Who's afraid of the big, bad MT post-editing job?

Still somewhat groggy without my third double espresso eggnog latté of the morning, I was woken up quickly by an interesting tweet from Andrew Bell, curator of the translator's social network The Watercooler. It pointed to a PDF file with eight slides summarizing the results of a global TAUS survey on MT post-editing by translation agencies.

The data are interesting and could be spun quite a number of ways. There were altogether 75 respondents out of God-and-TAUS-know-how-many-approached. I presume the latter figure was mentioned in the live presentation. About half of these actually provide such services to their clientele. Given all the talk about MT and "our" post-editing future, what fraction of business do you expect this activity to represent among the respondents? For 86% it was less than 10% of current revenue. I'm guessing much less. A mere 1.8% reported in the 26 to 50% range and none above that. Reality Check #1. The tsunami of MT hasn't hit the profession, nor do the waters appear to be retreating at the beaches. So don't head for the hills just yet. I assume that a certain company which MT'd and post-edited some fifty kazillion Wikipedia articles into Thai was among the respondents, and even that visionary firm didn't break 50% for MT-postedit revenues. So, people, there probably is other work out there in at least the near future.

Reality Check #2: The majority of respondents also reported little or no increase in such business in the past year. Most (75%) of the "post-editors" are in fact part of the regular stables of translators at these agencies, but I suspect these workhorses are those unable to digest better feed and make more than horseshit out of it. Or they are starving. Or a bit adventurously masochistic and can't find where they left the cuffs and leather whip.

If you want to surf the MT-postedit wavelet, do so by all means. It could be an interesting diversion, and as in with any path taken in life, I expect you'll meet some people, possibly even ones worth knowing. But if this isn't your sport, don't think you're doomed to starvation and oblivion.

I don't know how large the total market is for my German to English translation pair, much less for any other combination. An estimate of 100 million euros would be far too low based on a quick napkin calculation of how many translators it supports and what they probably earn on average. Some billions I expect. In any case, even in a relatively small "market" for a common language, a translator would need to capture only a miniscule fraction of the business to make a moderate to good living. I suspect that even our blogging overworked American translator serves somewhat less than 0.001% of the German to English market. The line between starvation and survival and between survival and prosperity is not drawn by the available volumes in the FIGES markets nor even really by the average rates charged in them. Nor by skill as a translator beyond a certain reasonable standard to be expected in a particular discipline.

If you want to earn "enough" as a freelance translator in major language pairs and avoid the ball-and-chain future of an MT posteditor, and you have sufficient linguistic and personal skills to avoid embarrassing yourself or anyone who recommends you, getting "there" is mostly a matter of organization, discipline, initiative and a good service attitude. My attitude is mostly bad, and I still do OK. And I strive to improve that attitude by shooting and skinning pigs instead of customers that may appear to share some of their characteristics. Find a way to get the message of fair service to those who need it and you'll have the freedom to worry about other things, like if the apple grafts in the garden will take. If you're clueless as to what to do, I can't help you. But I can offer you a link to 25 things translators should never do.

Let 1000 mushrooms sprout

As incompetent hypermoderation and other difficulties such as security breaches and Google advertising display policies at PrADs (which even led to the opening of the Ukrainian office being linked to mail order brides) have continued to put the squeeze on the translator community, sites for peer support and professional exchange among translators have been sprouting like mushrooms after a warm summer rain. It is interesting to note that unlike other translator sites which have been around a while (such as Aquarius, Translators Café and Go Translators), these new sites place little or no emphasis on project opportunities which for many too often mean a race to the bottom on rates. (Personally, I see this differently, but that is a common perception. I find the recent call for a ProZ boycott because of the fact that some are unhappy with posters suggesting rates to be more than a little ludicrous. If I don't like a rate, I'm not shy about proposing a better one. I will admit, however, that when someone asks for my "best rate" and I respond with € 2.50 per line there might be a fundamental failure to communicate somewhere.)

I've mentioned one of these sites already: Watercooler, which is organized by Andrew Bell in Australia. The rate at which this site has been growing is phenomenal, and I've really enjoyed the developments at that site in recent months. Discussions are uncensored but respectful and there is a great community of experienced colleagues there. The Watercooler is not indexed by search engines, and it includes a personal blog feature where the scope of readership can be set by the poster. The site uses Ning as its basis.

Stridonium is another very interesting private site. It's a rather quiet paid site (somewhere between 50 and 100 members at present) with an interesting twist on terminology. I joined about a month ago and am not yet fully familiar with the environment; what attracts me most to it is the caliber of the people there and the fact that it is completely cut off from the search engines.

Then there's the new L10NCafé for the localization crowd. My eyes tend to glaze over when numbers and letters get mixed up without spaces in the same block of text, but if you're into that, it's there. Given some of the people involved with this new site I think it will develop in an interesting direction.

Last but not least in the list of recent social network sites for translators is Langmates.com, launched four days ago by AIT after a brief beta period. It seems to be picking up members at a rapid pace. While I'm sure that there is some commercial interest linked to the launch, I don't see that as a bad thing; I like the beginnings I see. The company makes a nice range of affordable tools for various important tasks that translators face. Although our two-person office has outgrown Translation Office 3000 (because we need online access for two or three persons), I still think it's probably the best all-round, affordable solution for project management, customer records, billing and business analysis for freelancers who don't outsource. So I like the company and I like what they have started with the new network.

There are also good networks for translators that have started recently in South America and probably elsewhere; I'm not yet personally familiar with any of these, so I hope those who are can share some information for others in the comments. In my own part of the world, the BDÜ launched a members-only site that has developed into a very good platform for information exchange over the past few years. The ITI and ATA and others also have good private sites for members.

All of these different forums and portals take rather different approaches which may match the needs of different individuals to very different degrees. And that's a good thing. Translation is a very individual, personal business, and while most of us share particular concerns, there really is no single set of tools or one environment that will meet the needs of everyone. As much as some colleagues like to throw stones at ProZ (and I'll include myself there on the right occasions), it's a platform that helped me a lot in the past and continues to help many others today. Ditto for some of the other "job sites" I mentioned. But there's a lot more, different and often better value out there for those who are ready for it.

Translation blogging in German

Hang out at the Watercooler
The migration of translators to the Watercooler continues to proceed at an impressive pace, and the newcomers are full of suggestions for how to make the environment better. It's nice to see that suggestions are well received, too, even if technical implementation may not always be possible. There are some limits to what one can expect from a working translator who set up that fine, free site as a better place for networking, not a clearing house for jobs and projects or a source of Google AdSense revenue.

One interesting feature of the site is its internal blogging for each member. The Watercooler is a "closed" site, which means access is restricted to approved members and there is no access to search engines. Discussions on the site stay on the site generally, so unlike PrADs forums, where one's posts and comments are visible to the entire online world (including prospective customers), one can get down to some more serious business discussions if inclined to do so. Members who want to restrict a particular blog post or comments permission to a more limited circle ca use the "friends" feature. Very nice.

As part of finding my way in that rapidly evolving environment (which has doubled in size since December), I have begun blogging in German. The German group members are mostly familiar with my appalling written German from the ProZ forums, so I'm unlikely to shock anyone with mangled prepositions. And there I don't have to deal with any flaky moderators who seem to think that offering to work for less all the time is a strategy with a future. The atmosphere is thankfully free of the barrel bottom scraping nonsense I've found elsewhere lately. It's nice writing for a more limited group with a lot of the colleagues I've come to know and respect over the past decade. Maybe I'll repost the occasional German piece here from time to time, especially choice essays for Mr. Hinterberger :-)

Time for a refreshing drink

Visit Watercooler
Quite some time (a year or two) ago, I was invited by an Australian colleague, Andrew Bell, to join a new translators' network he was building. It looked interesting, but at the time it was rather small, and I seldom had the time to do more than drop by and browse a few interesting blog posts. While I was otherwise occupied, the site continued to grow and is now approaching 500 members. I see a lot of respected colleagues whom I have met in the past through the BDÜ or ProZ, typically those with a little more interest in the professional side of the profession. Due to events elsewhere, that growth has accelerated: I think more than 100 serious translators have joined in the last week or two, and last night a German group was formed.

What's the draw? Not the job posts, certainly. There aren't any, though there is a list where one could post opportunities. Nor are there any competitive schemes to earn gold stars for shot-from-the-hip term proposals. The Watercooler is simply an evolving virtual space in which people who are serious about our profession can share experience, advice and fellowship. It's a no-fee members-only site that is not open to the search engines, where matters best discussed among colleagues can stay among colleagues. Altogether a fine thing.

This isn't a "replacement" for the breadth offered at other sites which emphasize other things such as directories to be filtered according to X criteria to find translators willing to work for -Y, terminology resources (not sure how/if this would work on Watercooler) or contests. It's simply a different experience, one which will lack certain useful elements for a raw beginner looking to make his first mistakes, but for mature colleagues who understand the nature of our business and some of the approaches, tools and techniques that are part of it, I think this can have a lot to offer. Check it out.