Dezember-Übersetzertreffen in Hohen Neuendorf

Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

unser letztes Übersetzertreffen in diesem Jahr steht an, und zwar am:

                Donnerstag, 15. Dezember 2011, ab 19.00 Uhr

Wir probieren mal wieder etwas Neues aus (Dank an Heidruns Wolfgang für den Tipp!):

                Gasthaus-Pension Strammer-Max

                Schönfließer Str. 16 a

                16540 Hohen Neuendorf

                S-Bahn S1 und S8 Hohen Neuendorf

Das Gasthaus befindet sich direkt gegenüber vom S-Bahn-Ausgang auf der anderen Straßenseite und ist nicht zu verfehlen.

Hier ein kurzer Blick aufs Angebot:

http://pension-strammer-max.com/auszug-aus-der-speisekarte/

 

Bis Donnerstag!

Andreas Linke

Vorschau:

Das übernächste Übersetzertreffen findet wie üblich am dritten

Donnerstag des Monats statt - am 19. Januar 2012.

Heads in the Cloud? Or somewhere else?

As noted in my last post, concerns are growing over the trend toward "Cloud-based" translation management solutions and the potential negative impact on interoperability between TEnT systems with the wrong approach. As Jost Zetsche noted, there is a need to push solution providers such as SDL, Kilgray, Atril, Wordfast et alia to develop working, open interfaces so various clients can be used with a given server solution in online projects.

From a somewhat different perspective, Hungarian translator Csaba Bán noted that bits and dribbles of text translated via project management tools in the Cloud, while perhaps offering some efficiencies for an LSP or other company, too often unnecessarily fragment and waste the translator's time for inadequate compensation under most current schemes. I've heard a number of my clients talk about developing web-based "instant interfaces" for quickie translation service, and I know of a number of companies who have had something like this for years, but it all seems a bit like a sleazy back alley encounter on the fringes of a Red Light district with too great a chance of the translator's business suffering ill health from such indulgence. Cloud solutions which do not cleanly integrate with a translator's working environment tools but which require copying and pasting in various fields and windows are simply inefficient (despite some tools offering Clipboard integrations) and not very attractive. And appropriate minimum charges and premiums to offset the disruptions caused by too many dribbles during the day are called for. This requires some thought, and I can't pretend to offer any brilliant solutions to the dilemma, as I think each situation will have to be considered individually until a good set of general principles for best practice emerge. I have one such case I'm puzzling over myself right now: how to charge for "tweet translation" for a long-term client who runs a PR agency. So far I haven't, because the volume has been modest and fits well enough into the ordinary flow of our business discussions, but the case has me thinking.

As readers of this blog probably know, I am also involved in other types of Cloud-based project management for translation. When I began to encounter the first web-based administration interfaces with my agency clientele a decade ago, I hated them. In fact, I have dumped several otherwise rather good clients, some paying rates on par with decent direct clients, because I found their systems too cumbersome and prone to fault. One of the worst was a custom mess from an international LSP whose Swiss branch was a frequent customer; half the time, secure deliveries via their portal were simply impossible and I had to resort to insecure e-mail attachments. (Yes, these can be passworded, but that involves additional trouble.)

Gradually, decent standard solutions emerged. A number of my clients are happy with the German Plunet solution; I favor LSP.net's OTM, not because I localize the English interface but because it's comprehensive, legally secure, provides robust processes and archiving, is software as a service (SaaS) at modest cost, and I don't have to screw around with the infrastructure at my dilapidated country estate with its lousy bandwidth availability; and there are other acceptable alternatives beside the rather nightmarish mess of the Open Source solution I once tortured myself with for several months (Project ]open[ Translation). A good online administrative solution like this has many advantages over desktop or LAN solutions, and I have discussed many of these benefits in previous posts about OTM. Even the best solutions I have seen, however, have one glaring weakness: login management!!!

This is a big problem with many online applications. We all have too many damned passwords to juggle. When suddenly I have another dozen or two dozen logins to translation project administration systems for my agency and big corporate clients, things begin to get dicey if cookies, utilities like KePass or other methods are not applied. Personally, I would like to see options for OpenID and other integrations as one is beginning to see with some of the social media. Despite the hassles sometimes involved here, I think Cloud-based tools of this kind are among the most useful for managing translation-related processes and making them secure. I use my OTM for encrypted deliveries of confidential files and for providing clients with full access to their project backup archives. This is a blessing if I'm off somewhere taking a break and someone desperately needs a copy of a translation I did last year which has gone missing.

Don't surrender freedom again - demand interoperability

Once upon a time, in my youth, communication, including translation, used media that were more or less common standards. Any pen or pencil could write on most any paper or vellum, and while one might have preferences in a brand of typewriter, the choice mattered little to the end result. Transmission by postal mail, courier, teletype or (later) fax also used mostly compatible protocols, and fewer things got lost in the pile of junk mail, as the kinder, gentler form of "spam" was called in those days.

Then the rise of IT and media technologies in the commercial and consumer world shattered this pax, and a myriad of information fiefdoms rose and fell, with users as the foot soldiers and cannon fodder in their conflicts. Eventually, on the main stages of IT, the vendors were forced to realize that their futures depended not on information fortresses but in open exchange and interoperability. 

In IT backwaters such as the translation "industry", old practices persisted like medieval kingdoms and customs around the Himalayas, but eventually modern data sanitation reached even this provincial niche, which had adopted some computer tools while ignoring most best practices to maintain proprietary strangleholds. But eventually, the march of progress reached even those altitudes, and TMX, TBX and XLIFF became common parlance. And all is well or shall soon be. Really?

In the 203rd edition of his Tool Box Newsletter (premium version), Jost Zetzsche discusses a recent article in Forbes magazine (Cloud Computing's Vendor Lock-In Problem: Why the Industry Is Taking a Step Backward) and its implications for IT service consumers, including those involved in the translation business. The original article and Jost's commentary are very much worth reading (which is why I subscribe to the full content of his newsletters). His insights included the following comment:

"While we have data exchange standards that are more or less well supported (TMX for translation memories, TBX for termbases, XLIFF for the translation data, and the upcoming Linport for translation packages), there are no mechanisms that enable tool A to enter into the server- or cloud-based workflow of tool B. So, if your client sends your project not as data but as a login that you can use within a tool to access an online-based project or -- even more simply -- to actually log into an online-based tool that automatically gives you access to online-based data, all the hard-fought-for advances in widely accepted data exchange standards are nullified."

This is one of the problems which has concerned me, along with the loss of platform freedom for translators currently wanting to work on server-based projects. Although I know some translation companies, such as Translators International in the Netherlands, who use their server-based memoQ and other technology to make translatable content available to their language pair teams in a variety of best practice, compatible formats, in too many cases, server-based projects lead to a kind of lock-in which ultimately is in no one's best interest. Across Systems, with its wicked policy of deliberate incompatibility, represents the worst case I know, because it is not even possible to work with data exports of some kind as one can with respectable systems such as some SDL technologies, memoQ, Ontram and others. 

Various influencers within SDL, Kilgray, Atril, MultiCorpora, Andrä AG and elsewhere are probably quite tired of hearing me pluck the strings of my dream harp loudly and repeatedly in their presence: I want to see online server communication standards which enable a client user of Trados Studio or Wordfast Pro to connect to a memoQ Server project, or someone with a memoQ Translator Pro installation to connect to an Ontram or SDL server project and work most effectively using the ergonomic tools with which the translator or editor is most familiar. I don't buy the arguments of "difficulty" at face value; just look at all the integration plug-ins that are being released by various vendors, with remote TM or termbase access, and it's fairly obvious that at least some degree of online interoperability should be achievable without much pain.

Jost's commentary concludes with a quote from the Forbes article: 

"Only one thing will eliminate or reduce the risk of vendor lock-in in the long run: if end-user customers start demanding standardization and interoperability, just as they have in the past with on-premises applications... providers will fall in line."

All of us - individual translators, translation companies and corporate customers who manage their own translation services with server-based technologies - need to demand that all the credible providers of translation environment technologies "fall in line".