Преступление и наказание (and amnesty!)

The networks of Thought Police at ProZ are active again. Those who hold theories about the fondness of the company's management for using resources in countries with a strong tradition of totalitarianism may be on to something. It is seldom possible to have a reasonable discussion on the ProZ forums; where the silly RuleZ made for kindergarten don't stifle discussion from the outset, moderators with cultural or linguistic handicaps that render them incapable of understanding the discussions or the vocabulary used properly make up their own RuleZ. As usual, the interesting discussions are continued in other media, such as Facebook, Stridonium, blogs, etc. ProZ is essentially dead as a forum of exchange for serious colleagues, or at best critically ill.

The latest escapade began with a thread complaining about SDL's latest pathetic "amnesty" program for translators who have committed the crime of not upgrading to SDL Trados Studio 2009. For those who are actually interested in the upgrade, the dollars involved made a lot of sense, but as usual the ham-handed clowns who dream up SDL marketing campaigns under the influence of God-knows-what botched what could have been a nice campaign by using that ugly word "amnesty" again. Some of you may recall the last idiotic amnesty campaign before old Trados licenses of those not taking the bait would be sentenced to upgrade death. This historic blunder comes up frequently in private correspondence with a very decent, competent chap at SDL, who agrees (perhaps not just to placate me) that it was a pretty bone-headed campaign. So he goes on vacation and they do it again. Maybe he just decided to leave town before the turds hit the turbine again.

If anyone wants to see Soviet-style moderation at work, have a look at the thread. Before it was locked by the moderator, there were nine posts hidden or deleted with flimsy excuses. What sort of posts were removed? A few samples are given below. The original post looked like this:

The first response to be censored was this:

The second response was censored while the one above it was not originally. The "warning message" received was as follows:

This message is to inform you that your post "Just another reason not to bother with Trados at all", http://www.proz.com/post/1568902 , is hidden from public view, but is editable and visible to you. You are kindly requested to edit along the lines indicated below, so it can be made visible.

Please edit your post to avoid such terms as \"rubbish\". Thank you.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and future cooperation.

Later, another moderator approved the censored post and censored the one above it. A voice of reason was heard shortly afterward, when Antonin wrote:

indignation

14:22

I received the "amnesty" e-mail as well, and was not really surprised or annoyed so much as some people on this forum. I think it is a clumsy marketing feature, and SDL's campaigns trying to persuade me to buy I have already bought are pathetic, but why should I lose my temper over such trifles? 

On the other hand, what does annoy me a lot is the fact that several contributions from those who felt bad about that e-mail, were hidden by the moderators on very dubious grounds indeed. I can say that because I received them by e-mail so I could read them anyway

I really dislike this approach of the moderators, and it is a matter of principle. No bad language was used and I have seen much stronger stuff on this forum in the past.

This, too, was censored. Thou shalt not question moderators in public. For shame!

Today there were punishments aplenty for criminal violations of RuleZ and criticism of the deep pockets at SDL which H & Co. like to keep their hands in. All of it really silly and unnecessary. There were no personal attacks involved, no over-the-top language or anything of the sort. Once again ProZ has succeeded in making the management and moderators look stupid. Perhaps they felt that the marketing geniuses at SDL needed company.

TM Europe 2010

Just got an interesting note from an industry acquaintance about the upcoming event in Poland. I would like to share it here, because it sounds quite worthwhile.

This year the conference takes place from September 29 to October 1, 2010 at the Qubus Hotel, Krakow, Poland. The updated program for the TM-Europe 2010 International Conference is available on the conference website.  The Early bird registration ends on Friday August 27th.  The attendance figures are very high, with many customer and translation company managers planning to participate, so I thought you might consider attending too.

This year’s conference theme is “Project and Technology Management, and Business Optimization for the Translation and Localization Industry”. The TM Europe 2010 program will cover the following topics, among others:

• Project Management Workshop
• Translation Technology Primer Workshop
• The Warsaw Pact Debate - The Future of Translation Technology
• Customer- vendor business case-studies
• Translation technology and tools overview (MT, TM, TMS) and new developments
• Business development, optimization and change management in times of recession
• Budgeting, process and cost optimization strategies
• Industry standards, business models and forecasts

Impact

Once in a while I find it useful to review the state of things in my life and business and consider what actions or tools have had the greatest positive impact. Ranking the effects is usually rather subjective, of course, but that's OK - we live by subjective impressions far more than most of us realize.

So I asked myself what has made the greatest positive difference in my translation business in the past year? In the past five years? In the past ten? It was fairly easy to narrow down the answers.

For the past year, the increased use of online management tools for project management, deliveries and invoicing has helped me the most.

In the past five years, two things have mattered most: greater collaboration with a competent partner (which made many projects possible which I would otherwise not have touched) and joining a professional translators' organization (BDÜ in my case) after passing the state exams in Berlin, Germany. That has brought in many nice referrals. I don't think I can narrow down the five-year factors any more, because the impact of all three actions has been huge, and all are rather closely related in various ways.

The greatest impact over the course of the ten years I have been engaged in significant volumes of translation has surely been the use of translation environment tools such as Déjà Vu, SDL Trados and memoQ (just to name the primary ones I work with). That's also why these are discussed so often in this blog. Properly applied, these tools can play a positive role in nearly any commercial translation business.

Of course, every translation business is unique, and needs and priorities differ. What has had the biggest impact for you in the past year, the past five and past ten?