| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5] > | Strange email about a "new service" Thread poster: Kate Tomkins
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| I agree with Sheila | Aug 4, 2015 |
I share the same indignation as Sheila. I did not even know that this was happening until I visited my own profile today (something I don't often do).
I feel that the profile I created on Proz, in good faith, is being used for purposes to which I did not give my prior agreement and that to prevent this, I would need to (a) know that this is happening (b) opt out.
| | | | Michael Beijer 
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| Luddite confusion (same old story) | Aug 4, 2015 |
Sheila Wilson wrote: Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
I actually found the feature that will allow me (as a translation buyer) to upload a document to be analysed, but you have to pay to test it. They don't seem over-anxious to tempt clients to actually order anything, do they? It's difficult to even find the part of the site where buyers are addressed. Hardly welcoming. How is TM-Town going to provide us with all these promised job opportunities if it doesn't welcome potential clients? On the other hand, the site welcomes those of us with TMs with open arms. The FAQs mention nothing about actually working with clients. Nothing about the actual process of contact between translator and client, negotiations, delivery etc. Zilch! It seems that clients and their jobs occupy a very secondary role. The main aim of the site is clearly to collect those TMs and glossaries. But why? Does the bio that Kevin Dias, TM-Town's owner, displays on the site give us any insight into the site's priorities? This is an extract: Before developing TM-Town I built an online CAT Tool called transdraft This couldn't be a ruse to populate your own TM so you can add MT to your very own CAT tool, could it, Kevin?
I don't want to insult you Sheila (or you, Tom), but you obviously don't entirely understand how MT works. A couple of our TMs isn't exactly going to get Kevin very far with "adding MT to transdraft". Also, that is quite an accusation you just made there ("This couldn't be a ruse to populate your own TM so you can add MT to your very own CAT tool, could it, Kevin?"), and in quite a public place. I hope you are aware of that.
I think that this whole discussion, and the other recent ones re TM-Town / privacy, etc. here on Proz, probably point to something important: TM-Town is most likely going to become frequented primarily by the more tech-savvy translators among us.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 13:22 GMT]
[edited to remove something confusing]
[Edited at 2015-08-04 13:25 GMT]
| | | | | The Killer Feature | Aug 4, 2015 |
Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
I actually found the feature that will allow me (as a translation buyer) to upload a document to be analysed, but you have to pay to test it.
And according to me, that is exactly the "killer feature," Siegfried. The ranking doesn't mean much to me, being able to access my own TMs in the cloud neither - even though it's pretty fast - but if a client can find me based upon my previous work, I'd be happy. And so will the client be, even though I'm highly unprofessional, of course. Anyway, the "matching" doesn't seem to work yet, "patent pending," so we'll wait and see.
Cheers,
Hans
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 09:50
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| No way am I a Luddite, Michael | Aug 4, 2015 |
Michael Beijer wrote:
I don't want to insult you Sheila (or you, Tom), but you obviously don't entirely understand how MT works. A couple of our TMs isn't exactly going to get Kevin very far with "adding MT to transdraft".
That's not at all insulting, Michael. No, I don't entirely understand how it works. I don't entirely understand how my phone works, or even a coffee machine for that matter. At 60 (nearly) I'm a real dunce with technology. But that doesn't mean I write on a slate and only eat what I can grow, does it? What I can see looks remarkably like intensive farming to me.
Also, that is quite an accusation you just made there ("This couldn't be a ruse to populate your own TM so you can add MT to your very own CAT tool, could it, Kevin?"), and in quite a public place. I hope you are aware of that.
Well, I hope I haven't fallen foul of any rules and laws. I made it a direct question to Kevin. He's welcome to refute it, in fact I hope he will.
I think that this whole discussion, and the other recent ones re TM-Town / privacy, etc. here on Proz, probably point to something important: TM-Town is most likely going to become frequented primarily by the more tech-savvy translators among us.
Well, I wish I could agree with you. I fear the opposite will happen and it will become the place where naive and desperate freelancers will be sucked dry and fed very little. But maybe this is the future: where those who are tech-savvy take advantage of those who aren't. If so, I'm fortunate in that it isn't a future that I'm going to be part of for long.
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Michael Beijer wrote:
I don't want to insult you Sheila (or you, Tom)....
I'm not entirely sure that I believe you. You may think (erroneously) that I don't know much about technology, but I do know how viral marketing works, and I beleve this is an example of it.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 13:40 GMT]
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Tom in London wrote: Michael Beijer wrote:
I don't want to insult you Sheila (or you, Tom).... I'm not entirely sure that I believe you. You may think (erroneously) that I don't know much about technology, but I do know how viral marketing works, and I beleve this is an example of it. [Edited at 2015-08-04 13:40 GMT]
Ha ha, if it is indeed a viral marketing campaign, we are all just feeding it attention in this thread
But seriously, it's all just business. If TM-Town succeeds, and I therefore get work, everybody's happy. I really don't see the problem. Of course, I might have a slightly different view of Kevin, seeing as how I regularly send him feature requests about TM-Town/CafeTran integration, etc. and actually think he is a really nice, decent guy.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 13:54 GMT]
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Michael Beijer wrote: Ha ha, if it is indeed a viral marketing campaign, we are all just feeding it attention in this thread
Ah - so you, too, know how it works.
Now how about another smiley?
And another?
Hey, let's go mad.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 14:40 GMT]
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| :-) × 1,000,000 | Aug 4, 2015 |
Tom in London wrote: Michael Beijer wrote: Ha ha, if it is indeed a viral marketing campaign, we are all just feeding it attention in this thread Ah - so you, too, know how it works. Now how about another smiley? And another? Hey, let's go mad. [Edited at 2015-08-04 14:40 GMT]
Of course I know what a viral marketing campaign is. What do you take me for, a Luddite?
I studied memetics in the 1990s.
Yours infectedly,
Host organism #6754
[Edited at 2015-08-04 14:58 GMT]
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Meta Arkadia wrote:
And according to me, that is exactly the "killer feature," Siegfried. .... if a client can find me based upon my previous work, I'd be happy. And so will the client be...
I fully agree, this would be the killer feature. Currently it is well hidden, and if it works, I would put it on the front page and I would make it available for free, to show that it works. I would not reveal the name and the contact data of the translator before the client paid, but I would show some evidence that I have one or more translators available who do match the text.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:01 GMT]
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| but seriously, folks | Aug 4, 2015 |
All joking aside though, for a moment, I agree with Sheila, in that this API thing should be automatically opt-out, until users actively opt in. And there should be a lot more transparency about the whole thing (which third parties are using it, how they are using it, etc.). It's not a good thing that most people have never even heard of the ... See more All joking aside though, for a moment, I agree with Sheila, in that this API thing should be automatically opt-out, until users actively opt in. And there should be a lot more transparency about the whole thing (which third parties are using it, how they are using it, etc.). It's not a good thing that most people have never even heard of the whole opt out facility @ http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (click it to see what I am talking about)
see also: "The API's have been available for many years, but it is only recently (this year) that they have begun to be used significantly. Your posting, and the recent increase in activity (at TM-Town, Motaword, etc.), makes me realize that now would be a good time to remind/inform all of our members of the existence of the API's, and the option to opt out -- which is here: http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (We have the option to opt out entirely now, we will be adding the option to opt out on a partner by partner basis.)" (–Henry Dotterer, SITE FOUNDER)
Maybe I'm a naïve, guileless, childlike fool, but I kind of trust Henry and Kevin (especially Kevin; I mean, how can you not trust a person (read: "geek") who is into Ruby?), and think that they are just two American guys, trying to make a dollar, while hopefully helping us make one or two, too.
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:14 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:41 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Rogue apostrophe | Aug 4, 2015 |
Michael Beijer wrote:
....."The API's have been available for many years....
That's a possessive. The API's what?
As in "The API's (missing word) have been available for many years...."
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:14 GMT]
| | | | ..... (X)
Local time: 17:50
| Please read the terms | Aug 4, 2015 |
Hi Sheila,
If you do not like TM-Town and do not wish to sign up, that is fine and I completely respect your view. However, please be fair and do not intentionally spread misinformation after I have already pointed you to the TM-Town terms of service. As it is clear you did not read them, I will repost them below.
Sheila Wilson wrote:
This couldn't be a ruse to populate your own TM so you can add MT to your very own CAT tool, could it, Kevin?
No. It is not. Not in any way. To be honest, transdraft has zero active users and I haven't touched the code since I started working on TM-Town last summer. There is just not enough time in the day. There are a ton of CAT tools out there, and I decided I wanted to make something different.
Anyway here are the TM-Town Terms of Service:
TM-Town Content Confidentiality and Data Usage Policies
By default, a translation memory ("TM") or any document that you load into TM-Town is treated as follows:
- It can be browsed online, and downloaded as a file, ONLY BY YOU. Other TM-Town users can not see or download it.
- TMs you upload can NOT be searched or leveraged by others.
- TMs you upload will NOT be sold or made public.
- The only information made available to others concerning a TM you upload is (1) the language pair, (2) the number of translation units, (3) the (up to three) tags you enter to categorize the content.
- It is possible to elect not to show even this information to others.
- TMs you upload are NOT used to train machine translation ("MT").
- TM-Town does NOT, and will NOT, learn, train or otherwise use the content of your TMs and glossaries to its own benefit. What TM-Town provides is the opposite: the opportunity for you, the translator, to benefit from your content.
- TM-Town’s matching algorithm takes into consideration such factors as the frequency with which terms appear in a given sample of text, and the frequency with which terms appear in all texts within a given language. A TM that you upload WILL be analyzed for term frequency.
- This type of analysis, and other such forms of processing, will not affect your TM file.
- The results of the term frequency analysis are NOT made public; terms that appear in your documents will not be disclosed to others.
- The results of fuzzy match or repetition calculations when comparing your documents against a potential document to be translated are strictly YOUR DATA and will never be shared or disclosed to a client or 3rd party (unless you choose to do so yourself).
- Features such as alignment, term extraction and semi-automated glossary generation are provided solely for your benefit. Extracted terms and glossaries generated are NOT shared with others (unless you choose to do so).
- The number of translation units in your TM files and the number of term concepts in your glossaries WILL be shown to others in your profile page (unless you request that it not be shown).
- TM-Town staff are able to access TMs. This is necessary for the purposes of providing customer service and optimizing the functionality of the TM-Town service.
- If you delete a TM that you have uploaded to TM-Town, it will no longer be stored at TM-Town in any form.
TM-Town staff reserves the right to respond to complaints or otherwise investigate copyright violations. TMs which are loaded in violation of any confidentiality agreements or copyright laws may be removed. In such cases, appropriate notice and an opportunity to dispute the finding will be provided.
- TM-Town will do its best not to lose any data that you upload to the service. However, you should keep local backups as well.
- The above treatment also applies to non-TM documents that you load into TM-Town.
While TM-Town makes it possible for translation buyers to meet and order translations from translators registered with TM-Town, TM-Town does not itself offer translation services to clients.
-------------------
Sheila Wilson wrote:
They don't seem over-anxious to tempt clients to actually order anything, do they? It's difficult to even find the part of the site where buyers are addressed. Hardly welcoming. How is TM-Town going to provide us with all these promised job opportunities if it doesn't welcome potential clients? On the other hand, the site welcomes those of us with TMs with open arms.
The FAQs mention nothing about actually working with clients. Nothing about the actual process of contact between translator and client, negotiations, delivery etc. Zilch! It seems that clients and their jobs occupy a very secondary role. The main aim of the site is clearly to collect those TMs and glossaries. But why?
Great question! The answer is that in November of 2014 I launched TM-Town as a brand new site. That means there were Zero translators and Zero clients. A new business, starting from nothing. At that point you are faced with the chicken and egg problem. Do you try and get clients and hope that having clients will attract translators, or do you try and get translators and hope that they will attract clients?
I'm not a sales person, I'm a developer; and for this reason I chose the latter. It is/was my belief that I could build a site that had tools that would be useful for translators...tools that were completely independent of "getting jobs" and could be useful for translators even if they did not get work immediately from TM-Town.
I've tried to be very transparent with translators not to expect to get jobs from the platform right away. It is right on TM-Town's forums and I have said it other times in other places: How will I receive job offers on TM-Town? Has anyone received translation jobs from this platform?.
I still have a lot of work ahead of me but I have received real feedback from real translators that the tools on TM-Town have been useful for them. They send me emails, make requests, and I try my best to keep up. Some tools on TM-Town include:
- Automatic alignment
- Term extraction and glossary creation
- OCR
- Productivity analysis
- Search (your TMs and terms)
- Integration with CafeTran
So, the answer to your question is that the focus of TM-Town has been to attract the best translators to the platform by offering (hopefully) useful tools. With a directory of a certain amount of translators I think the site becomes much more attractive for end clients or PMs looking for translators and I think that side will start to pick up.
So Sheila, just like you are trying to earn a living and build your translation business I am also trying to earn a living and build a site that will hopefully prove valuable for freelance translators. If you don't like what I am making, that is fine and I respect the opinions you have expressed and the reasons for your reservations. I only ask that you please do not spread misinformation.
Kevin
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| I knew I could count on you, Tom Lud… | Aug 4, 2015 |
Tom in London wrote: Michael Beijer wrote:
....."The API's have been available for many years.... That's a possessive. The API's what? As in "The API's (missing word) have been available for many years...." [Edited at 2015-08-04 15:14 GMT]
…to spot any tiny errors in people’s hastily written, perhaps emotionally-laden posts, which might seriouslylylyly affect readers’s ["readers’"?] understanding of said so-called [by Michael Beijer] "hastily written, emotionally-laden posts" [insert extra special smiley here, and then blow on imaginary trumpet, signifying Complete and Total Defeat of Team Prozicles].
"API's" is in fact how a Dutchman would have written it. In Dutch, for some reason, plurals have apostrophes!
auto's = cars
API's = APIs
etc.
And the virus continues growing!
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:28 GMT]
| | | | | More thoughts on the API as such | Aug 4, 2015 |
Michael Beijer wrote: All joking aside though, for a moment, I agree with Sheila, in that this API thing should be automatically opted out, until users actively opt in. And there should be a lot more transparency about the whole thing (which third parties are using it, how they are using it, etc.). It's not a good thing that most people have never even heard of the whole opt out facility @ http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (click it to see what I am talking about) see also: "The API's have been available for many years, but it is only recently (this year) that they have begun to be used significantly. Your posting, and the recent increase in activity (at TM-Town, Motaword, etc.), makes me realize that now would be a good time to remind/inform all of our members of the existence of the API's, and the option to opt out -- which is here: http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (We have the option to opt out entirely now, we will be adding the option to opt out on a partner by partner basis.)" (–Henry Dotterer, SITE FOUNDER)
I agree, Michael.
I don't really see this as a matter of "tech savvy." To me, it is more a matter of professional respect. Our profiles should not be considered a commodity to be bought and sold indiscriminately.
The ProZ API should certainly be opt-in rather than opt-out, and this should be on a per-partner basis. That seems obvious.
I believe that new purchasers of API access - new partners - should also be required to present their projects in the forums, with links to their websites, explicit terms of use, and so on, before any "opt-in" becomes available. This would allow members to decide whether they would like to provide what amounts to a kind of endorsement of legitimacy through their participation. "Opt-in" doesn't mean much if it's not clear what one is "opting in" to.
The problem for me lies in 1) the presumption of opt-in, 2) the fact that it is an "all-or-nothing" choice right now, and, especially 3) the lack of information provided about and by API partners. These factors make the API program in its current form seem very unprofessional to me and make me not want to be involved with anyone who uses it.
Once again, here's the "opt-out" link: http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api
[Edited at 2015-08-04 15:43 GMT]
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| Agree with pretty much everything you just said. | Aug 4, 2015 |
John Holland wrote: Michael Beijer wrote: All joking aside though, for a moment, I agree with Sheila, in that this API thing should be automatically opted out, until users actively opt in. And there should be a lot more transparency about the whole thing (which third parties are using it, how they are using it, etc.). It's not a good thing that most people have never even heard of the whole opt out facility @ http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (click it to see what I am talking about) see also: "The API's have been available for many years, but it is only recently (this year) that they have begun to be used significantly. Your posting, and the recent increase in activity (at TM-Town, Motaword, etc.), makes me realize that now would be a good time to remind/inform all of our members of the existence of the API's, and the option to opt out -- which is here: http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api (We have the option to opt out entirely now, we will be adding the option to opt out on a partner by partner basis.)" (–Henry Dotterer, SITE FOUNDER) I agree, Michael. I don't really see this as a matter of "tech savvy." [Yes, I was just being expansive, as is my wont ] To me, it is more a matter of professional respect. Our profiles should not be considered a commodity to be bought and sold indiscriminately. The ProZ API should certainly be opt-in rather than opt-out, and this should be on a per-partner basis. That seems obvious. I believe that new purchasers of API access - new partners - should also be required to present their projects in the forums, with links to their websites, explicit terms of use, and so on, before any "opt-in" becomes available. This would allow members to decide whether they would like to provide what amounts to a kind of endorsement of legitimacy through their participation. "Opt-in" doesn't mean much if it's not clear what one is opting into. The problem for me lies in 1) the presumption of opt-in, 2) the fact that it is an "all-or-nothing" choice right now, and, especially 3) the lack of information provided about and by API partners. These factors make the API program in its current form seem very unprofessional to me and make me not want to be involved with anyone who uses it. Once again, here's the "opt-out" link: http://www.proz.com/?sp=settings_tpx_api
And hopefully Proz.com will too.
Michael
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