7th ProZ.com Conference - Prague 2010

The Czech contribition to world culture is unmistakeable: what would we all do without Semtex and the uplifting contributions of Franz Kafka, who was inspired by the perpetually sunny dispositions of the residents of his home town, Prague? Indeed, my visit to Prague took me back to an earlier, better time, when you could be sure that your товарищ was looking out for you. Or at least watching you.

Another visitor to the Prague conference from Vienna also remarked on the nostalgic impression made by the chosen venue. The last time she had visited Prague was 35 years ago, and she commented that the service had remained at the same level as in the good old days when the land was ruled by the people (albeit the people of another country).

Indeed, outside the Olde Towne, with its tourist-friendly cobblestones, crystal sellers and "special" tobacco shops, it was often made it abundantly clear that we are all created equal in our misery. It was in this zone of reality rather than the fairytale setting of historic Prague that the venue for the 7^th ProZ international conference was chosen, and it was rightly so: at an event with the theme of increasing one's prestige and visibility, the hotel staff took care to see that the translators did not forget their place and make off with the flatware or a cup of coffee between breaks. A very useful reminder that we must fight our own battles for recognition, success and caffeinated rewards, and whining on the sidelines probably won't get the káva.

On the first morning of the regular program, a Serbian English professor who professed to know English took her class through a bizarre and ungrammatical exercise in analyzing English texts which somehow would set us on the Golden Path to Prestige. A good number in the audience walked out; probably the same twenty percent that Oleg Rudavin, in his talk at the end of the last day, estimated would have a chance of a prosperous life in the Brave New Global Market.

After my confused retreat from the English lesson, the program improved: presentations by Hynek Palatin (who spoke on tools for added productivity), Sameh Rageb (who gave a fine overview of MultiTerm and Babylon applications) and others gave me good technical bones with lots of meat to chew on. I was a bit disappointed that sponsor SDL failed to take the conference seriously enough to offer more than a timid standard overview from a frightened new cog in the corporate gears, but the rep from Moravia made up for that with a detailed presentation of corporate everything and a lovely tap dance as we shot at his feet for suggesting that his company can produce top quality German to English translations paying the translators half to a third of the going rate that good linguists typically get in that language pair. Although he could not provide a clear answer on why one should go to the Czech Republic for quality FR<>EN, DE<>EN work & the like, he did mention a need for Inuit translators. I suppose he pays them in seal blubber. I wouldn't mind branching out and offering services in that language and doing on-site quality inspections of my service providers' translation offices provided that the social customs I heard about in elementary school have not "progressed".

I'll admit to playing hookey for about half the lecture program, not because the topics didn't interest me, but because the people attending did very much. It was a great pleasure to see old colleagues and acquaintances again and meet new, interesting people from around the world and talk about other stuff. I also suffer a bit from information overload with too many talks and need even more breaks that the generous number provided in the conference schedule.

The logistics of the event worked better than any similar ProZ event I have attended in the past. It seems that ProZ.com made the right decision in hiring a staff member to work full time on organizing conferences, and I was favorably impressed by Anne Diamantis when I chatted with her about the 18 she has done so far. That's a lot of experience in a short time, and what I saw on the whole is moving in the right direction. The teamwork between her and the local organizer, Pavel Janoušek, appeared to be very good. In any case, there were no more causes for complaint than I have experienced at most professional conferences of various kinds in the past 30 years. However, ProZ has a looong way to go before they can live up to the standard of the events for eye surgeons that I used to attend. The sponsors and exhibitors there really knew how to bribe those doctors, and I still have fond memories of all the food and loot. The talks were often worse, however.

My main reason for travelling to Prague beside retracing part of the historic route of others who felt the need to escape from a Germany into the arms of Helmut Kohl was to talk a little about my reasons for using online translation business management tools and how these have help to solve or improve serious problems I faced. I spoke mostly from the perspective of a busy individual or small team, while Ralf Lemster shared his experience as the owner of a small agency with a demanding clientele and the need for careful coordination of complex projects. We also spent a lot of time in breaks and out of sessions providing individual consultation to translators, project managers and agency principles looking to reduce their risks and improve their business processes.

For me, the conference was wrapped up with the talk by Oleg Rudavin at the end. There were closing remarks and ceremonies afterward, but I think Oleg provided a good summary and ended on an appropriately confusing note as he spoke about the future of translation and translators. I was tired – very tired – by the time he spoke, so his clear, strong speaking style and presence kept me awake and interested when I was sure I would melt into a pool of snore in my chair. He talked about changes and trends in the market and gave me a view of the recent economic crisis from an experienced, competent colleague living in very different circumstances. But regardless of whether or not we are affected economically by the global tides, at some point a crisis wave of some kind will wash over most of us, and the reflections on goals and lifestyle he shared at the end should at some point engage all of us. The sooner the better. Often, those most bothered by issues of prestige, recognition and career seem to be those who are least clear about their goals and the steps to reach them. Or who lack the courage to take those steps.

We have met the enemy and he is the customer

The Twitter stream from a colleague taking the train back to Berlin after the ProZ conference in Prague was unexpected and shocking. German railway employees assaulting unarmed Czech passengers, abusing them ever more loudly as their confused, embarassed victims waited for the boot to descend and the police arrive, which they finally did to back up their uniformed brothers from Deutsche Bahn. Only spirited resistance by other passengers and reminders that Kundenservice doesn't always mean serving your customer's head on a platter finally caused the uniformed tormenters to relent. Service is a foreign word, taken prisoner to do duty where no native word for the concept exists, and when it comes time to enjoy this serrvice, one is too often reminded that Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland, especially not for such ideas.

Face it, customers are the enemy. Isn't that so? My business isn't Burger King. How dare they presume to have it their way! You don't have to be a German railway employee to understand what a bother these people are, disturbing our perfect routines with their perfectly unreasonable projects. Vee muss train zem. Kundenerziehung. Now that's a word to export along with all those Mercedes cars and cool machine tools. Maybe it can come in a boxed set with a leather corset and a whip.

It's simply too much to ask that we recognize, accept and forgive the human fallability of our customers. That we forego the opportunity to enlighten them with brutally frank commentary on their second language competence and offer to let them kiss our college class rings in exchange for the grammar lesson. Emotional intelligence is a moron from Oxy when you're right.

Years ago, Mike (a consulting customer of mine) told me about his "big break" as a salesman for some sort of parts. His stuff was simply the best. Best quality, best price, best delivery time. Probably bore God's Own Seal of Approval, too, since he was in Oklahoma at the time. But the purchasing agent at the prospect was simply too stupid to realize that he and his company were missing out on the real deal. Mike tried for years to get that account, but the dummies just kept buying inferior stuff from the competition. And all the while he had to listen to the puchasing agent's piteous whining, his inferiority complex about being whupped by his brother-in-law at bass fishing. Finally, Mike couldn't stand it any more and brought him a package of his favorite rubber worms and explained how to hook and use them. The next time Mike visited, the guy surprised him with an order and bored him to tears with the tale of the jaw-dropping bass he caught the day bro-in-law got skunked. And he kept on ordering after that. But what did the customer learn about the better product he was now buying? Not a damned thing. Don't be like Mike. Teach your customers a lesson!

Poll: Barriers to Cooperation

Recently in the sidebar of this blog, the following question was asked:

What are the significant barriers for you in collaborative projects with colleagues?


The responses were distributed as follows:

12%    None. I do it all the time without trouble
25%    Organization: coordinating & scheduling tasks
29%    Technology: suitable means and methods of resource sharing
45%    Networking: I don't always know suitable people to work with
31%    Trust: I'm afraid of having clients stolen or being held responsible for the failures of others
6%    Other reasons

It's interesting that the most frequent response indicated a lack of suitable partners for cooperation. Whether this is a perception issue or a real matter of getting out and getting to know qualified peers is probably very much an individual issue. In my case I simply don't know a lot of linguistically qualified German to English translators with a significant knowledge of chemistry and related sciences and a healthy dose of legal competence. When I see otherwise very good translators going at such texts armed with a dictionary and boundless confidence, I can't help but cringe, especially if I'm involved in the review somehow. I have bad flashbacks to the day that a superb legal translator took on an IT text on entity/relationship modeling and asked me if some key term had the same meaning as it does in contracts. Not even close.

Trust was another major issue. This was not unexpected given the paranoia I observe at times in various fora. I don't worry much about client "theft" and often freely pass on contact data for qualified colleagues, with the understanding that the parties involves in any transaction bear all the responsibility for the results. Concerns about responsibility for bad quality from others is understandable, but here proper project management - enough time allowed for review and rescue and a sufficiently high margin to allow for any contingencies - can offset a lot of potential trouble. This is an important organizational issue that many freelancers are neither prepared to qualified to handle, so caution in this regard is probably praiseworthy.

Technology as a barrier is more a matter of knowledge than the actual technology available. Not everyone has the resources or inclination to maintain a translation server with SDL solutions, memoQ, Déja Vu or other options, but new entries to the market like Wordfast Anywhere (a free collaboration tool with privacy features) could be game-changing here, and little birds tell me that SaaS solutions may soon be available at affordable cost for small freelance teams. About a year ago I had the pleasure of being involved in a nice project where a memoQ server license was leased for a month; the only down side to that was the hardware problems the project coordinator had figuring out the IP addresses with his router. Technical options for collaboration outside of agency structures are increasing, and it is worth investigating developments in this area. In one case we brought a collaborative project to an agency that had the necessary infrastructure (a memoQ server), and the results were quite satisfactory, so this is one option that may be worth exploring with small, flexible LSP partners.

The challenges of coordinating and scheduling can be considerable. Many freelancers lack experience as project managers and may not have had occasion to develop the necessary interpersonal skills and "toughness" to deal with difficulties that may arise. The *technical* aspects of assigning, scheduling, coordinating and delivering jobs can be handled adequately with affordable software solutions. The best option I currently know for this is the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net, which for a basic monthly fee of 29 euros per month gives anyone full access to all the IT infrastructure needed to run an agency of any size. It's "software as a service" with automated backups and top-notch security; the cheapest option for setting up my own server and other software adds up to several years of OTM fees at the very least. OTM also gives me completely secure file transfer for clients and cooperation partners. This is important for paranoid patent lawyers and others. I've been looking for and testing solutions in this area for seven years now, and although there is still significant optimization needed by the provider for the average freelancer or small team, OTM is the best option for small teams looking to grow on a budget or medium-sized LSPs who need competence, security and cost control. The provider currently offers free trials to interested parties.

Of course, collaboration isn't for everyone. I'm often of two - or even three - minds on the subject. But for those who are interested in working together with others as a way to grow their business, there are many options and many exciting developments ahead.