the process, especially the “not responding” messages.
• The result actually looks very good to me. There are hardly any codes in the DVX2 project file (the import routine also integrates CodeZapper). I didn’t spot any mistakes in the sequence of the text. Indented sections with numbering seem to be formatted properly - i.e. with tabs and without any multiple spaces.
• The top and bottom page boundaries in the exported file are too wide, so most pages run over and the document has over 900 pages instead of just under 500. Marking the whole document and dragging the header/footer spaces in Word seems to fix this fairly quickly.
• I note that some headlines are made up of individual letters with spaces between them. This may be related to the German habit of using letter spacing (“Sperrschrift”) for emphasis as an alternative to bold type.
• I found one instance where text was chopped up into a table on page 857 of the file.
• There are occasional arbitrary jumps in type size and right/left page boundaries between sections.

On the strength of this sample, it would usually be OK to simply import the PDF file into DVX2, translate in the normal way, and then fix any formatting problems in the exported file.

TM Follies

A recent comment by Iwan Davies on Twitter revealing a reviewer's rather odd notions of the requirements imposed on translation by the use of a translation memory tool led me to reflect with a friend on some of the very strange and wrong ideas that persist in some minds with regard to such technology. In the case of the twitstream discussion, the reviewer's stupid notion that each segment in a translation must stand on its own without context provoked an interesting flurry of responses, ranging from the astute observation from @PaulAppleyard that "if you wanted to translate segments as 'standalone', then you would work in a random segment file, not a text that flows..." to some rather disturbing remarks from a few to the effect of "this is why I don't like to use such tools". Various people pointed out that modern translation environment tools such as SDL Trados Studio, OmegaT and memoQ make use of context in their translation memories to avoid the problems of more primitive systems which, in the hands of translating monkeys, too often result in matches being used in very inappropriate ways.

The list I could compile of wrong-headed ideas about TMs is a long one, and I would probably only capture ten percent of the foolishness on a lucky day. A few highlights in my memory include:

• A statement by an otherwise respected colleague some years ago that translators must not sacrifice potential "leverage" by combining segments to make sense in the translation. This included cases where someone inserts
  carriage
  returns and line
  breaks into the sentence to
  make it fit in some odd space. In a source language like German, where word order is often very different than in a good English translation, this can quickly pollute a TM to the point of being worst than worthless. This in fact describes the real state of many "promiscuous" agency TMs that I have seen over the years. Fortunately, advanced features in modern translation memories, like memoQ's "TM-driven segmentation" encourage much better practice among smart service providers today.
• The widespread notion that translation memory systems are only useful if one works on repetitive texts. I've got news for you: much of the repetitive stuff was outsourced to King Louie & Co. years ago. And yet I still find great value in working with good TMs. Why? A friend of mine summarized it nicely the other day when she talked about how she spent two hours researching a very obscure term for roadworks equipment in a minor European language: "The next time this comes up, I can find it right away and see the context." Indeed. I am amazed sometimes at the obscure technical terminology that comes out of my personal TM with its 12 year record of my work. Sometimes that amazement is even positive. An hour invested in researching a term and saving it in a TM (or much better: a proper termbase with metadata including domain´, source and examples of use) is probably several more hours saved over the next few years. At least.
• The idea that a translation memory is a reliable source of terminology and obviates the need to create and maintain termbases or proper glossaries. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Particular offenders in this regard are agencies with their brothel-like practices of letting any number of translators screw the end customers' texts. Do a concordance search to find the right term in one of those TMs? Riiiiiiiiiight. Even agencies I've worked with for years who have made a real effort to keep TMs clean can't keep the terms in them on the straight and narrow. And using TMs to replace a real termbase, even a limited one, sacrifices the enormous potential benefits of automated terminology QA procedures offered by some modern translation environments.
• King Louie & Co. as well as many other agencies in the race to the bottom of the quality barrel truly believe that once a good TM has been established by top translators, the second- or third-tier team can take over at lower cost and keep the customer happy. Well... at the moment, the lock on my Volvo's rear hatch is broken. I could get it fixed by a mechanic on Monday, or I could follow my neighbor's suggestion, and just hold it shut with a bungee cord. And the next time a tail light cover gets broken, I could just tape some red or yellow plastic film over it. Replace the hubcap that flew off when I hit that pothole? Naw. But sooner or later, people will notice the difference and draw their own conclusions. Will those be good for business? Can a jobbing student equipped with a good TM really produce the quality of legal translation you can rely on before the court? Trägt er auch 'nen gold'nen Ring, der Affe bleibt....

I have noted over the years, that most of the best clients never ask about translation memories or the tools related to them, even though a good number of them are aware of the technology and many of these use it. But these are the ones who understand that the monkeys who rely slavishly on CAT tools without the use of BAT* too often produce stale, stilted text unsuited for its communication purpose. At best. And all the king's machine translation engines won't change that.

Nonetheless, I believe there is great value for nearly all translators, even "creatives", in using advanced translation environment tools. But that value will not be in the same methods nor in the same features necessarily. Calls to "throw away your TMs" with the introduction of advanced alignment technologies like Kilgray's LiveDocs in memoQ, which allow final edited versions of past documents to be incorporated quickly when a new versions are to be translated, may be a bit premature, but they are often appropriate in my recent experience. And combinations of that with voice recognition technologies, term QA tools and other features offer a wealth of creative possibilities for taking the best and leaving the rest in our quest for better results and working conditions.


* brain-assisted translation

Social media: a waste of time?

In the past few years, a number of friends and colleagues have informed me quite indignantly what an utter waste social media are, a few implying that participation in platforms such as blogs and Twitter is simply filler for those without work. I'm sure that may be true in some individual cases, but my personal experience and observations tell a very different story.

My involvement began some years ago in translators forums while doing research for writing projects and expanded to blogs and private forums when the deterioration of ProZ as a public forum for professional discussion drove most of the serious professionals away or gagged them. While Twitter was still derided as a tool for keeping the world updated on your breakfast and bowel movements, I discovered that it was fast becoming one of the most efficient tools for the quick exchange of tips and professional tidbits among serious professionals. Facebook? Well, I don't like the shifting ground of the company's information policies, but used judiciously, even that platform has socially redeeming value.

The value of all these platforms will vary according to one's goals and the overall balance sought. But let there be no doubt: social media are valuable and sometimes surprisingly effective. I've had a very large number of financially worthwhile projects result from the the time spent sharing information, but more importantly, I have been able to get to know great professionals in distant places, sometimes help them and receive help in return. Maybe some day I'll throw out a few statistics or examples from my experience, but today I would like to share an inspiring example from two colleagues in the US and Austria, the Jenner twins.

At Christmas time, they issued an appeal for assistance for the co-founder of the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association, Álvaro Degives-Más, who has given so much to help others in our profession. Hoping to raise a few hundred dollars to help him and his wife defray crushing expenses from uninsured surgeries, in two weeks, the generosity of colleagues and a few companies has yielded over 7500 dollars. A small part of the total bills, mind you, but an impressive achievement nonetheless, made possible through the power of social media. Read the update here, and if you are able to, please consider doing a small bit to help these people see a light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Here Today, Gone Today!

I did something today that I don't usually do. I posted a response - no, two of them - to a thread on ProZ. I had pretty much taken the site from my radar, because the level of discourse there continues to drop, and the general environment has a questionable feel after several data theft incidents, the ongoing history of bad moderation and the ever mutating RuleZ for MutantZ. I do drop in occasionally to update my profile or check the payment practices of some agencies, but there doesn't seem to be much going on there lately from which I can derive much professional or personal use. Even the hosting service appears to be unable to resolve long-standing technical issues (mail server problems, lack of space and mysterious space accounting that seems to include temporary files), so that's on the plan to go out later this year.

But a colleague I like had engaged in discussion on the thread and obviously misunderstood the meaning of an English word, so I offered him an explanation. And then because his misunderstanding of the word was basically a correct understanding of the general spirit of the original post (pure trolling, so I don't even take much issue with ProZ for canning it), I vented a bit of sarcasm for fun, although I knew the NNSoEs would take my words quite literally in most cases.

Some hours later I received this:

Dear KSL Berlin,

This message is to inform you that the thread entitled "Tired of being paid peanuts?" has been hidden because the initial post was not in line with site rule http://www.proz.com/siterules/general/3#3

As a consequence your post "Clearinghouses " has been removed from public view together with the rest of the thread, not because it was in disagreement with site rules but because threads are removed completely when the initial post is removed.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding.
Regards,
AEJ, ProZ.com moderator extraordinaire.

No comments about the moderation in this case or about the moderator. The thread was no loss really, just another lot of bitching about rates and the usual silly French calls for Translators of the World to Form a More Perfect Union as the French always seem to want to do. (What do French translators' unions do anyway? Block the roads by dumping dictionaries on them?)

But the incident is a useful reminder of something that is very important for a serious professional: the need for some reasonable degree of content control. Some readers may wonder, first of all, why that letter is addressed to "KSL Berlin" and not "Kevin Lossner" when for years I have criticized the use of aliases by serious professionals. That was before I discovered that my name generated nearly 60,000 hits in a Google search, most of those hits being trash like the Tamil page from ProZ with my instructions on how to convert a PDF to editable text. You would think that the Arabic, Malaysian, Urdu and Mayan pages would have been enough to get the same message across. Now, blessedly, the Google hit count is declining steadily. I have almost achieved the degree of privacy I desire; tonight the count is a mere 25,500.

Moreover, contributions in a forum are quickly buried, so the same questions get asked over and over again. That used to drive me nuts. Since starting my blog, I have more control over messages and their visibility, though I constantly tinker with ways to optimize that (like the keyword word cloud I'm currently using in a haphazard way for post classification). As a result, certain information remains more accessible to others and I don't get asked certain questions as often as happened in the past. Everyone wins. Important too is the ability to call the shots oneself on whether the message stays or goes (if you have second thoughts or it's simply no longer relevant) or gets updated. Usually this particular moderator deep-sixes my messages there because of her own personal quirks and understanding of the RuleZ (which is apparently often greater than her understanding of message texts in English and German). In this case, my message is just "collateral damage" and not even damage I really care about. On the contrary, I appreciate the reminder to stay out of that particular wallow.

In many ways, message control via social media has wrought the greatest transformation on my business since I started doing my own thing about 22 years ago. Experiments with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other media have yielded some very interesting and often unanticipated results. Not all of them what I want, but many have been pleasant surprises. And I would have missed much of this had I depended on ProZ or similar portals in the way that many continue to do today. Nothing against ProZ intended here: I have said before and will reiterate that i the past I have derived great benefit from my association with the site. I don't think that's a fair expectation anymore give the flood of cheap otherworld zookeepers inundating me with monkey mail every week, using the ProZ Connect system to bypass the filters I set up ages ago or simply pestering me through the mail link on my profile. (Takes time, I know, but time is cheap in some parts of the world.) But when I think about the latest ProZ membership campaign with its slogan "Grow Your Business" I can't help but think that it's really better and more responsible to yourself and your dependents to grow your own!

Still a twit

Twitter is now over three years old - an eternity in the Internet Age - and its place in the social media environment is still the subject of great dispute. There are as many opinions about The Great Twit as there are users and abusers of the platform. It's pretty much what you make of it, really.

The latter-day MLM freaks often tout Twitter as the ultimate marketing tool, citing hyperbolic cases, which even if true are of zero interest to me. I know how to make money, and I like how I do it when I have the time to do it, and Twitter just isn't part of my scheme, thank you. I use it for other things and get good value.

My partner is a harsh critic of Twitter. She has never used the tool, probably never will, but she reads about in on the BBC and elsewhere and forms an opinion. While she's at it, she copies a few hundred articles from the news, pastes them into e-mail and sends them to her brother, me (in the next room) and any number of friends, typing the recipients list out each time and wondering whom she forgot. It's interesting stuff, actually - she knows what I like to read and I appreciate the filter - but it wastes a lot of time. Even pasting the URL and writing a long and constantly varying recipient list is a productivity killer. Twitter would be so much better. In my stream of the twenty or so accounts I follow, I am supplied with a number of interesting links and short comments that give me a hint as to whether I want more information. I ignore most of it, but once in a while, something cool about publishing or children's books catches my eye or a colleague shares a hot tip or exciting news. Even the very short personal exchanges (hey Chris - what would you use for this term?) are helpful and faster than e-mail.

The key to managing the stream for me is to do just that: manage it. I love reading The Onion and I've found Guy Kawasaki an interesting fellow since the early days of the Mac, but I just can't deal with their Twitter streams. TMI. Too much information. Ditto some other comments I've seen lately, but I haven't delisted those feeds yet, because there's still a lot of useful stuff. I think some people need to remind themselves of the public nature of their feed. "No work for a week, maybe I should slash my rates" is not a smart thing to announce to the world. Nor are my comments about impending death from overwork, but the I'm used to the role of jester, and if someone thinks me a fool, I'll probably have to agree. The Tudor court & others need someone to play that role.

So how am I actually doing in living up to my own notions of how to tweet without being a twit? Here's the page of my most recent missives:

@bonnjill - I don't see how people can read about Americans banning dictionaries and NOT believe that they are descended from apes    4:42 PM Jan 26th   from Echofon  in reply to bonnjill
 
@germanwords Schlimmstenfalls Du benötigst 50 Seiten "Einarbeitung". Danach fließt eine sehr schöne Geschichte.... 4:40 PM Jan 26th from Echofon in reply to germanwords
    
@germanwords Doch. Follet schreibt für die Masse. Das Buch ist zwar groß, aber nicht komplizierter als z.B. Stein & Flöte. 4:38 PM Jan 26th from Echofon in reply to germanwords

@germanwords Säule der Erde? Auf EN hoffentlich. Gutes Buch im Original. 2:47 PM Jan 26th from Echofon in reply to germanwords

#memoQ version 4: more to it than just good looks :-) 2:17 AM Jan 26th from Echofon

Another high-pressure collaborative project successfully completed with the help of the #memoQ Server for concurrent translation & editing! 1:20 PM Jan 25th from Echofon

I will be sooo glad whe the N key on my laptop gets fixed! 12:42 PM Jan 25th from Echofon

118 comments & over 6500 in the German ProZ forum discussion (i DE & EN!) of unprofessional ads: http://tinyurl.com/ycyukp8 12:34 PM Jan 25th from Echofon

A failed remote server connection again this morning is a good reminder of the risks of online translation technology 9:07 AM Jan 25th from Echofon

RT: @Jeromobot: Heard a great quote this morning: "We won't change when we see the light; we change when we feel the heat." 2:37 AM Jan 25th from Echofon

Swiss legal German/English: http://www.swisslegalenglish.com/dictionary 11:56 PM Jan 24th from Echofon

Changed my ID on ProZ to "KSL Berlin". I cannot have my name associated with ads for rip-off diets and mail order brides. 6:05 PM Jan 24th from Echofon

 RT: @localization: RT @morsmal: Bilingualism:10 Myths. http://bit.ly/7BHdnL #mle #efl #esl #ece #edchat 1:55 PM Jan 24th from Echofon

Agriculture & dairy terminology dictionaries http://bit.ly/5NICF1 12:15 PM Jan 24th from Facebook

Excellent justification of machine translation on the eMpTy Pages: http://tinyurl.com/yjs5z5z 10:47 AM Jan 24th from Echofon

Any experience with #CafeTran out there? 2:25 AM Jan 24th from Echofon
 
Saved by the #memoQ Server: http://simmer-lossner.blogspot.com/2010/01/saved-by-server.html 1:27 PM Jan 23rd from Echofon

Phony projects continue to roll in... http://bit.ly/4z4MMz 12:15 AM Jan 23rd from Echofon

Ave, Maria! http://bit.ly/66GcyF 12:08 AM Jan 23rd from Facebook

The registration form for the professional translators' refuge Stridonium is working again: http://stridonium.com/ 10:35 PM Jan 22nd from Echofon 

Twenty tweets. As can be seen from all the notes about "Ecofon" as the source, I use a browser plug-in which allows me to monitor what's up while I do other things like look up terms or read background information on a topic I'm translation (or the news or whatever). There are two automatic notes from my Facebook page in there too. I'm not thrilled about having no control over what these look like, so I may cut off that publishing link and do it manually. Of the 20 posts, 14 (70%) are somehow directly relevant to my professional activities though tht isn't always obvious from the tweeted text. The three tweets about the Ken Follet book belong on the direct channel perhaps, but I left them public, because I happen to love the book in question (Pillars of the Earth) and thought maybe someone else might get curious ad read it. In the original English preferably. They keyboard comment is irrelevant and off the wall, but in the past few weeks a number of people have wondered what happened to my spelling/typing as my keyboard has failed bit by bit and the replacement keyboard has decided to play the sticky key game too. I'm better of throwing a snowball at the dog to blow off steam, I know. The book banning comment with indirect hints at William Jennings Bryan & Co.? Controversial, surely and destined to offend, but those who need political correctness at all times will quickly realize that I'm probably the wrong guy - the sooner, the better. We translators live by words, and I take strong personal offense at the banning of dictionaries - critical tools of our trade - from schools. So maybe that's 15 relevant posts (75%). Room for improvement, though it could be worse. I could tweet that I'm off to make a grilled cheese sandwich now!

In the echo chamber of social media

Rod said...

I see you're going hog wild in the social media echo chamber ;-> I bet in the end that quietly doing translation work and then enjoying your free time will prove more profitable than chasing after loopy followers.

This comment on my Listening to Jeffrey post by our colleague in Japan reflects the confusion that a lot of people have with regard to so-called "social media" and the role these now play and will play in the future in our business and others. In fact, the latest newsletter from Mr. Gitomer included an interesting article on this very subject. According to Mr. Gitomer's definition of social media and my own understanding of the term, this "echo chamber" is where I and many others make a living. All of it.

Nitpickers will point out that Gitomer's definitions of social media confuse Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 media, but I don't think such distinctions are particularly productive. I think it's important to consider one's online presence as a whole. This will include e-mail, static media, dynamic media and interactive media, and the lines are not always clearly drawn between these areas. In the end what matters is that potential clients and colleagues with shared interests can find you and interact in some useful way, with the ultimate result hopefully being that the electric bill and a few other things get paid.

My business uses no local advertising. I have a sign next to the door so temporary postal workers don't walk away with my business mail undelivered, but local directories, yellow pages, etc. are not graced with my business presence in any form. And as much as I agree that it is valuable to attend local business chamber mixers and get involved in other community organizations, time is short, and I usually prefer to spend that limited time exercising the dogs, hunting or studying for a test. The time I spend "advertising" my business - or more correctly making the world aware of the fact that I exist and offer certain services - is generally better leveraged online. The experience of others may differ, of course. And along with the inevitable echo that over 30,000 Google hits brings (one friend recently complained that Google autocompletes my name, but I think that's normal), comes a steady stream of interesting professional contacts and inquiries resulting from the full range of online media I use.

What are these media and how do I use them? Some of this is covered in many earlier posts, but I'll take this opportunity for a recap and overview, because my approach is developing as I learn more, and it might be useful in six months to a year to see what has changed.

Let's start with e-mail. That's not really what one thinks of under the category of social media, but it is the most frequent direct means of communication that many of us use with our clients and colleagues, and it is often a gateway to social media interactions. How is that? In my e-mail signature I list addresses for my business web site, translation blog and translation-related Twitter account (so far, perhaps more to be added). I don't list my Skype account, though many do, and many use that tool to communicate with agency PMs and direct customers. Some of my signatures also include my pompous-sounding, legally protected German professional title as a state-examined, court-sworn translator. As silly as it sounds, it does carry weight with some clients, and it answers the question "Can you certify a patent translation?" without anyone saying or writing a word. There are many opportunities to use an e-mail signature effectively as a tool for improving communication and promoting your business.

There's this blog. Despite the irritating overabundance of comments on translation portal politics and other irrelevancies from time to time (virtual watercooler gossip, not to be confused with Any Bell's excellent Watercooler site), most of the posts reflects my professional interests as a translator in some way, including resources and tools which I think make my work easier. In some cases this provides information to prospects or current customers that make it clear that a particular project might be a good fit. Or tips I provide in the blog or a public forum may head off a private e-mail request or telephone call asking for help on a subject I have already explained a few hundred times. I began to write and publish little "how to" guides in PDF format a few years ago, because colleagues, customers and complete strangers were asking an enormous number of questions which often could be grouped in a few simple categories and handled in a 5 page written guide with a few screenshots. I usually give these away or actively promote them on web sites, public portals, Facebook, etc. This ultimately saves me time that I can spend on other things, and it demonstrates my competence in certain subject areas, which is often good for business.

My business web site is horribly outdated. I think it was last worked on seriously in December 2004, though a few minor changes have been made since then. Its successor has been in the works for over three years, but lack of time and my teenage daughter's opinion of my bad German have caused some delay. (I have been criticized for having a business web site only in English when I live in Germany and have most of my customers in German-speaking countries. However, the glass can hold only so much fine wine, and the tablecloth is ruined from the overflow as it is. I also got a belly laugh that the fellow with the harshest critical comments is a German who has French, German and English listed on his web site's landing page, but only the English link works, leading to pages that are shockingly ungrammatical.) In any case, with all its flaws, our site brings in steady business, even from customers who don't speak much English. Some day I'll do these nice people the favor of introducing myself online in German, but not before I have a full time secretary or project manager in my office to answer the phone and say I'm busy.

Online professional forums. For me these include the closed BDÜ members forum (not viewable by the public) and ProZ. Significant business volume and professional support from colleague has been derived from both platforms. I also have profiles registered with at least half a dozen other portals and forums, but these have not been very productive for me (and I haven't invested much time in them to be honest, so that may be the result), and if I could figure out how to delete some of these profiles (often quite difficult), I would.Depending on your location, qualifications, etc. the ITI, ATA and other organizations may offer other useful alternatives. These forums also contain searchable directories which have resulted in many referrals and excellent new clients over the years.

LinkedIn and Xing are favored platforms for "connecting" with business clients in the opinion of many. I'm present on both, and I find them to be useful tools to keep track of some colleagues past and present as well as clients, but I spend more time reading the Xing hunting forums in German than I do looking for business there. I think there's a lot of potential there, but my presence is and will probably remain largely passive. The structure of these environments doesn't really fit how I prefer to communicate, though I think forming ad hoc groups to discuss issues like crowdsourcing has some value.

If I did training videos as a way of promoting training or other services, I would probably use YouTube. I don't.

Even flawed online content publishing sites like eHow, where I have invested a little time, have brought in interesting business inquiries, though so far nothing of note has come of these. However, the fourteen short articles (11 related to translation) have been viewed over 2700 times in the past 5 months, which might prove beneficial in a business sense at some point if it has not already.

When Rod refers to "echo chambers", I presume he means Twitter and Facebook. I've written enough about the former I think; while I get irritated with one translator who seems to feel the need to let the world know every time she washes her hair, for the most part I have found the Twit Stream useful for communication in both directions. However, I am concerned about the manageability of that data stream, so I follow very few people. I think I've added one (Kilgraymemoq) in the past three months. Twitter has actually become the major mode of communication with a few colleagues who are very high on my professional respect list. Most of our useful exchanges fit well in 140 characters, and I'm sure they're glad not to see my pompous e-mail signature several times a day.

Facebook. Although I've used that platform to keep in touch with old high school friends and college buddies, FB has been a dilemma for business. I have a few friended colleagues there, most of whom I would consider actual friends in the real world or persons whom I would gladly have in that role, but when I get a request from a stranger or business I don't know I am not comfortable with given them access to my personal profile. I really don't think they need to see rude remarks from my sister, the stoned ravings or a high school friend who still hasn't overcome his substance abuse problems after 30 years or the political and military commentaries of my Texan cousin. Recently I read a blog post by Pat Flynn which seems to offer a solution to this problem or at least a plausible approach: Facebook "pages". I looked into this function and discovered that it works almost like a second profile and allows me to collect translation business information in a way that might be useful to my colleagues and clients without annoying the motley crew that constitute my friends and family. For the most part, I've found the setup and maintenance of my Facebook page for translation to be simple, and it lets me organize a few things in a way I cannot currently do with other tools. It feels comfortable. One thing that annoys the heck out of me, however, is the term used to refer to persons who subscribe to the profile stream or request access: fans. Elton John has fans, but until I learn to play piano and sing, I'd prefer a different word. I'm just not sure which one. My Facebook page allows me to organize information I may have published elsewhere in more useful, accessible ways. My "target price defense tool" - a spreadsheet for calculating a word or line price to counteract a Trados scale one disapproves of - has been available for some time on the How To tab of my ProZ profile for over a year and was even mentioned on this blog in its early days, but except possibly for members of a Bavarian BDÜ chapter who may have received the German version on a CD, I don't think many are aware of it. FB provides another channel which allows me to help fellow translators with information like this or agencies and direct clients with other issues.

As for chasing loopy followers, if henna gaijin applies, it's your issue, not mine or anyone else's ;-) Doing business involves letting people know what you do in a variety of ways, and I don't generally find it useful to put a money meter on every activity. Really understanding the changing world of online media means hands-on involvement, not eternal grumbling over a sake flask. Moreover, teaching and communication are important to me, and I will offer information in any channel which I think is of potential use to those who may benefit. Sometimes this may involve looking beyond the edge of my plate as the Germans are fond of saying. The world continues to change, and the long term viability of a business may very well be tied to taking steps today to explore communication media which may be important tomorrow and which are not obviously related to my main professional activities. If in five years most translation buyers and translators hang out on Third Life, I'll probably be there somewhere.

There are some things I plan to publish on my business page on Facebook which I really don't know where I should put elsewhere. I have a huge number of links to online dictionaries and other resources which follow various topics I translate frequently. I suppose I could do a "Links" page on my business web site, but I would really rather not for various reasons. It seems to me that the Facebook "Notes" function might be a more useful way to organize links related to hunting terminology, sustainability and corporate responsibility, materials science, etc. If desirable I suppose I could even use the Facebook pages or groups functions to organize information on specific translation topics. I might have to look into that someday.

And the next time I am accused of robbery, I'm sure that my participation in Facebook will prove useful :-)

Four months of Twitter

Last May I finally decided to become a tweeter on Twitter (or a twit some might contend). Four months on, my use and perceptions of that medium have changed little. I follow few and am overwhelmed by those feeds , so I simply can't imagine how anyone following hundreds can pan the gold out of all the mud. Major filtering tools I suppose. However, I am finding it an interesting channel of communication, particularly with colleagues and strangers who go light on the self-promotion and details of when they take showers and point me to interesting resources. I also appreciate the pointers to news I might otherwise miss.

It's a medium that is clearly abused by some. I killed one feed, because the woman writing it seemed to be intent on retyping an entire book of crappy aphorisms. Multilingual feeds in languages that I don't understand are occasionally frustrating (and I'm sure some reading my feed feel that way about my German tweets), but it's also fun to puzzle out the odd tidbit of Portuguese or Italian with no pressure. Lately I've been getting spammed by "nice" girls offering themselves for sale, and I wish I knew a way to block nonsense like that and not restrict others with reasonable intentions.

On the whole I think that Twitter has been a worthwhile addition to my communication toolset. I'm not sure where else I could get a bunch of good, fresh tips on children's book reviews and publishing like Carsten Peters (calutateo) provides or follow the tasteful reading lists of others. Since I'm not selling anything at this point (plans for a technical book have been delayed indefinitely due to surprise developments in the technology in the past year), I can't confirm or refute any of the claims of Twitter's importance for marketing, and I really don't care about that point. I'd rather trade work philosophy one-liners with colleagues, point to useful sources for self-education and have a bit of fun.

Tweet, tweet, chirp chirp

When I logged in for my daily dose of Doonesbury today, I found Roland Hedley tweeting away with important messages for his follower base about the impending dismissal of his houseboy and whatnot. A few months ago I wouldn't have understood the joke; now I'm part of it. In February, my colleagues the Jenner sisters (Twin Translations) put a post on their blog about having joined Stephen Fry and other celebrities on Twitter. I was rather skeptical about the whole thing, being inclined to agree that this Web 2.0 "phenomenon" was blogging for those with ADHD. Recent endorsements by The Petshop Boys haven't done a lot to persuade me otherwise.

So why am I now GermanENTrans on Twitter? Rather often I've had short bits of news that I wanted to post to my blog, where there was neither good reason, nor sufficient information, nor time to make a "normal" post. A bunch of one-liners for stuff that might be valid for a limited time only would look really silly in the main text. Other thoughts also played a role, like being able to communicate availability or the lack thereof without logging in to and updating a dozen agency calendars (I'm asked to do this, but I ignore it, because it's an unreasonable waste of time I don't have).

Currently I'm only "following" a few people on Twitter, and I'm quite overwhelmed trying to keep track of that limited data feed. I don't send it to my mobile phone or any such thing, because the constant interruptions would be as bad as telephones that never stop ringing I think. I just log into my page once a day or so and scan for interesting tidbits. As you can see from looking on the left column of this blog, I feed my twitter posts to my translation blog, thus achieving exactly what I wanted in the first place: passing on short bits of information on (mostly) translation-related topics in an efficient, timely manner. Since I expect to have a lot of short messages regarding dog stuff in the future, I'll probably do a separate Twitter ID for that. I don't think there are a lot of translators out there interested in laying blood trails through the woods or dummy training.

At the ProZ powwow in Berlin recently, I met quite a number of other translators who have made Twitter part of their personal and professional communication toolset, including a number of old fogeys like myself. That's where I heard about hash tags and a number of other "insider tips" for the first time.

So is Twitter the crest of the wave of the future? I don't know and I don't care. It's accomplishing the limited result I want from it now with no bother, and that's good enough for me.