tag:www.tm-town.com,2005:/blogTM-Town Blog2023-02-18T07:49:10Ztag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/812017-09-05T06:26:58Z2017-09-05T06:26:58ZTranslation is Affected by High Context and Low Context CulturesThere are two different cultures when it comes to language. One is high-context culture which is how much of the communication in a society takes place using context specific cues which aren’t necessarily the spoken word. This could include the tone of the voice and body language. The other culture is what is called low-context culture, where communication takes place through language with very specific linguistic rules.Translation services need to be aware of the role of culture in translation so that when decoding a language the culture of the speakers is taken into consideration.Most of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America are considered to be high-context culture countries. In these particular countries, the language is not necessarily specific and may be flowery in nature. A story related by a Japanese business leader to his counterpart, who was American, complained that, “When we say 1 word, we understand 10, but you have to say 10 in order to understand 1.”In the low context cultures, as in Western Europe and North America, they value getting straight to the point, where precise words with precise meanings are valued and used. When presented with a translation job it’s important to know the role of culture in translation and whether the language speakers are low or high context in order to ensure the right emphasis is created in the translation.Typically, translations across cultures involve a lot more than translating individual words. These are the constraints of machine translations but aren’t applicable to human translators. One of the most important effects of the cultural context in writing is how much detail is required in order to convey a point. Those writing in a high-context culture assume that everyone already understands both the meanings and the contexts so any details that someone from outside may require in order to help them to gain an understanding of the foundation of an argument are not included. A low context culture typically assumes that everyone interprets writing literally so they tend to say exactly what they mean without taking into consideration cultural variation.If in doubt of the role of culture in translation conduct some research on the culture which is to be the recipient of the translated document.Sharon Wilsontag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/802017-06-27T06:15:04Z2023-02-18T07:49:10ZWhy Agencies Should Provide Full TMs with JobsAgencies often refuse to deliver a full TM with a job, preferring to insert 100+% hits only or perhaps the highest TM hit into the xliff file delivered to the translator.
This short article explains why this practice is detrimental to all involved.
Agencies are often reluctant to release a full TM, feeling that it could be ”stolen” while many a PM is simply not aware that inserted target text as mentioned above is a poor substitute for a full and comprehensive TM.
The most common problem is that, where the agency only inserts 100+% hits, many target segments are therefore left empty.
Yet if the agency were to insert the highest fuzzy TM hits, many key words might occur in the inserted target text.
So you might think that inserting the highest fuzzy hit would be satisfactory for all but unfortunately, this is not the case as the highest fuzzy hit may not contain the key words or phrases that the translator needs.
But that does not mean that the same source key words and phrases and their translations are not present in the full TM. Agencies and PMs would do well to pause here and carefully consider this.
The following image of an English text with a pseudo translation (English words spelt backwards) exemplifies this point. I can assure the readers that “cat” was indeed previously translated and is in the TM as “tac” (cat spelt backwards) but it has not been inserted in the following case as only 90%+ fuzzy matches were provided with this xliff and our segment (3) did not qualify.
Perhaps it is quickly worth saying what I mean by key words as “cat” is provided as a simple, but rather unimaginative one.
If we leave aside creative marketing material where the use of synonyms is often encouraged, most clients want consistency.
They don’t want a keyword in the source text to be translated as “appraisal”, “evaluation” and “report” to give a simple example that everyone can relate to.
Or to give a more technical example, it is generally undesirable and confusing for the reader if we refer to the same object as a “pipe”, “hose” and “tube”, especially where we may need to use two or more of these words in our translation to differentiate between two or more similar objects. So a “pipe” should always be a “pipe”, a “hose” should always be a “hose” and a “tube” should always be a “tube”, no matter who is translating on this occasion.
Arbitrary choices too come up far more often than an agency or its PMs might imagine. It can involve the spelling of certain words e.g.” travelling” vs. “traveling”, a hyphen e.g. “work-place” vs.“workplace”, word order e.g. “a 55 cm diameter wheel” vs. “a wheel of 55 cm diameter”, whether to translate a proper noun or not e.g. “Lac de Neufont” or “Neufont Lake” etc. and such questions cannot always be settled by googling as both versions will of course come up in the search results.
Reference material delivered with the job does help but this in turn means either aligning PDFs or DOCs beforehand, and we all know how difficult and time-consuming that can be, or checking the source language documents to see if the word has occurred in the past and then looking through the corresponding target reference language material in roughly the same location to see what the translation was on a number of occasions.
As I sometimes say in despair to my clients. “For Christ sake, that’s exactly why TMs and TBs were invented!”
Another less common but just as troublesome problem sometimes occurs when a proof-reader is given a bilingual file without the TM that the translator had at his/her disposal while translating.
In the somewhat idealized screenshot below, the proof-reader can see that the translator had a 94% hit from their TM when translating the segment. But the proof-reader cannot see what the difference is between the original TM entry and the translated segment to proofread. So it is like looking for a needle in a haystack to check that the modification of the segment has been made correctly by the translator.
Now if the same file is delivered with the TM the translator had while translating, the proof-reader would see in the right hand column of memoQ:
The changed source text is clearly marked - in red with strikethrough for deletion and underlined for additions - and the proof-reader now knows exactly what needs to be checked in the target text translation.
This is especially important to translators/proofreaders when agencies say to you “a job of 10,000 words but only 100 words have been changed. It remains to know which ones!SafeTextag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/792017-06-13T06:23:38Z2017-06-13T06:23:38ZHow to Translate Top Quality Foreign SubtitlesForeign subtitling is a highly specialised field, and one that is seeing constant growth and development with the explosion of online video content and new regulations coming into place around video on demand content. Anyone working within the translation sector knows that good translation is an art form. It’s impossible to mechanically translate precisely from one language to another. There are just too many syntactical and cultural differences between languages to allow for a word for word translation. When working with documents, making decisions on what words to use, what structures to retain and what elements to localise is tough, but add a video requiring highly accurate timings (to 1/100th of a second) to the mix and it’s a whole new ball game.
We’re looking at the key quality checks that subtitle translators should make when translating top quality foreign subtitles.
Restricting Subtitle Line Lengths
Most clients will have guidelines from their video service provider on line length requirements. There can be significant differences on line length expectations from client to client, usually anywhere between 25 and 55 characters. The most commonly used subtitle or closed caption character limit in the video production industry is 42, so if you’re unsure, consider using this as standard.
When working on translating foreign subtitles, it’s important to remember that some languages are typically more word or character heavy than others. For instance, if you are working from English to Chinese subtitles, lines may be shortened from the original .srt file. Similarly, if you are translating English subtitles into German, lines may become up to 50% longer, and timings may have to be amended to keep the video and captions in sync.
Maintaining Foreign Subtitle Structure
Subtitle lines don’t often come as full sentences. They are usually broken up into small, manageable chunks and split according to the best syntax in the source language. As any good freelance translator knows, languages can differ greatly in the structural composition of sentences. When translating a document, it’s often the case that a translator will make choices which change some of the arrangement of words and even whole clauses.
When it comes to foreign subtitles, however, the structural differences between languages can cause some issues. For instance, in almost all foreign videos, you will likely find universal or recognisable words or phrases within the foreign speech. When translating subtitles, if the translated caption is restructured too much, it may move too far away from a recognisable word or name, making the subtitles appear to be out of sync.
Maintaining a Reasonable Reading Speed
Reading speed is really important when it comes to both English and foreign subtitles. Subtitles aren’t much use if they disappear from the screen so quickly that the viewer doesn’t have a chance to read them. Professional subtitling and closed captioning software is expensive but should provide a feature to set a limit on reading speed (usually around 250 words per minute maximum). It’s worth browsing around, but free software online doesn’t usually have these features.
Double Checking the Coding for Foreign Characters
Encoding is really important when it comes to subtitles. Saving with the wrong coding selected can cause characters to display incorrectly, read as complete gibberish or worst of all, as a long series of question marks! Professional software such as WINCAPS or SWIFT will give the subtitle writer the option to select a language and automatically save in the write format. Free or inexpensive software, on the other hand, may not allow for this option and instead, the coding will need to be input manually. For this reason, when working in writing and translating foreign subtitles, it’s crucial to know the difference between the different options and which is applicable to you. E.g. ANSI or UTF-8.
Double Checking for Narrative
Closed captions and some subtitles should include forced narrative (writing that displays onscreen with the video). This is standard practice when it comes to English subtitles but is absolutely crucial when using subtitles to translate a video from one language to another. Forgetting to translate forced narrative can deprive foreign audiences of important information, and missing this out as a subtitle translator could get you a bad reputation.
Considering Placement and Formatting
Whilst some clients won’t specify formatting requirements in terms of font or the visual aesthetics of their subtitles, it’s good practice to set your own standards. If you are creating .srt files that will be passed onto a client who will deal with adding them onto their videos, you won’t need to consider placement or formatting options as these are not available for basic .srt files. However, if your client requires you to burn the subtitles onto their foreign video, you will need to take care to make good placement and formatting choices. This includes: appropriate use of bold and italics; colour changes where requested to denote different speakers; placement changes to avoid clashing onscreen text or reading difficulty and use of background colours or the use of pop-on or roll-up subtitling.
Jodene Antonioutag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/782017-04-12T05:45:12Z2017-04-12T05:45:12ZTM-Town API Use Cases for Translation AgenciesRecently TM-Town has received inquires from various language service providers asking how the TM-Town API can be used in their own TMS or online tool. In today's blog post I'll detail some potential use cases for the TM-Town API including:
How to find and message the most appropriate professional(s) for a translation job.
How to find relevant glossaries for your translators based on the parameters of a client job.
By using the TM-Town API, language service providers can more easily automate their internal processes and create a custom solution that can connect directly to their in-house TMS system.
Finding and messaging the most appropriate freelance professional(s) for a translation job
Instead of having to visit the TM-Town (or ProZ.com) website every time your agency needs to find service providers for a new job, you can instead create a solution using the TM-Town API which will allow all of this to happen right within your agency's own TMS system.
In this particular case, you will be making use of two TM-Town API endpoints:
Nakōdo Search https://www.tm-town.com/api/nakodo-search-data-only
Job Message https://www.tm-town.com/api/job-message
Step 1 - Get the relevant translators
When a new job comes into your TMS system, you can use the TM-Town Nakōdo Search API endpoint to find the most suitable freelance translation professionals for the job. Your API request will send 3 pieces of information to TM-Town:
The source language of the document that needs translation.
The target language of the document that needs translation.
The text (or a sample of the text) that needs to be translated.
With this information TM-Town's Nakōdo search engine will return data on translators who have translated similar material in the past; sorted by Nakōdo's Similarity Score.
As the data is now in your hands you can use your agency's own criteria to determine how to display, rank, or choose the translators whom you would like to message.
Step 2 - Message translators
The Nakōdo API results from Step 1 above will not return the translator's email address as this is private information; therefore, once you have determined the freelance professionals that are of interest to you, you will need to use TM-Town's Job Message endpoint to send an enquiry. For this API endpoint you will need to send the following parameters to TM-Town:
The TM-Town username of the translator you would like to message (the username will be returned to you in Step 1 as part of the Nakōdo results).
The name of the sender of the message (typically the name of the project manager).
The email address of the sender.
The source language of the document that needs translation.
The target language of the document that needs translation.
The budget for the translation job (e.g. Entry Level: less than $0.09/word | Intermediate: $0.09/word - $0.15/word | Expert: greater than $0.15/word).
The text of the message to send to the translator.
That's it! You just messaged your next service providers without leaving your agency's TMS system. Of course, this is only one specific use case. The great thing about using APIs is that there is a lot of flexibility around how you can design for your own specific use cases.
Finding relevant glossaries for your translators based on the parameters of a client job.
This use case is pertinent for those agencies looking to equip their service providers with the best tools for the job. In some cases a client will provide a terminology file to use with a job; however, in others they may not. For those times, you could utilize the following set up to inform translators of potential relevant glossaries for the job at hand.
This example makes use of following TM-Town API endpoint:
Marketplace Term Search https://www.tm-town.com/api/marketplace-terms
When a new job enters your TMS system, you can query the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace API against terms from the text to be translated to see if there may be any relevant glossaries to alert your service providers to.
For this API endpoint you will need to send the following parameters to TM-Town:
A query to search the source terms of the glossaries in the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace.
The source language of the glossaries you would like to search (optional)
The target language of the glossaries you would like to search (optional)
The TM-Town API will return details on any matching glossaries including the title, overview, price, seller, as well as a URL link to purchase the glossary. Using this information you could then notify your service providers of this potential resource.
Hopefully the above two examples give you some ideas of ways that you might incorporate TM-Town into your agency's internal work flow to make your team more efficient and productive. Nate and I love working on the API, so if you have any requests or additional endpoints that you would like to see, please email us.
Thank you for reading and please share with any LSPs or agencies who you think might benefit from a TM-Town API integration.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/772017-04-04T00:50:48Z2017-04-04T00:50:48ZReal Translation Job, or Scam? A Simple Checklist for TranslatorsAs cyber criminals are getting more sophisticated every year, freelance translators need to remain just as cautious in order to stay safe from financial, and other, risks.
In this article, let's take a look at some basic steps you can take to stay safe and protect your business.
What is a Scam? How’s it Different from Spam?
Spam is a word that is used relatively broadly in today’s world, but the spam that is truly annoying is the automated junk that usually contains a potentially harmful link, and text that usually doesn’t make much sense. This sort of spam is usually completely automated and can be picked up pretty easily by email clients and other messaging services.
A scam, on the other hand, is a much more manual process for the sender. There are a number of scams, but the one TM-Town members reported is called a phishing scam, where the attacker pretends to be from a reputable company in order to attain personal or financial details. This type of message is much harder for email clients to filter out automatically, so it is up to the receiver to perform due diligence.
For example, a common phisher tactic is known as an overpayment scam. Those scams that are designed for translators do a convincing job once you've taken the initial bait. Those who show interest to the original job message can usually expect a document to translate, being promised payment once they sent their bank account details. Those who go on to translate that document (about 5000 words) will soon have the unfortunate discovery that they will not be paid for that work. In the final stages of this scam, you'll be warned of an accounting error which requires you to send back a partial refund. They even send a tracking number for a fake check they send through FedEx.
As you can see, the attackers take considerable strides to keep the con going once you've taken the initial steps. This is because they know each step a translator takes, it becomes harder to recognize the scam as they are now invested in the transaction. <b>So how should translators spot early warning signs that can help prevent harmful or time-wasting outcomes?
A Simple Checklist to Identify a Scam
1. Are there any reviews on the ProZ.com Blueboard?
A good first step before taking any job is to consult the ProZ.com Blueboard. If a record exists, you'll be able to see feedback from other translators.
2. Is the sender really reputable?
If the sender claims to represent a real company, and claims to have a position like an HR Manager, that person should be sending from a company email. If they aren’t, and the rest of the message is void of the other items in this list, simply send a reply asking for them to send more details from a company email account. Usually, this is enough to break their flow, and you won’t hear from them again.
3. Do they write like a professional?
Is the message full of short sentences with bad English and other simple mistakes? Not a good sign, especially when combined with a yahoo or gmail account. Always trust your translator spidey senses when they start to tingle from easily avoidable linguistic mistakes.
4. Are they a ghost?
If they claim to be an employee at a company with a title, but yet not be present on the employee or team section of the website, that is a problem. So you might do a Google search to find out more, but that brings us to number four…
5. Are they using a famous or popular name?
If you search Google for “Name at Company LinkedIn” only to discover a best selling author or someone else who is famous, it’s doubtful they’re the sender of your message. In today’s world, most people who contact others as a representative of a company will be on LinkedIn with the name of their company and title. If they are not, this should raise an red flag.
If the simple tests above all come out negatively, most likely the message is not worth your time and you can simply delete it.
The above checklist should be enough to save you the wasted time of translating a bogus document and revealing sensitive information to someone who plans to use it maliciously.
Should you find yourself feeling uncertain after you already initiated a string of replies from someone, you might check the ProZ.com scam alert center, or post a message to the scam forum to see what others think. It’s always better to tread a little more closely on the side of playing it too safe.
How about your own experiences? Comment below about what types of scams you’ve received in the past, how you knew they were scams, or any thing else you think might be helpful to the overall translator community.Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/752017-03-21T00:03:19Z2017-03-21T00:03:19Z6 Tips To Be a Reliable and Professional Language Project ManagerI have been working as a translator for over seven years now and as soon as I finished my Masters in Translation I was hired and then promoted to Language Team Leader in an online travel agency.
Translating into your language and coordinating translation projects for different languages is not the same thing, obviously. However, there are many questions you do not even think about until you sit on your desk and start your new role. How do you become that ideal Project Manager that is reliable but at the same time flexible? How do you navigate between corporate relationships and your translation team? What are the top five skills you need to work on to make sure you are fair to your team, your company and last but not least yourself?
This is what I learnt when I became a Linguistic Project Manager.
DEADLINES are FRENEMIES
Do not agree or commit to deadlines that seem difficult to meet without previously doing a risk assessment. I understand the translation industry is a very competitive market but we have to think about being professionals that know how to manage people as well. Sometimes the best skill is knowing how to say ‘NO’. My best advice is to talk about deadlines and potential issues from the beginning of the project. Deadlines could be your best friends if you are honest with yourself and what your team can achieve, prepare a detailed project calendar and are ready for unexpected issues to arise. If you do not do this, well, you can be lucky and meet deadlines or experience very stressful situations.
OPEN COMMUNICATION
The quality of your multilingual project depends on the amount of time you put into discussing translation concerns with your team. When briefing your team about a new translation project make a point to understand what is confusing or what needs more clarification for each language. Get this information as soon as possible and deliver it to your translators with enough time to ask further questions. The idea behind this is to open a communication channel where everyone feels valuable when contributing to clarifying information. It is, in fact, a bonding experience and makes everyone feel part of the team.
DOUBLE CHECK, WITH BALANCE
There is a fine line between being cautious and being a worrier. Find the balance in your project management skills, work on your plan B way in advance and add a buffer when you negotiate deadlines with the parties involved (translators, clients and third parties). Check periodically with them so you are aware of how the project is progressing at all times.
YOUR WORD, YOUR WORK?
Translators are not responsible for what the client is saying in the documents but all of us have previously encountered difficult situations where being impartial is hard due to the source language’s message. As a project manager you should discuss this openly with your translators and offer them your assistance to reach a professional solution for the problem. Nevertheless, when this poses an ethical dilemma trust yourself and remove the translator or yourself from the project at the same time you disclose the problem to your client, always taking into account confidentiality. One of the best things about working with different people is to understand that different cultures have different perspectives about current issues. You are always learning, which takes me to the next point.
KEEP ON LEARNING, KEEP ON GROWING
Continue your work in the translation field and make time to be a translator when possible. Only when you experience those issues you know how to be the best language team leader your team will have. Dedicate time for your professional development and when the budget allows it, treat your team to a course that is valuable for their work and their professional careers. Investing in education will always pay off.
CONSTRUCTIVELY HELPFUL
Everybody makes mistakes and whoever says they don’t is lying. For that reason we need to make sure we are patient during learning processes and cooperate to get the best result for our translation project. As a team leader, be firm when the same mistake is done multiple times but also be helpful and investigate why is that happening and how can you help the person that is failing repeatedly. Measure your words and try to be fair. If you feel too stressed or too upset wait until you clear your head before being the one that makes the biggest mistake.Maria Lorenzotag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/742017-03-14T03:07:24Z2017-03-14T03:07:24Z10 Qualities Only Professional Translators Can Add to Your ProjectTranslation is thought of by many people as a field which anybody with bilingual or multilingual ability can handle. This is not a very accurate way of thinking about the profession, however.
This article is going to provide ten reasons why it’s beneficial to hire a professional translator, as opposed to simply hiring someone with multilingual abilities but perhaps lacking the rigorous training and education of a professional.
So the first question to answer is...
What is a professional translator?
Translation is a profession in which an individual receives specialized training at colleges, universities or within translation associations of a certain country in order to transform written text from one language to another.
What does that training really entail, though? A student of translation specialises in linguistics with two or more languages. This may be a native speaker of one language and trained in depth on that language and/or other languages in their rules, culture and uses in specific contexts. In addition to this study, they also receive training on how to best handle the translation process as well.
Therefore, translation offered by a professional is like any other admirable profession such as law, administration, engineering or any other.
The above discussion helps to define what a translator is, and the skills and training that go into becoming a professional translator, but there are ten characteristics that translators typically possess that make them stand out compared to a bilingual speaker.
The 10 Qualities of Professional Translators
Among other issues that professional or specialised translators may learn in her/his programme of study that a multilingual or bilingual speaker may not are as listed below:
Passion. Translators tend to be very passionate about their translation work. They use all their means and effort to deliver every project in excellent shape, as if it was their own baby.
Translation Skills. A good translator must have a specific linguistic education. They should master not only the foreign language they work with, but also the skills of translation (as discussed in the previous section).
Curiosity. A translator is curious and motivated to keep on learning new words and expressions. The learning process of a translator is never-ending.
Rich Vocabulary. A good translator must have a wide lexicon, not only in the foreign language but also in their mother tongue. This will make the translation process easier and the quality of the translation higher. Translators also acquire technical terms in specific fields, such as business, law, sciences, engineering, etc…
Clarity. A good translator’s goal is to express the idea of the source text as clearly as possible, without ambiguity. They should avoid difficult structures when they can use simple ones.
Honesty. Translators are humans after all, therefore it is normal for them to not know some expressions or words. Nevertheless they shouldn’t just skip it, but they should conduct research and note it down for future reference.
Humble Pride. A good translator should always deliver a translation that they can be proud of, but at the same time be humble enough to accept possible corrections from the editor/proofreader. The most important thing in the end is always the quality of the translation.
Translation Quality. A good translator should be obsessed with quality.
Resources. In order to achieve the aforementioned quality, a good translator should use all available resources at their disposal.
Accuracy. A good translator should provide an exact transfer of information. Despite it being tempting sometimes, the translator should not correct the source text, trying to maintain its “spirit” instead.
Final thoughts and wrapping up
Apart from the above qualities that a professional or specialized translator should possess through effective learning and practice in their academic career, s/he may also have specific translation techniques depending on the client’s requirements. For example, some clients and documents need word by word translation, others literal, semantic or communicative. Thus the multilingual or bilingual speaker may lack the experience of knowing which techniques s/he should apply to the document.
Not only that, but translation has a specific process in which a translator needs to follow to make the translation work more effective; utilizing that process, the professional translator will take many considerations into account in order to make the translated document of the highest possible quality and free from any avoidable errors.
It is high time now for managers and people wishing to hire individuals for translation works to consider specialisations and professionalism as they do when hiring engineers, doctors, lawyers or any other career professional.Athumani Issatag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/732017-03-07T02:12:47Z2017-03-07T02:12:47ZHire the Artist and the Engineer: How Professional Translators WorkDo you use the spellchecker when you are writing a text? Nearly everyone does.
It is possible to eliminate any spelling errors from your text by carefully reviewing every word of it. But it is very efficient to run a spellchecker and therefore have the computer assist you with that task. So what you are doing at that moment is to use a specialized tool to help you with a specific task. The spellchecker is a “tool of the trade” for writing. And you get your task done faster and with more quality than doing it manually.
The same reasoning applies to translators. They also use specialized tools of the trade to deliver to you translations that are done faster and with more quality. Could a translator simply work with Word? Yes. But most translators don’t. The same way that you did with the spell checker, translators let the computer assist them with the translation. And that is the reason why something called CAT tools has the feline acronym expanded as Computer Assisted Translation tools.
So how does the computer assist translators?
Spellchecker
Yes, it does that. And you know what happens.
Things that were written before
Imagine that it is January and you created a beautiful report. Your boss, she loves it, and the people that have you as the boss, they love it as well. Life is good. Comes February, and you notice that the overall structure will stay the same, the sections are all good. The content is going to change a little. In January we “exceeded expectations” and in February we only “met expectations”. When you explain that performance, some things stay the same, such as the “the economy is growing strong”. And some new things appeared such as “there is uncertainty in the market”.
You make a copy of the January report, rename it as February, and start making the necessary changes. But you are not going to rewrite everything from scratch, are you? So what you are doing at that moment is reusing content that you created before. Translators do exactly the same thing as you do. They have specialized tools that read a sentence and provides them with the translation that they had created before. It is a smart tool, so it even provides translations that are very similar to what you need. Because the tool is remembering what the translator wrote before, these pieces of the past are called Translation Memories.
It makes the translations faster, consistent with what was done before and therefore, yes, the translations have better quality. Better and faster because of “tools of the trade”. Again.
Terminology
You are in charge of the suppliers of your company. You write instructions and communicate with them all the time. You have a relationship with them, it is a good one and you would like to keep it that way. So you came to the conclusion that it would be best to use the term “partners” to call your suppliers. It has this idea that “we are in this together” (we actually are). And it is less impersonal, less commercial than “suppliers”. It is also better than “providers”. And absolutely not, we do not want to call them “vendors”, too financial and disposable. So you made up your mind. Let’s call them “partners”.
Now, how do you guarantee that everyone will use “partner” every time, in every document? It is not obvious, is it? You try this: create a checklist. That checklist contains a step saying:
Search for “supplier”, “provider” and “vendor” and change to “partner” if appropriate.
This actually works and you are one happy person.
The translators do a very similar thing. They have a glossary, where they capture the preferred translations for important terms. So you decided that “partner” is a really important word. The translator will add “partner” as the English word and will add a nice, well thought translation for that word that conveys the exact message that you have in English. When the translation is in progress, the translator is using that magic CAT tool that I told you about. They actually have a window there that shows “partner” and the perfect translation for it. It also highlights the word “partner” in the English segment that you wrote. Nice, isn’t it? In case the translator misses one of those, at the end of the translation they can run a “glossary check”. The computer assists the translator by going through the text, finding the word in English and checking if the translation contains the correct word. If it doesn’t, the translator will see a message saying “Houston, we have a problem”. No, it does not say that. It says “the translation does not match what is in the glossary”. Then the translator can make corrections.
This is so nice that you wish you had a tool like this for the English source, don’t you? Yes, me too…
So what you saw with the glossary here and with the very smart translation memories is a kind of high tech feature on tools of the trade. It is like an engineer thing. Which brings us to my final message to you.
Translators are artists of the words. But when they use these high tech specialized tools, they are being the engineers of words. That is what you get when you hire a professional translator: the artist and the engineer. What is not to like?Silvio Picininitag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/722017-02-28T02:40:21Z2017-02-28T02:40:21ZEnglish to Bengali Translation Online: Some Critical Thoughts and CasesWell, let me introduce myself, at first. I’m a Bangladeshi, and my mother tongue is Bengali. There are people in India too whose mother tongue is Bengali. Actually, thanks to the politicians, Bengal was historically divided in two, and when the colonial British left India in 1947, they left behind a partitioned India. One part became Pakistan and the other remained as India. A plebiscite held before the partition, and based on the result, the western part of Bengal, with the majority of the population being Hindu, became part of India and the Muslim-majority eastern part joined Pakistan with a new name; East Pakistan. Later, in 1971, East Pakistan became the new nation of Bangladesh, followed by a 9-month War of Independence.
Well, it’s not a history blog. What I mention is necessary to understand what I’m going to write about in the succeeding sections. So, readers, please excuse me for the way I’ve started the blog. I’m actually here to tell you something on translation. Let me come to the point very quickly.
My 5th grader son is fond of watching some specific programs on TV that are either aired by an Indian version of Discovery Channel, or by Asian TV. These programs were originally made in English but were repackaged in dubbed Bengali for the West Bengal and Bangladesh markets. He often says, “Well, Pa, why do these people speak Bengali in this way?” One day, when I replied, “What’s your problem?,” he then said, “their Bengali sounds weird. We’re not speaking in that way.”
Well, it’s not my son’s reaction alone but many people in my community feel as such. So, what’s the problem, really? Translators aren’t good enough to capture the language? Not really. The elephant in the room is something different. I’m here to discuss that. But before doing so, I want to tell you something more about myself again, and for that I’m begging to be excused again.
I’m a linguist by training, and as such, translation has been my companion since the days of my undergrad program in English Language and Literature. I had to translate literary pieces as part of my course. Those were the days when translation (from English to Bengali or Bengali to English) used to be done manually and handwritten from printed texts. I had never been one of the best translators but I had the opportunity to learn from my teachers and editors. Though I’ve translated many pieces of diverse discipline in between, I entered into the world of online translation after retiring from active service forty years later. I’m now seeing how “cheap” translation has become; I’m seeing why it has been so, and possibly how humble it has becomes thank to the advent of software-based machine translation.
Today, I see that translating text online is as “easy” as clicking a button. But will automated services ever really be enough to break down the boundaries between us in all language pairs? Not likely; esp. when the translation is English <> Bengali. Let me explain why.
Yes, I know that one of the most popular and successful applications of artificial intelligence is machine translation, and how it has to go through many ups and downs after many incidents that completely mistranslated what is wanted. But today, machine translation has become statistical, and we see statistical machine translation that leverages the vast amount of available translated corpuses in major language pairs that have access to a lot of texts from official governments and also from embassies, and United Nations that publish texts both in English and other languages.
As these sources contain good quality texts, some languages, especially the major global languages used by the UN systems, were powered by the machine translation systems. While there is room for improvement still, machine translation of some language pairs has made significant progress and the translators of those pairs use those resources extensively, utilizing various CAT tools.
But what about other languages, such as Bengali? Though, for example, Google Translate claims that it can handle over 100 languages, let’s see how it handles English to Bengali. Our model test case (case #1) would use this two-slot sentence that is generated automatically by converting voice to text:
1. We wanted to break the big obstacle, আমরা শেষ বড় বাধা ভাঙতে চেয়েছিলেন,
2. which was the breaking of the bridge. সেতুর ভাঙ্গাসহ ছিল.
Now, let’s see what it brings when I used subtitling software to translate this two-slot sentence humanly.
1. We wanted to break the last big obstacle, আমরা শেষ বড় বাধাটি অতিক্রম করতে চেয়েছিলাম,
2. which was the breaking of the bridge. যেটি ছিল ব্রিজটি ভেঙ্গে ফেলা।
But, to my judgment, the sentence can be better translated simply like this, which is more close to what we the Bengalis usually say: আমরা ব্রিজটি ভাঙ্গার শেষ বড় বাধাটি অতিক্রম করতে চেয়েছিলাম।
Take another example (case #2) where the source text in English was taken from a published article and translation was done humanly (wasn’t done using software and the English order in the sentence was avoided to make the Bengali translation more reader-friendly). The English passage was:
“Most days, Julio César Imperatori’s tiny restaurant in Old Havana is packed with tourists who have flocked to the Cuban capital since the Obama administration moved to end a half century of enmity and normalized relations with the Communist island.”
And the Bengali translation humanly done was: “ওবামা প্রশাসন যখন কিউবার সাথে অর্ধ-শতবর্ষের শত্রুতার সম্পর্ক শেষ করার পদক্ষেপ গ্রহন করে ও কম্যুনিস্ট দ্বীপটির সাথে সম্পর্ক স্বাভাবিক করার উদ্যোগ নেয় তখন থেকে পর্যটকরা দলবেঁধে সেদেশটির রাজধানীর দিকে ছুটতে থাকে, ও প্রায় সব দিনই জুলিও সিজার ইম্পারেতরির পুরাতন হাভানায় অবস্থিত ছোট্ট রেস্তোরাঁটি পর্যটকে ভরা থাকে।“
Had the translation been done keeping the English order, the Bengali translation would be: “সব দিনই জুলিও সিজার ইম্পারেতরির পুরাতন হাভানায় অবস্থিত ছোট্ট রেস্তোরাঁটি পর্যটকে ভরা থাকে যারা দলবেঁধে কিউবার রাজধানীর দিকে ছুটে আসছিল ঠিক তখন থেকে যখন ওবামা প্রশাসন অর্ধ-শতবর্ষের শত্রুতার সম্পর্ক শেষ করার পদক্ষেপ গ্রহন করে ও কম্যুনিস্ট দ্বীপটির সাথে সম্পর্ক স্বাভাবিক করার উদ্যোগ নেয়।”
Had it been machine translated (using Google Translate), the translation would be:
বেশিরভাগ দিন, প্রাচীন হাভানা হুলিও সিজার Imperatori ক্ষুদ্র রেস্টুরেন্টে পর্যটক যারা কিউবার রাজধানী ভিড় করত পর ওবামা প্রশাসন শত্রুতা ও কমিউনিস্ট দ্বীপ সঙ্গে সাধারণ সম্পর্কের একটি অর্ধ শতাব্দীর শেষ সরানো সঙ্গে বস্তাবন্দী হয়.
You’ve got the examples of the machine translations in these cases, and the judgment is yours. But my impression is that both the translations are syntactically and semantically wrong. Regarding two other translation examples, what I can say is that, in these examples, there’s no absolute right or wrong but aesthetic qualities of the target language may have been better kept when the ‘order’ of writing sentences in that language is honored.
Order is not only important in language but also in math, you know, and that’s pretty important. Just take this case, for example. This math is a simple problem 6÷2(1+2) but what the answer one gets depends on how s/he calculates it. We know that the order of operations rule we learned during our childhood days, BODMAS, says we should solve a problem by working through the bracket, then the order, the division and multiplication, followed by addition and subtraction. If we go by avoiding the order of the problem, we would get 6÷2(1+2) = 6÷ 2(3) = 6÷6 = 1 (the wrong result). But if we go by the correct order (from left to right after solving whatever inside the bracket) we would get the correct result 6÷2(1+2) = 6÷2*(1+2) = 6÷2*3 = 3*3 = 9.
But how can one maintain ‘order’ when the software only understands the lines (first thing first), and that also has character limits? So, there is the cultural conflict that arises obviously, and most of all active online translators usually go by the rules to stay in the business and worry less about the aesthetics of the sentences they write.
After all, translation outputs aren’t computer codes. So, those outputs aren’t rejected if they are done within the allocated time and character limits no matter as to whether they’re syntactically or semantically wrong.
Anyway, I’ve had similar experiences as the above while bidding on job postings on ProZ.com. I’ve seen how companies post machine-translated pieces of source materials that were also captured automatically from voice recognition (similar to the examples mentioned above but may not be limited to those only) and ask translators to proofread/edit that @INR0.50psw. (INR = Indian Rupee; 1INR = US$0.015). I also observed that most of the English <> Bengali language pair jobs originated from Indian translation companies and/or trafficked through them, and most of them can’t afford to pay more than 1INRpsw – 1.15INRpsw to the translators for translating content from English to Bengali or Bengali to English. Not only that, they also expect Indian Bengalis to bid since they’re only willing to pay in INR and unwilling to pay in FC to Bangladeshi translators (foreigners) like me who are, in fact, translating research materials at home 4BDTpsw (BDT = Bangladesh Taka; 1BDT = US$0.013). And they also like the translators to complete these jobs within a very limited time; say 12,000 words in 3 days.
I’m short of taste in writing all these things in my blog but the purpose is to let you know that, perhaps, everything is choreographed to do these jobs on a machine using this or that software, and so, most of the employers might have a preset mind that as everything will be done by machine, why should they allow translators enough time and money?
Well, I don’t want to repeat all these things time and again testing your patience. I only sat for this piece to be written to answer my son’s question as to why Bengali spoken by characters in cinemas and/or TV serials “sounds weird”. Is there any way out, then? I’m afraid that, no, there isn’t; because “translators” are, by default, inclined to use software and machines since they’re somehow able to make some quick money while translation companies are also able to make money by paying less. So, consumers would continue to swallow what suppliers give them, and unless and until English to Bengali translation becomes statistical, we’re to remain as consumers of “bad quality” artificial intelligence rather than actors.
In today’s business environment, scopes of human translation are diminishing, and so, my going online has gone awry. Now I fear that the job of translators will be no more beyond 2030.Sirajul Islamtag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/712017-02-21T05:02:45Z2017-02-21T05:02:45Z7 Pitfalls for the Freelance TranslatorThe best kind of working relationship (or indeed any relationship) is one in which the parties involved are aware of each other’s concerns and problems and can adjust attitudes and demands accordingly.
Not all companies or individuals who outsource translation or interpreting work to freelance translators have quite the desired level of empathy to give the translator confidence and self-assurance. I have listed a number of the pitfalls that both sides should attempt to avoid either laying or falling into. Some of these have been covered elsewhere, but there is no harm done by repeating them.
I’ve been a freelance translator for twenty-six years. Before that I had been a soldier, a sailor and an airman, an actor and a film producer and many other things besides. I lived in Venezuela for many years, and when that country began to fall apart in the late eighties, I returned to the United Kingdom with my family and began work as a freelance translator. I sought work where I could find it and, as my wife is Venezuelan, we are able to offer translations both into and out of Spanish.
Rush Jobs
We learned early on the importance of knowing what the purpose will be of the translated document. A ‘rush job’ came in one Friday evening from a harassed secretary of a British insurance company who wanted its annual report and company profile translated into Spanish. For Monday morning. 12,000 words. Please please, oh pretty please. I didn’t want to do it and my reluctance was plain to see. I quoted a high price, hoping that would put her off. But no, we were lumbered.
We did a beautiful job and delivered it well on time. A week later, I had a phone call from a furious CEO. He had taken our translation with him to an insurance symposium in Indonesia, of all places, and used it to give a presentation of his company in Spanish (a language he didn’t speak). It had of course been a disaster for him. Had he contacted us in plenty of time and explained that that was what he was going to do, we could have prepared something quite different for him, but like many other clients I have had, the translation is the last thing to be attended to. I have translated requests for quotations for multi-million dollar projects that have to be submitted on the other side of the world on the same day as my deadline to present the translation in London.
Tight Budgets
Then there are the agencies that like to pay well below the going rate and expect to get a professional job done. Their client is on a ‘tight budget’ but expects a really professional job, nevertheless. I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked to proofread one of these and found it has been translated by either a non-native speaker or by someone whose grasp of grammar and syntax is slippery at best, or simply by Google. Often it is quicker, but for me not cost-effective, to redo the whole thing. For the client, it can mean an extra 20% on the cost.
Volume discounts
Yes, there are companies (most often agencies) that offer to pay a pittance with the promise of huge amounts of work to come in the future. These are to be viewed with some scepticism. Such ‘huge amounts’ very rarely materialise. The same companies often also request a ‘volume discount’. Well, I’m glad to say that, after all these years, I’m rarely short of work and while I’m slaving away on a job for which I’ve agreed a 10% discount, I cannot be working for one of my regular clients who pay me the going rate. I therefore tend to turn down such requests and… then I find that my regular rate is accepted anyway!
Test pieces
No, tight deadlines are not really such a bugbear. After all, one can always add a useful bonus to one’s normal rate as in every other walk of life. But I have found there are unscrupulous operators keen to bamboozle the unwary. Now that I’ve been around the block a few times, I can recognise them more easily. The worst is the rogue who divides up a job into small sections and farms each section out to eager starters as ‘test pieces’, for which they are not paid. He then collects the sections, sews them back together and sends them off to his client. I hope that in most if not all cases, the client is so unimpressed with the Frankenstein monster he is delivered that he refuses to pay. Utmost care should be taken with such requests.
Bad payers
I have clients around the world, from London across North and South America to Hong Kong. In twenty-six years, I’ve had only one non-payer. I did have an individual in Holland who went bankrupt owing me twenty four euros. He really wanted to pay it, but I think he had more pressing problems so I wrote it off. I had one agency in the UK who took nine months to settle and that only after I had taken them to court. And I had a guy for whom I’d worked for twelve years and done thousands of pounds worth of work, who suddenly decided he wasn’t going to pay anyone anymore. He owes me several thousand pounds (and others too) and when the bailiffs catch up with him, as they surely will, I hope they’ll give him a good kicking.
Ennui
Some documents are so dreary they make one weep. Legal texts in particular tend to be repetitive and long-winded and often seem to have been drafted by people with only the scantiest understanding of their own language. One wonders if they are being paid by the word to write the text just as we are to translate it. The only compensation is knowing that ‘verbosity pays’. The trouble is that, particularly with Spanish (I cannot speak for other languages), there is a form of legalese that has to be unraveled into plain-speak, translated into the target language (in my case English) and then back into legalese. This process can be laborious but also a kind of challenge that gives a masochistic thrill. (call me weird if you like). The ennui of it can be overcome by keeping an eye on the word count as the target document grows and thinking of how that trip to the Caribbean is creeping nearer.
Having said all that, I have to confess that, as extensive as my range of expertise is, there are many gaps that can only be filled by further study. Luckily, there are now so many readily available sources of information that I have learned a very great deal about many interesting subjects that, years ago, I would otherwise have ignored. So not all is ennui by any means. I find that much of what I do is fascinating and enlightening.
Feedback
And finally, it is always nice to know when hard work is appreciated and has been well received. It is also useful to receive constructive criticism when due, so now and again outsourcers might drop a word or two in the translator’s ear, as appropriate.Gile Bickfordtag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/702017-02-14T03:48:09Z2017-02-14T03:48:09Z4 Questions to Answer Before You Hire a Professional TranslatorYou don't hire a history teacher to help you with math or an engineer to write product marketing brochures. The same way, you don't hire an excellent technical translator to translate your website or a Brazilian Portuguese translator to translate content that will be read by people in Portugal. The result will not be good no matter how good the translator is.
The best translator for your job is the one who understands the content to be translated, has training and experience with the type of content (user guide, website, marketing material) of your project and, above all, is a native speaker of the target language. In addition, there is the cost. You shouldn't pay for what you don't need.
4 questions you should answer before looking for a translator
What type of content do you want to translate?
A user guide of your product? Is it your website to sell your product abroad? Is it a collection of tweets where your product was mentioned? A digital brochure to use in your digital marketing campaign? This is critical because being a skilled translator doesn't mean one can translate all types of content well. Website translations are more complex. It requires good understanding of tags and html codes not to create bugs. In addition, website translators need to be aware of the page layout to make sure the words they choose won't mess up the layout. For marketing translations you want translators who are comfortable deviating from the original text, taking some liberty to convey the message as intended.
Where is the audience of your content located?
Languages evolve differently in different countries, thus, you want to select a translator who is a native of the country you are targeting. If your audience is in Canada, don't pick a translator from France. Canadians will roll their eyes with the neologisms that contaminated the language in France. Plus, they will think that you are either reusing a translation made for an audience in France or don't know that they speak a different variation of the language. If your content type is a marketing piece, it goes without saying that this is not the best way to approach a market for your product.
What is the subject matter of your translation?
One needs to understand the subject of the content to be able to communicate the message and not make mistakes when choosing the proper terminology. Remember, translation is not just the exchange of words from one language to another. Translation is communicating what one wants to say in another language, thus, translators need to know what they are talking about.
How do you intend to use the translation?
Translations that are critical to your business, like customer facing content (marketing material, instructions and user guides) should be handled by experienced professionals in the respective content type, like transcreators for marketing, and technical translators for manuals. You want to create the best first-impression and ensure that your customers will have as few questions on how to use your product as possible. Websites are worth the investment in skillful experienced translators. On the other hand, non-customer facing or short shelf-life content can be handled by less-skilled translators. This consideration will help you stretch your localization budget.
However, never let your budget drive your choice of translator for your project. If you don't have enough money to translate all you would like to, reduce the scope of your project instead of going with the lowest quote. An inadequate translation is worse than not having a translation.
Editor’s note
Once you’ve answered these questions and have found a short list of translators to reach out to, check out Part I and Part II of the TM-Town guide to writing job enquiry messages to new translators. We share word-for-word scripts you can adapt to your own needs, and also go into all the information translators like to have when being contacted about a project.Monica Oliveiratag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/692017-02-06T11:11:07Z2017-02-06T11:11:07ZShould You Specify Your Rate Range on Your TM-Town Profile?On your TM-Town profile, you have the option to set a rate range (both a per word range and also a per hour range). This field is optional, and when a translator does choose to show their rate range, we accompany it with the following text:
* The listed rates are a general range for this translator. Every project is different and many factors affect translation rates including the complexity of your source text, file format, deadline, etc. Please contact this translator with the details of your translation job for a more specific rate quote. Rates on TM-Town are always listed as USD for consistency. A translator may have a different preferred currency.
Recently we received a great question by email from a translator. This translator asked:
"Is it good policy to set the rate or not to set the rate on my profile to attract clients? I mean, would hiding or not setting the rates attract more clients?"
After writing a response to the translator, I thought my answer might be worth sharing with the broader community.
Pros
Some reasons you may want to set your rate range on your TM-Town profile.
It can make things more efficient (i.e. you won't have to spend time going back and forth with a client who ultimately does not have a budget to meet your rates).
Depending on your rate range it may signal to the visitor a sense of quality. Whether it is true or not, often times pricing can signal quality in the buyer's mind.
Cons
Some reasons you may not want to set your rate range on your TM-Town profile.
Depending on the rate range you set, it may reduce the number of enquiries you receive. (This could be either a pro or a con, depending on your viewpoint.)
It might limit your negotiating power (i.e. if a job comes and after looking at the materials you think it needs a price of {x}, but that is above the rate range you have listed, the client might use that fact in their negotiations with you).
The data
As for the data (at the time of writing this article), on TM-Town 11% of translators specify a rate range. Out of all job messages sent through TM-Town, 28% went to translators who had a rate range specified.
How can we interpret this data? Well, if job messages were evenly dispersed across our community, we would expect only 11% to go to translators who have a rate range specified (as that is the make-up of the translators on TM-Town); however, this was not the case. Instead, 28% went to those who had a rate range specified.
Given this, I think we can conclude that showing a rate range doesn't hurt your chances of receiving a job message. Whether it helps or not is up for debate (as correlation does not imply causation). It may be other factors (outside of having a rate range specified) that account for those translators getting messaged.
In the end, it is up to you if you would like to specify a rate range or not. Hopefully, the above data can help aid you in that decision. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below on specifying your rate range and what factors influenced your decision.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/682017-01-30T02:13:54Z2017-01-30T02:13:54ZHire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 2In Hire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 1, Nate summarized advice on what to do (and what not to do) when making an enquiry to a potential translation service provider. In this second part I'll provide a sample annotated form email that you can use when messaging a potential service provider for the first time. Feel free to use it or modify it to fit your needs.
Dear Jane Translator,
Be sure to address the translator by their name. Translators receive a lot of mass email blasts directed at ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. Personalize the email and make it clear that this is not just another mass email fishing for the lowest bidder.
My name is John Doe, I represent ABC Company, a specialized agency focusing on German to English medical translation based in Munich.
A quick introduction of yourself and your company. It is good to say where you are based as this may have tax implications for freelance translators. A quick note on your company's specialization will also help pique the translator's interest.
We currently have a German Internal Medicine research paper (attached) of 4,000 words that we need translated into English to be published in an American Medical Journal. It is a Microsoft Word document with limited formatting; however there are a few tables.
Remember to always include the source language, target language, document length, document subject matter and the intended audience / purpose of the translation.
The final translation needs to handed over to the client in 4 weeks time so we would need your translation returned within 3 weeks in order for it to go through our final QA process.
Make sure to state the deadline. If it’s a rush job, expect to pay more or lower your expectations on quality.
ABC Company pays service providers net 30 through PayPal. We can also accommodate wire transfer if the fee is born by the service provider.
Provide the payment method you prefer, with a backup option. Additionally you should clearly state the payment schedule / terms.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions about this potential project. I look forward to hearing from you.
John Doe
Project Manager at ABC Company
81829 München Olympia Park
Munich, Germany
555-5555-5555
{ProZ.com Blue Board link}
Sign the enquiry with your full name, with other details about yourself or your company below the signature. If you work for a company, make this known by providing the company name, as well as additional contact methods where questions could be directed on weekends or after office hours. Link to your Blue Board rating if you have one on ProZ.com.
If this was helpful, you can download a blank template here. Remember that the above sample includes not only what you should do, but also leaves out all the things you shouldn't do (e.g. tell a translator to send their best rate). Be sure to reread part I for all the email don'ts.
Thanks for reading and please be sure to share this with any clients or agencies who you think might benefit from this post.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/672017-01-17T07:30:16Z2017-01-17T07:30:16ZHire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 1Finding a translator – or rather, a service provider willing to translate your content – in today’s world is most definitely easier than it was in the past.
Hiring the ‘right’ professional translator for a job is where the struggle still remains, but the truth is, many of the difficulties that usually arise can be avoided before you ever send in an enquiry to a professional translator.
How?
The simple answer – provide as much information and detail as is possible.
But what information? What details?
That’s what I’ll outline below in this two-part article.
How to hire a professional translator by enquiring like a pro
By including the job details that translators desire most when considering new enquiries, you’ll be starting out on the right foot, allowing the translator to quickly decide if they’ll be the best fit for your job or not. This saves them, and you, a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth, headache, and ensures that both parties will be happy with the work arrangement you establish.
The following points come from key insights we learned from the survey results of 247 professional translators who described the types of crucial information that is either missing or poorly communicated in the most problematic of job enquiries.
Budget and Pricing
Talking about pricing can be a touchy subject, but here’s what translators suggest you should include.
Information to inculde:
Most translators prefer to see some sort of budget information in the first enquiry.
Stating your overall budget for the project is probably safer than naming your desired word rate.
Things & phrases to avoid:
Don’t justify your budget or try to negotiate a better rate by stating it’s a “long-term/big project,” or by promising “more work in the future.”
“Give me your (very) best rate” is a pet-peeve of all translators. Instead of asking for best rates, provide all the information you can. This is the only way to ensure you’ll get their most accurate rate for your job.
Check if the translator has published his or her typical word rate range on a profile or website. If your budget is significantly lower, it might be best to consider a different translator.
Payment details
Late payments, and even cases where they don’t receive payment, are issues translators face and want to avoid at all costs.
Always:
Provide the payment method you prefer, with a backup option, before you ask them to accept a job. Payment method matters because there may be fees associated (e.g. - wire transfer) where different standards exist around the world. For example, clients based in the US expect such fees to be included in the ammount to be paid. However, European based translators expect this fee to be covered by the client on top of whatever the project ammount is.
State the payment schedule clearly. Whatever policy you have (On completion, 30 days after completion, etc.), don’t require the translator to follow up with you. That’s just bad business. Pay when you say you will.
Project details
Always include:
Source language. What’s the language of the document as you possess it now?
Target language. What language do you need it translated to?
Document length: number of words. Don’t say how many pages. That’s too relative.
Document subject matter. Be as specific as possible. Don’t say, “It’s a technical document.” That is too vague to be helpful.
Intended audience: specialists / company staff / general public
Purpose of the translation: web, print, mailing, etc.
Translation deadline. If it’s a rush job, expect to pay more or lower your expectations on quality.
Scope of the project. Is there proofreading/review or formatting work you’re also needing? Mention this.
Consider including:
A preferred style guide if you have one, the date and time format you need, and how to translate headers.
TM or CAT tool requirements. Be open to compatabile alternatives in software. If a translator’s tool is compatible with, for example, Trados, don’t require the translator to make an expensive investment if it’s not 100% necessary.
If your company uses a custom-made CAT tool, remember this is something else the translator will need to learn that affects the translator’s translation speed. Consider offering paid training.
Format
Always include:
Formats available, and the desired final format. If there’s a .doc of a PDF laying around, be sure to mention/include that. If the final document could simply be the text of a bunch of PDF text images, that is a different requirement than needing the translated document to look exactly like the original. Be specific.
Explanations to non-standard abbreviations.
A glossary of terms if you have them.
Background context if the document to be translated doesn’t make that apparent (e.g. - a list of words).
If possible, always attach a copy of the actual document you need translated.
Common misconceptions to clarify:
PDFs are not created equal. A PDF of a scanned document potentially requires much more work than a PDF consisting entirely of text.
Be transparent about the state of the document. If the original is not yet final and subject to change, or contain potential errors, make this known upfront. Don’t leave room for surprises.
General Professionalism
Always:
Sign the enquiry with your full name, with other details about yourself or your company below the signature.
If you work for a company, make this known by providing the company name, as well as additional contact methods where questions could be directed on weekends or after office hours.
Link to your Blue Board rating if you have one on ProZ.com.
Proofread your email for common mistakes in spelling and grammar. Remember, you’re dealing with language professionals.
Always answer responses you receive. If you’ve awarded the job to another translator (or the job has been cancelled), follow-up and thank that person for her time and consideration.
If you’re unsure of the typical translation workflow, ask for the translator to share her process with you.
Have realistic expectations. Don’t expect 4000 words to be translated that day if you’ve just sent the document at 3:oopm on a Friday.
Never:
Forget a salutation, or use, “Dear Sir/Madam,” “Dear vendor”, “Dear Mr./Mrs.”
Use sloppy or informal language.
Boast or advertise your company instead of offering useful information.
Pass your own lack of planning onto expectations for the translator. If it took a month to create the original, why should you expect a translator to do it in 24 hours?
Mass email. Spending a little extra time to find a handful of qualified candidates is the better option. TM-Town’s translator search engine, Nakodo, is a great tool that can do this for you in less than a minute.
Change the details of your offer without at least mentioning the changes. If you offer something in your first email, but that is different than your final offer letter, make the translator aware of the change.
Use phrases like, “Not much work to be done,” or “This is an easy job.” Translators know best what is easy or difficult for them.
Ask for an unpaid test. Translators get scammed all the time by being asked to complete an unpaid test that never leads to any paid work. It’s possible for someone to send out different parts of a project to a dozen translators as ‘upaid tests’ and simply piece together the separate translations later. The quality and consistency will be horrible, but this is what translators are afraid of. So if you genuinely need more proof to trust that a translator will do a great job, first ask for a CV and look for reputable experience. If that still doesn’t do it, ask if they have any prior work they’d be able to share with you so you’d be able to have its quality assessed. Of course, you could always just offer them a paid test.
The above list may seem like overkill…
But if you’re honestly wanting to find the best translator for the content you need translated, the above gives you a very detailed look into what types of information and communication styles real translators have shared with us.
If you follow this list as a guide to the next enquiry message you write, I’m confident that you’ll not only save time in the long run, but you really will get started on the right foot with a translator who knows exactly what to expect in your working relationship, confident that he or she is the best for the job at hand.
In Part 2 of this article, we’ll share some word-for-word scripts that take the above information into account. Sign up for our newsletter to get those scripts emailed directly to you once Part 2 is available.Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/662017-01-05T06:33:56Z2017-01-05T06:33:56Z2016 Year in ReviewHappy New Year everyone! It has been a long time since our last blog post...too long. Our resolution for 2017 is to restart the TM-Town blog and keep it active. As you haven’t heard from us in a few months, you are probably wondering what we have been up to. Let’s review!
2016 was an exciting and busy year at TM-Town. Here are the highlights:
TM-Town grew from 3,770 freelance translators at the start of the year to 18,281 at year-end
TM-Town paid memberships were released and we sold our first membership (TM-Town now has 841 Starter members and 1,169 Professional members)
Translators sold 286 glossaries on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace
TM-Town’s desktop application was released - allowing translators to leverage the power of TM-Town's Nakōdo search engine without the need to upload the actual files from their computer to their TM-Town account
Release of the TM-Town SDL Trados Studio Plugin
TM-Town was acquired by ProZ.com
Worked with the ProZ.com team on the new “What I Am Working on Now” feature
Behind the scenes TM-Town upgraded its server infrastructure to provide you a better, faster experience
TM-Town’s Professional membership was included as part of ProZ.com’s new Plus package
In addition to all of the above, Nate and I also spent a lot of time becoming familiar with the ProZ.com team and site. We visited the ProZ.com office in Syracuse in July and had the pleasure of building the new ProZ.com video library as part of the Plus package release. We look forward to finding even more ProZ.com and TM-Town synergies over the next year.
The Road Ahead
We have a lot of planned for the year ahead. We are proud of the network of translators that have joined TM-Town to date and we plan to focus our attention in 2017 to increase the numbers of job messages and client interest coming your way. Additionally we plan to create new state-of-the-art tools to help you manage and leverage your translation assets.
We are excited about the year ahead and hope you are too. Wishing you a healthy and successful 2017! Happy translating from the TM-Town team!
Let us know in the comments about your goals for 2017 and how we might be able to help you reach them.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/652016-08-16T22:57:08Z2016-08-16T22:57:08ZSubtitling and Closed Captioning Plays a Very Important Role in Our LivesSubtitles and captions are widely relied on by viewers. The deaf and the hard of hearing need captions. People also rely on captions for low quality mobile speakers on TV’s or laptops, noisy environments, and not to disturb the baby sleeping or those around them.
Subtitles are used because localization has been done though them. There are all kinds of reasons why we need to have subtitles and captions available for viewers. Nowadays, it is more common that you will have the selection to turn on the captions, not only for entertainment but learning purposes too.
Colleges and Universities are incorporating captions into their tutorials and this has not only become common practice, but also FCC regulation.
How captions are presented, both optically and structurally, could have a serious impact on the viewers understanding and enjoyment of the content. The difference between a good and bad experience is usually minor fixable issues.
I’ve written this very short article to share what I believe are the basic good practices in subtitling and closed captioning.
Let’s begin with the visuals of captions. I would start off by advising to avoid presenting too much text onscreen at one time. Make sure the subtitles are easy to read and follow. Always allow enough time for each subtitle to be read.
Ideally, each subtitle should contain a single complete sentence. Wherever two lines of unequal length are used, the upper line should preferably be shorter to keep as much of the image free as possible and in left-justified subtitles in order to reduce unnecessary eye movement.
It is crucial to caption all important dialogue and to distinguish between speakers. In subtitling, you should simplify the text to make the subtitles easy to read so that the viewers can understand them at first sight.
Use a large enough text size. The font must be clear and easily readable. There should be a high contrast between the caption (text) and the background.
Position subtitles at the center/bottom and avoid clashing with any on screen texts. The normally accepted position for subtitles is center/bottom of the screen, but in obeying this convention it is most important to avoid obscuring 'on-screen' captions or any part of a speaker's mouth or eyes.
Always ensure accuracy in captioning. The target point for synchronization should always be at naturally occurring pauses in speech-sentence boundaries, or changes of scene. This has to be the most important best practice in subtitling and closed captioning.
A question that comes up a lot in my courses are abbreviations. Can we use abbreviations in subtitles and closed captions? Just how far can we abbreviate?
Of course, there are different opinions on this topic, but I believe there are also some very good ground rules which you can go by. I have put together some very basic and easy to follow guidelines on what I think is ok to abbreviate in subtitle or caption files. I hope you will find this useful.
Abbreviations such as “wanna” (want to) and “gonna” (going to) are appearing more and more in captions these days.
Use apostrophes for abbreviations of auxiliaries like “They’d want” and “We can’t” but avoid abbreviations like “y’know” (you know) and “Jo’burg” (Johannesburg).
You can use numerals to indicate numbers over ten, for example; She is 15 years’ old, however we don’t use numeric expressions, for example; “the 3 of us” or “100s of times.”
Use acronyms like “UCLA” and “NATO” but acronyms like “PM” (Prime Minister) should be avoided.
Symbols such as “&” should also be avoided.
Numerals, apostrophes, acronyms and symbols all save character space by abbreviating meaning signs, we should however, use them cautiously. We always need to correctly render the meaning of the dialogue in the subtitles and keep within the restrictions of appearance.Kelly O’Donovantag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/642016-08-08T06:31:37Z2016-08-08T06:31:37ZWhat Are You Working on Now?Translators - what are you working on now? TM-Town has a new feature wherein TM-Town Starter and Professional members can conveniently share descriptions of the projects that they are working on. Translators are already using it to share interesting projects, thereby letting colleagues and potential clients know the type of work they do, while establishing a track record of the projects they have done. Check out some of their posts here.
Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below. We have a lot more planned. For example, we hope to have a "My WIWOs" page where you will be able to track your personal project history including word counts, etc.
The background on this new feature.
As you may know, back in April of this year, TM-Town was acquired by ProZ.com. This past month Nate and I had our first chance to visit the ProZ.com headquarters in Syracuse, New York. It was a very fun, interesting, and rewarding trip. As part of our stay, we participated in a "hackathon" of sorts. The idea was to work with the ProZ.com team to build a new feature that would work across the ProZ.com network.
What is the ProZ.com network?
ProZ.com used to be just a single destination site. If you wanted to use ProZ.com services you would go to ProZ.com in your web browser. Recently though, that is expanding. ProZ.com now provides a means -- called an API -- for outside companies and tool vendors to access and make use of ProZ.com services and data.
What is an API?
An API (Application program interface) basically allows different applications to "talk" to each other. In other words, application developers from other companies or services outside of ProZ.com can integrate parts of ProZ.com in their own application. A good example is TM-Town. Not only does TM-Town use ProZ.com's API, TM-Town also has its own API that allows our SDL AppStore plugin to "talk" to TM-Town securely through the TM-Town API.
While many translators still go to ProZ.com in their web browser, many are now able to benefit from ProZ.com tools and opportunities in other places (in their own CAT tools, on other web sites, etc.). With this in mind, we knew that this new feature would have to start with an API as its base.
As a start, CafeTran has already integrated the "What I'm Working On" feature. We hope other CAT tool vendors will consider incorporating this and other (free) ProZ.com services into their tools for the convenience of their users. If you are interested in getting the API early, please reach out to us and we can give you more info. The API will also be published soon on the ProZ.com website.
Happy translating and let us know what you are working on.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/632016-06-15T08:08:26Z2016-06-15T08:08:26Z10 Reasons to Upload Your Prior Work to TM-TownOK, so you've taken the first step and signed up for your free TM-Town account. Awesome! You may have also already added a profile image, spent some time deliberating over a great tagline, and composed some catchy prose for your 'About Me'. Now what?
Well, you have only scratched the surface of what TM-Town has to offer...and you have only just begun to improve your chances of finding success on TM-Town. To unlock the true potential and benefits that TM-Town offers you need to upload your prior work to your account. This could be a translation memory file, a glossary you created on a recent project, or even a sample translation you show prospective clients.
You might now be thinking - 'Upload my work? Why?'. Well, good question. TM-Town is a different and unique service that doesn't fit the mold of what many translators are used to. Sometimes we receive chat messages and emails thinking we are a translation agency (hint: we are not) or a typical translator portal (hint: nope, not that either). In fact, TM-Town is a new type of translation enablement platform that uses patent pending technology to match you to incoming translation jobs based on your prior work - while ensuring your work stays your work and always stays private and secure.
Without further ado, here are 10 reasons you should upload your prior translation work to your TM-Town account:
Get discovered by clients using our Nakōdo translator search engine
TM-Town's first-of-its-kind translator search engine takes the text a client needs translated and returns translators who have uploaded similar work to TM-Town. By uploading your work you have a chance to get matched with clients searching for help in your working fields.
Improve your rank in TM-Town's traditional directory
One of the important driving factors behind your ranking in TM-Town's traditional directory is the amount of work you have loaded to TM-Town. The more work you load, the higher you will rank. Even loading one document can greatly improve your standing by bumping you above translators who have not loaded any work.
Search your TMs and terms
Work you load into your TM-Town account can be easily searched using TM-Town's simple yet powerful search tool. Not only can this be done in the browser, but TM-Town also has CAT tool connections (currently SDL Trados Studio 2015 and CafeTran) to help you search your work directly from your CAT tool.
Receive more visibility throughout the site
Did you know that the translators featured on the home page are those translators who have most recently loaded work? Not only can you increase your visibility on the home page which is the first landing page for many clients and agencies but you can also increase your odds of getting discovered in other areas of the site such as the Browse Translators by Language Pair and Browse Translators by Fields of Expertise sections.
Automatic term extraction and easy glossary creation
TM-Town will automatically extract terms from your translation memory files allowing you to quickly create a new glossary.
Sell your terminology glossaries
Join the translators who have already made sales on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace. It is super easy to get started and become a seller yourself.
Convert file types
Do you have a Wordfast TM that you'd like to convert to TMX? Want to export your translation memory files into Excel? Do you have some dead PDF source and target documents you'd like to turn into a translation memory file? TM-Town makes it super easy to convert to and from many formats including TMX, XLIFF, TBX, CSV, and XLSX. Not only that but you can use TM-Town's alignment tool to turn your monolingual source and target documents into a translation memory file which you can than easily export to use in your CAT tool of choice.
Back up your work
TM-Town makes it easy to back up your work off-site. We have already been contacted by 2 translators who benefited from having their work backed up on TM-Town.
Collaborate with colleagues
Need to share a TM with another translator who you are collaborating with on a project? TM-Town makes it simple to share files with other TM-Town members. Not only that, but using our CAT tool integrations you can collaborate in real-time on a shared TM with multiple translators.
View your productivity data
When you upload a TM file TM-Town will automatically analyze any productivity data stored in the file and present the analysis of that data to you in some cool charts and visualizations so you can better understand how you work.
Remember, merely creating a TM-Town account is only the first step. The real value you get out of TM-Town will be based on what you put in - in the work you upload. The more work you upload the more you can benefit from everything TM-Town has to offer.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/622016-06-06T01:02:24Z2016-06-06T01:02:24ZHelp Us Spread the Word About TM-Town (and Earn Some Rewards)Today we are releasing a new referral program on TM-Town wherein you can earn some great rewards for helping to spread the word about TM-Town to your fellow translators.
It's super easy - just visit this page and send an invitation to any of your friends or colleagues who have not yet joined TM-Town. If they sign up using the link from your email, both of you benefit.
Your friend will receive a bonus 10 extra documents and you can earn the following if your friend goes on to upload at least 1 document:
+10 documents
+10,000 segments
+1,000 terms
+5 alignments
Additionally, if your friend goes on to sign up for a paid membership, we'll credit you with a 6 month upgrade or extension of the equivalent plan.
There is no limit on the rewards you can earn, so what are you waiting for - help us grow TM-Town and make it an even more attractive place for end clients and agencies to find the best freelance translators.
Invite your friends and colleaguesKevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/612016-06-01T06:10:41Z2016-06-01T06:10:41ZA Translator's Worst Fear“Gather round the campfire, children. I have a story to tell...”
“... a story about losing it all.”
“And the worst part is...”
“It’s all true...”
The old man’s knees and spine cracked as he slowly lowered himself down by the fire, the shadows grew longer as they danced up his heavily wrinkled face.
Oooo, I don’t know about you, but I love a good scary story!
I know it’s not Halloween yet, but I heard a true translator horror story the other day that I just had to share with you so that the same thing doesn’t happen to you...
Peter was a translator just like you.
Also just like you, he did all of his work on his home computer where he stored something vital to his career and livelihood...
His TMs.
One morning, it was business as usual.
Peter sat down in front of his computer with a cup of hot tea.
He pressed the power button and took a careful sip before placing the cup down on the desk.
Mentally going over what he needed to get done that day, he took a deep breath, ready to begin, when all of a sudden...
The blue screen of death appears right before him!
Yes. That’s right.
Peter’s computer had crashed...
He tried not to panic as he forced it to shut down.
Anxiously tapping his fingers on the edge of the desk while the computer tried to reboot, its fan whirling and roaring, he prayed it would come up...
You see here’s the thing.
All the work Peter had on his computer would be lost if it didn’t reboot.
But this time, there was no blue screen of death.
Just a quiet clicking sound made by the disk as it turned off, made even more audible since the fan had stopped blowing...
The screen was black, and nothing was bringing his computer back.
All was lost! What was he going to do? His priceless work was now gone, stuck on a dead computer...
While that is a terrifying story for anyone who makes their livelihood from files and resources that exist on his computer, it’s also a story that could easily happen to anyone.
And it happens all the time.
This also happened to Judith just the other day who told me she had to get another computer after hers died.
She lost glossaries she had invested time and money into, along with lots of other data.
But fortunately, that is not the end of Peter and Judith’s stories.
You see, Peter and Judith are both users of TM-Town (names changed to protect the innocent), and we were able to transform these horror stories into stories of salvation.
In Peter’s case, he had stored his most valuable assets in his TM-Town account.
All he had to do was login, and download the original files.
Everything was soon back to normal!
For Judith, the purchased glossaries she lost were also still available in her TM-Town account. So she could download everything again.
Whew! What a relief!
So, the moral of these stories?
Make sure you have your files backed up!
While there are many places and ways to back up files, let me remind you that backing up your precious work with TM-Town also adds the extra benefit of potentially being matched with a client looking for someone with your experience and expertise.
Think about the files you have on your computer right now.
If your computer suddenly crashed, would you lose something that you wouldn’t be able to get back?
If the answer is either “yes” or remotely leaning in the direction of “I’m not sure...”, head to TM-Town today to start backing up your most important files before it’s too late!
Because if you’re not backed up...
Your story may not have a happy ending like Peter and Judith’s fortunately did...
Be careful out there, and think about backing up some work nowNate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/602016-04-27T23:47:38Z2016-04-27T23:47:38ZThe Long Tail TranslatorOn April 19th and 20th I had the privilege of attending the TAUS Tokyo Forum. It was an interesting conference with presentations on a wide range of topics. The one thing that really jumped out at me though, was a single comment from a single slide.
Professor Hitoshi Isahara of Toyohashi University of Technology was giving an update on the TKUN project. As part of that project they are preparing for the upcoming Rugby World Cup to be held in Japan in 2019. Their mission will be to disseminate news and updates in English. To do that they will be post-editing machine translation (ok, please bear with me...I know PEMT is a dirty word for many of you, but PEMT is not the point of this post).
The interesting thing, and the part that jumped out to me - they will be using Rugby fans (with no translation experience) instead of professional translators. Why? In the preliminary tests they did, the Rugby fans had the domain knowledge and terminology knowledge that the generalist professional translators they tried did not. Even though these Rugby fans were not translators, and may not have even been bilingual, they produced higher quality output when editing the translation.
What Professor Isahara really needed in his experiments were professional translators that specialized in Rugby. I'm sure the thought crossed his mind, but that thought was probably immediately met with, "How would I go about finding that needle in a haystack?".
Nakōdo finds that needle in the haystack
This is exactly what TM-Town was built to facilitate. Connecting those in need of specialized translation with domain experts. The status quo of routing translation work to the first professional translator with their green light is not the future. It is just not efficient. Think of your own experience. When you have a translation job that truly matches your interests, abilities and expertise - you are able to work faster and produce higher quality work. You need less time to research terminology.
After the acquisition by ProZ.com, many ProZ.com members wondered, "what is unique or different about TM-Town?". In my opinion this is one of the major differentiators - TM-Town helps the Long Tail Translator (the specialized expert with deep domain knowledge) more easily get discovered for work that is right in their wheelhouse.
If 'general' is one of your top 3 fields, you probably aren't going to find anything unique about TM-Town. However, if you are Rugby enthusiast, a wine connoisseur, a particle physics geek - then you are going to love TM-Town.
There are not going to be hundreds of jobs coming through for Rugby, but when that job does come through, if you are the Long Tail Translator for Rugby, you'll own that. Not only that, but as the expert with specialized knowledge, you are in a great position to negotiate higher rates. As Chris Anderson says in his book The Long Tail - "Our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches".
Until now, there has not been an easy way for clients to find the specialist with the domain expertise in the material that needs translation. TM-Town is setting out to change that.
Find your niche
My advice to you is to follow your passion and find your long tail(s). I truly believe that the translators with specialized knowledge and expertise will be the ones who benefit from TM-Town over the long term. So go out there, find your niche and own it!Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/592016-04-25T08:51:43Z2016-04-25T08:51:43ZTM-Town SDL Trados Studio 2015 PluginTM-Town has a new plugin available on the SDL OpenExchange which allows you to leverage your personal TM-Town TMs and glossaries right in Studio 2015.
You can download the plugin from the SDL AppStore or directly from TM-Town.
In addition to searching your own segments and terms you can also check a term or phrase to see if it exists in one of the glossaries for sale on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace. Need help to finish your project by the deadline? Easily find a collaborator using TM-Town's first-of-its-kind Nakōdo search engine right within Trados Studio 2015.
Give it a try and if you have any feedback, as always, let us know!Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/582016-04-13T08:15:20Z2016-04-13T08:15:20ZTM-Town has joined the ProZ.com familyWe have some huge news!
We're joining forces with ProZ.com to further our mission to create a better translation world through technology and specialization.
Don't worry though, TM-Town will not be disappearing or closing. In fact, we only have GOOD news for TM-Town members.
First, let me explain a little of how it will work going forward. The two sites -- ProZ.com and TM-Town -- will continue to exist separately. The strong privacy and data confidentiality policies we have at TM-Town will remain intact. Nothing changes there.
Additionally, both of us (Kevin and Nate) will still be working full time on TM-Town, striving to make it a better platform day by day.
Over time, we expect that a joint membership will be offered and we are also excited to explore other possible synergies. ProZ.com has a ton of cool features (15+ years of development work!) and we are excited to put on our thinking caps and find ways to help our members benefit from these.
Why did we choose this path?
Simply, we want to grow TM-Town faster and we want to help more translators find more work. Not only is ProZ.com the world's leading community for freelance translators, but I think both sites are very similar with a focus on serving the freelance translator. This makes ProZ.com a match made in heaven for us - we can continue pursuing our mission with a partner who shares our ideals and values.
We expect that partnering up with ProZ.com -- a respected and trusted member of the translation industry with a long track record -- will allow us to better serve our members. More awareness of our platform will lead to more use amongst translators, end clients and agencies...and this means more job messages and opportunities for you.
How does this affect me today?
In the short term, not much changes. You can now log in to TM-Town with your ProZ.com account (if you wish). As I mentioned though, over the long term we want to explore different ways that TM-Town can benefit from ProZ.com and vice versa. Of course, if you have any ideas, let us know in the comments below!
For specific details on the acquisition please reference the official press release and ProZ.com's FAQ page. Of course, if you have any questions or concerns feel free to email us.Kevin Dias & Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/572016-04-08T07:38:46Z2016-04-08T07:38:46ZTM-Town's User Settings Page Gets a Huge MakeoverTM-Town has been chugging along at an alarming rate (from a developer’s standpoint) for the last few months.
And while that means lots of new features and better user experience on many areas of the site, Kevin and I, only being a team of two, have been hanging on for dear life!
One place the new features had amassed to a critical level was on the User Settings page...
It was seriously turning into a mess!
So we finally found some time to turn our attention to making the user settings page much easier to update and navigate.
I’d like to walk you through some of the things that have changed, but hopefully it’s pretty straightforward.
Here’s the short version of the updates:
Current Plan Usage
New Badges and Badge Generator
Visual Profile Editor
Nakōdo Settings (much easier to find!)
User Preferences
Connected Applications
Say hello to the new and improved User Settings
As you can see in the photo above, the page now has navigation on the left side that makes updating only one section at a time a snap. If you need to update multiple sections, however, you can also do that!
When you edit something on this page, an update button will appear fixed to the bottom of the screen.
You can switch tabs, close popups, and edit anything on the page without losing your work, but don’t navigate away from the page without clicking on ‘Update’ at the bottom. In that case, you will lose your changes.
Here’s each tab explained in more detail.
Current Plan Usage
This is a visual look into your current usage. We have three plans: Basic (free), Starter, and Professional. You can see the details of each plan here.
Monitor from this view how many alignments, documents, searchable segments and terms you have left. Manage your subscription or upgrade when necessary.
Badge Generator
We also created new badges, and made choosing the style and size that’s best for you really simple.
These badges show your name, as well as the number of translation units and term concepts you’ve uploaded, if any. They’re great for putting on other profiles or on your personal website. This will make sure as many people as possible are seeing your beautiful TM-Town profile.
In addition, Dmitry at The Open Mic has recently added the ability for TOM users to show their TM-Town badges on their profiles.
Visual Profile Editor
Having a well developed, professional profile is a must, and we took a big step in making it easier to see what you’re not showing that you might want to.
From this tab, you can change your profile theme color, background image, and user photo.
You can also update your basic info, add education, translation association memberships, payment information, CAT tools you use, as well as link social media and other translator portal profiles.
In addition to the above, we’ve also added the ability to sync RSS feeds to your blog(s)! This is really cool because you can show up to three of your latest posts, across multiple blogs, right on your TM-Town profile.
By linking to your blog, you not only will get more exposure for your writing, potential clients and other translators will see you as even more of an expert.
If you’re not blogging about translation yet, The Open Mic is a great free platform where translators can be heard by their peers. If you know about the blogging platform, Medium, The Open Mic is basically Medium for translators.
And just like any other RSS feed, you can easily add your Open Mic feed to your TM-Town profile.
Here’s what your Open Mic feed URL should look like: https://theopenmic.co/author/(your-username)/feed
Just enter your username above!
Nakōdo Settings
Nakōdo is what really separates TM-Town from other platforms. Nakōdo is a search engine that takes sample text from a client, and finds the most qualified translators for that content based on prior work each translator has loaded into TM-Town.
Nakōdo works like a virtual assisant to introduce clients to you - “Fred, this is Rosa, an amazing translator if you’re needing XYZ translated. I know her prior work, and it’s right in line with what you need done.”
We believe this will eventually make finding translators online much more organic, and much more like a personal referral in the real world.
For something this important, it was a little buried on the old settings page...
So now, it should be pretty easy to find, and make sure that you’re being listed in Nakōdo search results.
User Preferences
On this tab, you can change your username, email, or password.
You can also update your notification settings, or delete your TM-Town account.
Connected Applications
As you were probably aware, your TM-Town account can be connected from within CafeTran.
What you may not be aware of is that we have also released our SDL Trados 2015 plugin. Learn more about the plugin if you are an SDL user.
Let us know in the comments which CAT tool you’d like us to work on next!
And... That should just about cover everything!
If you have any questions, though, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
And if you haven’t worked on your TM-Town profile in a while, now would be a great time to go add some more details, connect your blog posts, and paste your new badge around the web!Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/562016-03-28T08:52:10Z2016-03-28T08:52:10Z8 Experts Share Their Best Tips On Translator ContractsWhen you're just starting out as a freelance translator, it's hard to think of anything else besides wanting to get as much work as you can, as quickly as possible, right?
So you put yourself out there. You bust your butt filling out as many profiles as you possibly can, creating a website of your own, setting up social media accounts, a blog, responding to countless job board postings, and just about whatever online marketing advice you've been able to unearth in the process...
And then, just when you think all of that was never going to lead anywhere, a job opportunity lands in your lap!
This is it! This is what you've been waiting for.
You instantly take the job, right?
Wrong!
How you deal with potential clients and jobs from day one will set the tone for how you continue to deal with them as your business develops and grows.
Just like anything you're new to, you will eventually learn the warning signs of [monster clients](https://www.tm-town.com/translation-job-monster-handbook), and learn how to best negotiate for your own interests as well as the interests of the client.
In an effort to help you avoid costly beginner mistakes, I've asked eight expert translators from our [TM-Town community](https://www.tm-town.com) to give you their top pieces of advice, tips, and precautions when any new contract lands on your door step.
Top 3 Tips, Precautions, and Advice Regarding New Contracts From 8 Professional Translators
Tess Whitty
Signing contracts are part of the deal when working for agencies. Here are some tips:
1. Read through the contract, not fun, time consuming, but wise to protect your business
2. Pay special attention to: a) Agreeing not to get paid until the end client pays the agency - The agency is a company and should have the liquidity to be able to pay you before the client. However the agency might not want to pay you before they know that the end client is happy with the translation. b) Agreeing to indemnify (hold harmless) the client against lawsuits and/or claims resulting from your translation. The client should have a quality control system in place so that an error by one translator doesn’t have a disastrous effect on final project. c) Agreeing not to accept or solicit work from agency’s clients. Of course you should not go behind a clients back to steal the client for yourself, but you cannot know each and every client the agency has. d) Agreeing not to subcontract work to another translator. OK, agreement, just make sure you follow this if you agree to it. e) Agreeing to submit credit check or criminal records
3. If you find a clause in a contract that you do not agree to, you can cross out the clause in question, modify it, or refuse to sign the contract. Some agencies will agree to a change, others will refuse to work with you if you do not sign their contract. Just realize that if you sign a contract, its terms are legally enforceable.
Grey
(1) Is the project in one of my areas of specialization? It's important to specialize early so that you can work better and more efficiently, and it puts you in a position to justify higher rates. Having a limited number of specializations also helps you brand yourself online and attract more work.
(2) Is the client reputable and offering an acceptable rate? Early on especially, I feel it's important to focus on working with agencies--they take care of most of the busy work and give you an opportunity to learn the ropes--but you need to avoid the bottom-feeders. Join Proz.com if only to get access to their Blue Board, because this will help you to figure out if you can trust an agency you've never worked with before.
(3) Is the timeframe reasonable? Actually, low rates and unreasonable deadlines tend to go hand in hand and are both red flags that you should avoid the client. Urgent jobs happen, of course, but it's never the best way to start a relationship with a new client.
Samuel Sebastià Holden i Bramah --
My top three would be these:
1. Be prepared to say no... The client is NOT always right... You must sometimes educate your clients.2. Don't be afraid to drop your prices. I have always believed that it is better to sell 100 items at 1€ than wait along for that one magical client to buy one thing at 100€.3. Start off low and gradually increase your prices as your workload increases. Go up a couple of points every few months. In a year you will have probably doubled what you are getting paid per word. Old clients can either pay more, or you can say a polite good-bye, leaving the door open to future colaborations if your well-paid workload decreases.
Max - These are my top 3 tips:
1. Before getting to work with a company, make sure you do a proper research on it. Check its Blue Board record on ProZ.com and their entry on Glassdoor.com, and google it up to see if there is any relevant information on the web (e.g. forum posts and articles). This way you'll be able to see what the vendors and in-house employees of this company think about it, as well as what the general attitude toward it is.
2. Be wary of working with companies and agencies from developing countries. Pay particular attention to clients from India, Pakistan and China, because that is where most scammers come from. That is not to say you should avoid clients from these countries -- there are some wonderful agencies down there -- but be extra cautious when dealing with them.
3. Don't try to outbid your competition by offering an unreasonably low rate. Even if you win the project, this will hurt in you in the long run. Position yourself as a professional, not a bottom-feeder.
Michael Beijer
Here are my three tips:
1. Always first check the company on the Proz.com Blue Board and Paymentpractices.net, and if they don’t look 100% trustworthy, avoid them like the plague. To use the Proz.com Blue Board, you will need to join Proz, which I highly recommend every fledgling translator to do. Re Proz: remember that a complete and active-looking profile is the key to getting work via the site. Paymentpractices.net is very cheap (only around €20 for an annual subscription, and there is a free 7-day trial).
2. Make sure to get a proper PO (in the form of an email or PDF) with clear details about the job (rate, number of words, deadline, client’s payment details, etc.). Also check that you are being properly paid for the actual number of words in the document(s). There are various ways unscrupulous project managers (who are just following orders) have of shaving off a word or two. Figure out what these are and be vigilant. If accepting to translate a PDF, make sure either the agency will provide you with a decent conversion into an editable format, or you know how to do this yourself (I recommend ABBYY FineReader).
3. Figure out what you are worth, and make sure not to accept a rate much below that. You can always go down, but negotiating your way up at a later stage can be very difficult. How can you figure out what you’re worth? Find an established translator who works in your language pair, and ask them to have a look at your work and perhaps suggest what they think you could charge given your current level of quality.
Irina Lebedeva
1. Thoroughly check payment terms that are specific to client's country’s laws and fiscal regulations. Search for sentences like, Any issued purchase order that stays uninvoiced for more than 3 months will be voided. You or your client actually can't change these clauses. But at least try to amend your invoicing procedure accordingly.2. Please make sure that the amount of your responsibility for the delayed delivery or some quality issues doesn't exceed the project total amount.3. It's useful to include a clause about the client's responsibility in case of payment delay (for example, 0.5% of invoiced amount per day of delay). It usually helps to prevent your client from delaying the payment process.
David Miralles Pérez
I've been working on negotiation skills for quite a while now and I'd love to share some of my experience with you.
The crucial thing to do when you start negotiating is to research the potential client. During my career, I've noticed three main categories of people that are likely to negotiate with you:
- People and businesses that basically tell you that you're too expensive.- Businesses that can easily afford your services but are looking for a better (cheaper) deal.- People that can't afford your services but they're very interested in working with you.
Depending on the category, you should plan a different strategy to persuade your potential client.
Also, it's important to set a minimum rate and stick to it. Your first offer should be at least 1/3 higher than this minimum rate to have a considerable margin to negotiate.
It's also important to bear in mind that you can negotiate more aspects of a project apart from money (deadlines, services included in your offer, resources used in the project, etc.)
The main objective of negotiation is to find a win-win solution for your client and for you.
You can have a look at these other blog posts on negotiations I wrote:
http://circalingua.com/how-i-increase-my-income-by-negotiating/http://circalingua.com/how-to-answer-you-are-too-expensive-emails/
What have you learned?
I really hope this advice has been helpful to you.
I’d love to hear what you’ve learned specifically from the above tips, as well as what lessons you may have learned from your own experiences that weren't mentioned above.
Finally, please take two seconds to share this post as a way to thank the contributors for sharing their years of knowledge and expertise.Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/552016-03-09T07:00:59Z2016-03-09T07:00:59ZFinding Freelance Translators Keeps Getting Better at TM-Town
Raise your hand if you’d like the process of finding freelance translators to be as easy as copy-and-paste…
Well, with our translator search engine, Nakōdo, that’s exactly what we’re seeking to accomplish.
We’ve released a new version of Nakōdo today that I’d like to tell you about, but first, let me remind you what Nakōdo does exactly.
What is Nakōdo, and what exactly does it do?
Nakōdo is a Japanese word that means matchmaker.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word ‘matchmaker,’ this scene from Mrs. Doubtfire immediately comes to mind… Take a second to let Robin Williams put a smile on your face today.
Alright, with necessary nostalgia out of the way, let’s get back to business…
The purpose of Nakōdo is to help clients get introduced to translators who have the highest level of specialisation in a certain field.
How does Nakōdo do that?
A client pastes in some text from the document they need translated, or something similar.
It then analyzes the documents that translators have loaded into their TM-Town accounts.
Using the latest in natural language processing techniques, Nakōdo then scores translators with a Similarity Score and Quantity Score.
Basically, the Similarity Score is the score of that translator’s most similar document to the text that was searched. On the other hand, the Quantity Score represents how many other documents that translator has loaded that are also similar to the text searched.
That means, a translator with fewer documents can have a higher Similarity Score if they have just one document that really matches what the client needs.
You’re then free to message the translators Nakōdo introduces you to, letting them know more about your requirements so they can give you a quote. TM-Town takes no cut of any work you hire through the translators on our site, and you’re free to communicate with them however you’d like to.
Now that you’ve got a good idea of what Nakōdo is, let’s take a look at the new version we released today!
Introducing the All New Nakōdo Translator Search Engine
In this latest release, we’ve completely refreshed the look and feel of Nakōdo.
We’ve also increased the speed by up to 10x in many searches. That means a lot less waiting, woo hoo!
When you first arrive on the Nakōdo page, you’ll see a very simple interface. You can paste some text, and set the target language (notice how the source language is automatically detected for you).
After you hit search, kindly wait a few seconds while Nakōdo does its thang (refer to the previous section).
While you’re waiting, we’ll also introduce you to a few of our paid Professional Members. If you see someone who catches your eye, clicking on the ‘View Profile’ button will open a new tab.
After that, a graph of your results should pop up if we’ve found any matches!
You can see the results plotted by Similarity Score and Quantity Score.
Down below the graph, you can see more details about each translator, including the Match Strength (Weak, Strong, and Golden). There’s also a message button so you can easily send messages to each translator you’d like to reach out to.
And that’s it! A brand new, shiny, lightning fast Nakōdo that is yet another great tool to leverage when you need a specialist for a freelance translation job.
Go ahead and play around with the new Nakōdo, and let us know what you think!
It’d also mean a lot to us if you’d take just a second to share this news with your friends. Simply click on one of the share buttons. Thanks!Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/542016-02-05T01:49:47Z2016-02-05T01:49:47ZNew User Dashboard, Document Manager, and Better Job Messages on TM-TownIn addition to the new game changing desktop application we released, we also worked hard over the last couple of weeks to rethink how your user experience on TM-Town could be better.
The result?
You now have a dashboard area that acts as your command center when you login. I'll tell you about what you can do from here down below.
From your dashboard, you can easily access the Document Manager, where all of your uploaded documents or purchased terminology files live. Mainly a cosmetic update here, but hopefully a little bit easier to see some key stats.
Finally, we've also given you a shiny brand new Job Messages page. I'll also give you the complete run down of this below.
If you'd rather dig right in and get your hands dirty with these new additions, existing members can SIGN IN HERE. And for those of you new to TM-Town, well, what are you waiting for?! Join us today with a forever free membership RIGHT HERE.
DASHBOARD OVERVIEW
Like I mentioned above, the dashboard is you're brand new control center, where you can get an overview of your account as well as perform the most common actions you need to on the site.
STAR TREK IMG
CAPTION: Ok, perhaps not quite as cool as the USS Enterprise's command center, but… still pretty sweet, right?
By looking at the page, I don't think you should have any issues with understanding what anything is, but just to be sure, let's take a quick look.
Welcome pane
The first thing you see is the welcome area. Here you can see and manage the membership plan you're on, see your total unique profile views plus the ones you've had this week, and how many translation units and term concepts you've uploaded.
Search pane
The pane right next to the welcome area is your asset search. Not only can you quickly and easily search all of your translation units and term concepts, but you also see a meter of how many more searchable segments and terms you have left on your current plan.
Upload pane
Moving down from there, you have an easily accessible document uploader. Drag and drop a file in the box, or click ‘Add Files' to browse your computer. Enter the requested info about the document and voila, the document is processed and added to your account.
Activity pane
To the left of the uploader is a TM-Town Activity pane. Here you can see some key stats about TM-Town like how many Translation Units and Term Concepts have been uploaded, as well as see what recent actions your fellow members have been taking on the site. (PS — if you'd prefer not to have your personal details shown in this feed, please select ‘Anonymize in feed' in your account settings.)
Moving on down the page, the last two panes you see are “You're Stats” and “Leaderboards.”
Stats pane
You should recognize the graphs in the You're Stats pane because they should be identical to the ones on your profile. We've just given you a convenient way to see those without having to navigate to your profile.
Leaderboard pane
Finally, the Leaderboards pane is a way for you to get an idea of how your stats stack up with other TM-Town members in your chosen language pairs and fields of expertise. Simply select what languages and fields you'd like to see the top 10 for, and click ‘Update.'
So as you can see, there's quite a bit going on here on the new dashboard!
But moving on, let's take a look at the Document Manager.
Document Manager Overview
If you've been with TM-Town for a while, this page will seem more or less the same functionally speaking. You can access the page by either clicking on the green navigation button on the right and selecting ‘My Documents', or clicking the ‘Manage Documents' button from the dashboard's document uploader.
Once on the page, you can see tabs of different types of documents. Within each one of those tabs, you'll see the stats for that document type, nice and big at the top. You can then scroll down to view, sort, and take any desired actions on that document type.
If you'd like to add a document while on this page, you can do that too! Simply click on the blue plus button and the document uploader will appear at the top of the page.
Job Messages Overview
Up until now, we've been manually reviewing the job messages that come in to ensure they are definitely not SPAM. We would then take those that were legit and email them on to you.
Starting today, however, you've now got a way to manage your messages directly on the site.
We've built in some smart SPAM filters to catch the most common offenders, but anything that is not manually marked as SPAM by you or us will have a warning icon next to it.
We decided to go ahead and deliver these messages to you immediately since there are cases when a message may be urgent and you can't wait for us to check that message before delivering it to you.
So what to do if you think a message you've received is SPAM?
Open the message (and don't click on any URLs that might be in the message if it seems odd). Then, click on the ‘Feedback' button. A form will appear with options once you click on the field. If you think it's SPAM, please select that option. This will archive the message as well as help us improve our SPAM filtering. From there, you can also delete the message.
If the message you receive is legitimate, but doesn't necessarily seem applicable to you, please let us know why by selecting ‘Rate too low' or ‘Not in my fields.' If there's another reason, please contact us and tell us what option you'd like to add.
If you choose to reply to the message, simply click the ‘Reply' button and your email client will open. You're free from that point to directly correspond with the client and decide on your own whether or not to work for them. Our goal is to introduce great clients to you based on your prior work and expertise. We aren't looking to take a cut from the work you get from messages on TM-Town.
Finally, any message you've given feedback on will be tagged, and that tag will appear under the message for future reference. If you'd like to archive messages in your inbox, you can do that. If you need to move something back to your inbox, you can do that too.
Hopefully it's a straightforward process, but give us a shout if you've got any questions!
Alright! That's it!
As you can see, we've been staying insanely busy at TM-Town, and we've still got lots more coming!
Be sure to subscribe to our email list so you don't miss any announcements.
Also, if you like the work we're doing, it'd really make our day if you'd take two seconds to share this post. Thanks and have a great week!Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/532016-02-01T02:57:06Z2016-02-01T02:57:06ZMaking TM-Town Accessible for All TranslatorsAnalyze your work offline, get discovered online. In a previous blog post back in September we promised to take steps to make TM-Town better even for those translators who do not have work to load.
Since that post we have worked hard to make that a reality by:
Updating profiles to give all translators a beautiful home on the web.
Continuing to improve our sample source text library to make it easy to submit a sample translation in one's field of expertise.
However, these changes were not enough. There still remained a large gap between those that had work to load and those who could only load a sample translation on TM-Town.
We put on our thinking caps and imagined -
"What if there were a way by which translators could reap the benefits of Nakōdo without ever having to load a translation memory file to the Internet?"
Impossible you might say. Well, today we are here to announce exactly that - with our new desktop application a translator can now get discovered through Nakōdo based on their prior work without that work ever leaving their computer.
How it works
Deshi, our new offline desktop TM analyzer, allows translators to get discovered through our Nakōdo search engine without having to actually load any aligned translation units or any full segments. The system works as follows:
Download the desktop application.
Load a translation memory (TM) file into the desktop application and your TM file will be analyzed offline.
The desktop application creates a synopsis file which is just a plain text file with the file extension “.town”.
Load the synopsis file into your TM-Town account. This allows you to get credit in your profile for your work and the potential to be discovered in TM-Town’s Nakōdo search engine based on the content of your work. No aligned translation units or full segments are sent to TM-Town.
What exactly is included in the synopsis file that you will be loading into your TM-Town account? This plain text file contains the following information:
A count of the number of translation units in your TM file
A count of the number of segments in your TM file
A word count
The language pair of your TM file
The top terms from your file
An encrypted checksum of the file (to ensure one can't 'cheat' and change data in the file)
Further Motivation
While our primary motivation for creating this desktop application was to help translators who may not have work to load to TM-Town, we also had a secondary motivation. There has been some criticism levied at us around the inter-webs implying that our intentions and future plans are quite nefarious.
What the critics are saying:
Do you want to give thousands or millions of your translation units for free [of charge] to men behind it?
I am personally very suspicious about your site's long-term objectives, Kevin, but maybe that's just because I'm a cynical old woman - I'm suspicious of Google and Facebook, etc. even though most people don't seem to be.
I think it’s obvious the whole point of TM Town is gathering TM content. That’s it. This interface is just a decoy (and a very unprofessional one, at that).
No guarantee... that my TMs wouldn't be exploited in any way. I'm not calling this a "scam", but just people telling me "we won't do it" is not enough for me. There's just too much at stake.
What is the use then of uploading your TMs to the site? Perhaps a client or two in exchange for the website owner getting full access to all your language pairs, all your work nicely aligned, all your terminology, for free, and doing whatever they want with that? Perhaps the TMs are not shared with anyone, but how about the owners of the website, do they access and mine the TMs? There are usually years of hard work behind translation memories and I am only willing to share mine with a selected group of colleagues when needed. Perhaps I am old-school and suspicious, but clouds - I still prefer those in the sky.
In my opinion the above skepticism is not only natural but warranted. TM-Town is still rather new and with Nakōdo we are doing something that has never been done before in the industry. Having said that though, I also think we have continually taken steps to improve TM-Town and address these points. The new desktop application goes even further to address the above critics. Now, a translator can 100% benefit from Nakōdo and our traditional directory search without ever uploading a single segment or translation unit.
Hopefully this is further proof that we are squarely in the corner of the translator.
Job Messaging System
How does loading work help you on TM-Town (either loading work the traditional way or through the new desktop application system)? Simply, it improves your chances of getting discovered. Loading work helps you get discovered through Nakōdo, our first-of-its-kind translator search which returns specialists based on their prior work. Loading work also helps improve your standing in our traditional directory search which ranks translators based on the work they have loaded.
On TM-Town visitors searching for translators are free to message translators and engage with them as they wish. TM-Town takes no cut of any translation jobs or clients found through our site (our business model is explained here). To date, the following is an analysis of the types of messages flowing through TM-Town's job messaging system:
Agency: 44.4% (~25% specific orject | ~75% long term collaboration)
End client: 28.8%
Peer-to-peer: 26.6%
More good news is on the way as well. Nate is hard at work on a complete redesign of TM-Town's job messaging system and it is going to be great! It will be more transparent and much easier to use.
A Final Note
Make no mistake - for those who do entrust their work with us, TM-Town offers many great features that allow you to safely and securely leverage your prior work...and we have many more features in the pipeline.
Benefits of loading work:
You have a (backup) copy of your TMs in the cloud
You can search one/more than one/all your TMs simultaneously
You can search TMs you have loaded to TM-Town from within your CAT tool (currently supports CafeTran and a Trados Studio 2015 plugin is in beta)
You can align documents
You can create terminology glossaries from terms extracted from your TMs
You can collaborate with other translators
You can sell your terminology glossaries on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace
and more...
You can download the new desktop application here. If you do not yet have a TM-Town account be sure to sign up and give it a try.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/522016-01-18T00:23:56Z2016-01-18T00:23:56ZFor Translation Jobs, PDF = Pretty Darn FinickyI am surprised by the number of discussions in the ProZ forums about how to convert PDFs to an editable format such as Microsoft Word. In my opinion, the short and best answer is: it cannot be done. I say this because to my mind, conversion entails an almost perfect transfer of page layout, fonts and formatting such as bold underline and italics. This is if the formatting is simple. Tables and images deserve an explanation in and of themselves.
Dead or Alive?
There are two kinds of PDFs, each with its own difficulties. A live PDF means that it is (sort of) extractable and therefore editable right off the bat. What this means is you can copy the text from the PDF and paste it into a Word document. This does not necessarily mean that you will be successful in completely converting the live PDF into a Word document (again, I can't stress enough that those tables and images wreak havoc during the conversion process).
Then you have the dead PDF. Think of this variety as digital paper. Someone had a piece of paper (hopefully several pieces of paper) they wanted to put on their computer. So they scanned it and it became a PDF. But to you the translator, it is still a piece of paper — it just happens to live on your computer screen. You will find all of the characteristic flaws of a piece of paper: crooked, smudges, illegible handwriting and some more fun stuff thrown in for your pleasure. In fact, these PDFs can be worse than paper because many times they are at least once removed from that original piece of paper. My guess is that they are photocopies or faxes. This can make Arabic numerals especially hard to discern. Was that a number 6 or an 8? (Did I mention that when you are squinting at these numbers and try to make a sound decision, it is 1:00 AM and you are dying to get some shuteye?
Some Solutions
Let's start with those live PDFs. I'm afraid you can't kill them, but I do recommend that you anesthetize them and make quick work with your scalpel in the operating room. First of all, you have to decide how good/bad the formatting is. If it is a simple, straightforward text, you can probably convert it. There is some pretty good software such as Solid PDF or ABBYY FineReader. If the output is a clean-looking Word document with no text boxes or paragraph marks at the end of each line, you're home free and ready to start translating in your CAT tool of choice. If not, a simple but somewhat time-consuming solution is to copy all of the text or save it to a text file and then either paste or open it in Word. Then you will have to format the document yourself. Depending on what you've agreed upon with the client, you may not have to reproduce the formatting exactly. Fortunately, your text is clean and the formatting job is just a matter of time. Maybe you want to put on your favorite music to lessen the drudgery.
If your PDF is dead, you will have to extract it — no chance of copying and pasting here. Whatever its condition (and I've seen mangled and mutilated dead PDFs that need an autopsy), make sure you run it through an OCR (optical character recognition) program. I can only recommend ABBYY FineReader, because it's the only software I've systematically used over the years. Now take a look at the output. Is the target document riddled with text boxes, funny characters or chunks of images of text? If you see any of the above, run for your life! — No, wait! You already agreed to translate this document, so here is what you can do:
Of course, if you have a clean target document, the only thing you need to do is go over it and check that the spelling, and the words themselves, are in order. After a while, you get a feel for what mistakes ABBYY FineReader will throw your way: l instead of 1, garbage text and nn for m, to give you a few examples. If you like, you can use the built-in spell checker and correct the text highlighted in blue. The key here is to never lose track of the source text and check it thoroughly against the document that underwent OCR.
Before you bury that scarred and wounded dead PDF littered with rubbish that makes it unfeasible to format by hand, save it and keep it on ice for future use. Think of it as your Frankenstein project. You can easily use bits and pieces of it — or limbs and organs in keeping with the leitmotif — in the target document. Look for proper nouns and numbers, which will no doubt be similar or the same in the target language. In other words, let nothing go to waste.
Which brings me to the fix for that dead PDF slaughtered beyond recognition, you know, one that would make roadkill look good! I'm afraid folks, you'll just have to limber up your fingers and type away your translation. There's a quick way to set up your Windows so that the source is on the left and the target is on the right (unless you want to do it backwards). Just press Windows key + left arrow so that the PDF is positioned on the left half of the screen and Windows key + right arrow so the word document is positioned on the right side of the screen. Of course, if you don't like to type, you can always dictate your translation with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Typing Assistant is pretty good if you just want to stick to keyboarding and opt out of vocal cording.
If there are a lot of text boxes, stamps, seals, tables and graphs or any mixture thereof, consider breaking each page into smaller chunks in the form of a screen snippet. When I am looking at a tax form, for instance, it is hard on my eyes and more daunting if I see the complete page all at once. However, if I isolate each chunk or paragraph and focus on that alone, it is much more pleasant and hence I am more productive.
There are many ways to snip PDFs: Evernote, SnagIt and Microsoft Windows' own Snipping Tool. Yes, I know, it's an extra step and somewhat tedious if you have a long document, but I find it worthwhile. There's nothing worse than a translation with missing portions (Well, actually there is, a poor translation).
If your budget and schedule allow for it, you can always outsource the dirty work involved in formatting dead or live PDF documents. Seek the services of a DTP expert on Fiverr or oDesk. For a reasonable price and a fairly quick turnaround time, you can get someone else to prep your source document so that you can wake up the next morning or the morning after that and find it in your mailbox. Even so, don't forget to give it the once over in case your helper left something out/unresolved.
Besides those translators on the various forums who say that they refuse to accept PDFs (which is not my case), there are others who suggest asking the client if he/she has a Word copy of the document. I myself have asked the same question and usually the answer is negative. But it's worth a try as this would be the ideal and ultimate solution. If this is not possible, you should also ask the client how accurately the source document has to be formatted. Sometimes they will just say that minimal formatting is acceptable. Other times, they will demand more from the translator. Just make sure you are charging enough to make it worth your while. I myself add a certain percentage of my regular fee to all PDF translations. If you prefer, you could also add a given fixed hourly rate for dealing with these monsters.
Whatever you choose to do, and however you choose to go about it, it is extremely important to decide what solution or solutions you are going to apply before you start translating. At the beginning of my career, I relied too heavily on OCR programs, and in my ignorance, I would start translating on a less than perfect Word conversion with funny lines and squiggles. Then the client would mention this fact and I would have to scramble and fix it the best way I knew how. Conversely, sometimes I would type out the translation when I probably could have benefited from conversion software, saving me several hours. PDFs can be challenging, and a pain at times, but without them, our options would be limited.Reed Jamestag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/512016-01-13T04:44:01Z2016-01-13T04:44:01Z10 Steps to Become a Professional Freelance Translator: Ultimate Resource PageIsn't it amazing how many people believe translators are just human dictionaries?
Becoming a professional freelance translator is no easy task, even if you have managed to memorize an entire dictionary...
Because on top of your amazing suite of linguistic skills and knowledge, there's an underlying necessity to understand how business works as well.
So if you really want to go pro and spend all of your time as a freelance translator, you’re going to need a lot of dedication and know-how in several areas, on top of your linguistic dexterity.
Luckily for us, the internet is overflowing with helpful information that can aid in reducing the learning curve. That's why I decided to find and curate a list of the best content I could find on becoming a professional freelance translator.
Then, I categorized each link into 10 steps that you can follow as you progress from fledgling freelance translator, to Chuck Norris roundhouse kick awesome level translator.
A Note About TM-Town
TM-Town believes in making translators happier through technology. That’s why we focus on creating tools that make your job easier, more enjoyable, and more lucrative.
Sign up for your free account today, and join a community of translators who are already benefiting from our array of tools.
The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Professional Freelance Translator
Below is our table of contents. Start here and click on the sections that sound most appropriate to where you are in your career. You’ll be taken to that section where you can explore the links further.
There’s a ton of information here, and it’s meant to serve as a resource for you any time you feel like you’ve gotten stuck. So go ahead and bookmark the URL now so you don’t lose this link.
We also want this resource to be a community effort, benefiting from your own knowledge of invaluable resources online for translators. If you can think of anything we’re missing, please use the tweet button in that section to send us a link.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Understand what professional translation (the art) entails
Step 2: Select one or more niches to specialize in
Step 3: Assess your ability to produce professional translations
Step 4: Confirm with a third-party that you are capable of translating to a professional standard
Step 5: Understand what professional translation (the job) entails
Step 6: Learn how the business side of things works
Step 7: Market yourself and find work
Step 8: Continuously improve
Step 9: Continuously build your body of linguistic resources
Step 10: Rinse and repeat!
Bonus Chapter: Fun for when you need a laugh
Step 1: Understand what professional translation (the art) entails
Most people don’t understand what translators really do. They believe you just take one word and say it in another language. But every translator knows this is not the case. This section is to help you determine what translation really means for you as an art. Spend some time reading over these links and really meditate on what translation is for you, and why you’re embarking on this career path. It’s an essential first step.
10 Translation Quotes: Great Writers on the Art of Translation | Alta
Good Translation: Art, Craft, or Science? | Translation Journal
Is Translation an Art or a Math Problem? | The New York Times
The Art and Craft of Translation | John Hopkins Magazine
Translation - art, craft, or science? | ProZ.com Forums
The Science of Translation? | Transubstantiation
Translation is Science and Art Combined | The Kurdistan Tribune
Step 2: Select one or more niches to specialize in
It’s a common mistake for those just starting out in translation, but it’s actually not a good idea to market yourself as being able to translate anything under the sun. Read the below resources and develop your service based on domain knowledge that you have or plan to focus on learning.
What’s So Special About Specialisation? | thebigworld
Specialization in Translation - myths and realities | Translation Journal
Advice for Beginners: Specialisation | Translation Times
Choosing your translation specialisations | Thoughts on Translation
Six tips for choosing a specialisation for your freelance translation career | Marketing Tips for Translators
Specializing | ProZ.com Wiki
What translation field should I specialize in? | ProZ.com Forums
Step 3: Assess your ability to produce professional translations
Once you’ve decided on a direction for your area of expertise, the next step is to gauge your ability to produce translations of a professional caliber. If necessary, you may need to also spend some time to improve your knowledge and skills.
Translation credentials: what are they and do you need them? | Thoughts On Translation
List of Approved Translation and Interpreting Schools | American Translators Association
Good sources of volunteer/pro bono translation work? | ProZ Forum
Coursera — Improve Your Domain Specific Knowledge | Coursera
Step 4: Confirm with a third-party that you are capable of translating to a professional standard
After you feel comfortable with your ability to translate at a high quality in your chosen fields, it’s time to confirm that with a third party.
Guide to Selecting a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Service | NAFSA
Step 5: Understand what professional translation (the job) entails.
The true mark of a master is the ability to utilize the tools of the trade to maximize output. The below resources will help you learn how technology can and should be added to your workflow to increase words translated per hour.
What is Translation Memory | TranslationZone
What are Translation Memory Tools? | London Translations
An Introduction to CAT Tools | Wolfstone
Open Source Tools for Translators | One Hour Translation
Computer Assisted Translation | Wikipedia
Unlocking the Black Box of Translation Memory Files | TM-Town
Step 6: Learn how the business side of things works
Planning where your business is going and budgeting so that you can scale your translation business to earn more will require that you learn some basic accounting principles. It’s a good idea to start out doing your own books, utilizing the software that’s available to you. You can always hire an accountant later, but it will be very eye opening to work closely with your own numbers at first.
Accounting Basics for Freelancers and the Self-Employed | QuickBooks
Not an Accountant? How to Make Sense of Your Business Finances | SitePoint
10 Great apps for busy freelancers: accounting, contracts, etc. | FreelancersUnion
5 Bookkeeping Tips for DIY Freelancers | Upwork
The Freelancers Essential Guide to Business and Taxes | FormSwift
Tools from ProZ.com | ProZ.com
Step 7: Market yourself and find work
The good news about marketing now is that anyone in the world can now hear your message. The bad news is, that can feel very overwhelming! Believe that you can do it, and just start. It’s more common than not to dislike marketing and sales, but without them, you’re not going to last very long as a business owner. Learn as you go and don’t get discouraged.
Create a Free, Beautiful Translator Profile that Doubles as a Portfolio Page | TM-Town
21 Marketing Tips for Freelancers From the Most Successful Women in the Industry | Freelance Flyer
5 Tips to Actively Market Your Freelance Business | Brent Galloway
Ultimate List of Marketing Tools for Freelancers (free ebook) | The Admin.org
10 Laws of Social Media Marketing | Entrepreneur
50 Entrepreneurs Share Their Top 3 Social Media Marketing Tips | Founders Grid
Step 8: Continuously improve
You can always get better. And there’s no better way than to collaborate with other translators, find time to research your field, train further, and enhance your translation abilities — both art and commercial activities.
Collaborating with Other Translators | The Savvy Newcomer
Collaborative Translation | Wikipedia
Are there any good open source collaborative translation apps? | Quora
Translation by collaboration: How TEDxSapporo work together to find the perfect word | TED
Niche specific webinars for translators | eCPD Webinars
ProZ.com mentoring program | ProZ
Step 9: Continuously build your body of linguistic resources
Your work and your linguistic assets are like gold. Take care of them from the beginning by managing them properly, and work every day on making sure they grow. Ideally, you’re doing this while getting paid for your translation services. So now is the time to focus on finding even more work.
DGT - Translation Memory | European Commission
OPUS - an open source parallel corpus | Jörg Tiedemann
TM-Town Terminology Marketplace | TM-Town
12 tips for getting direct translation clients | Transylvania Digest
How to Get More Work from Translation Agencies | Translator Thoughts
Advice for a new translator on job hunting | Translation Musings
Step 10: Rinse and repeat!
Repeat steps (7)-(9) and enjoy!
You made it to the end of the guide! Way to go!
I hope all of the resources above will help you as you hone your skills and grow your freelance translation business.
If you know someone else who would benefit from this page, please take a second to share it with them.
Bonus Chapter: Fun for when you need a laugh
All work and no play... is never any good!
So if you're in need of a break, take a look below for a healthy laugh.
Videos
How English sounds to non-English speakers (video)
Fresh Prince: Google Translated (video)Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/502015-12-30T03:53:38Z2015-12-30T03:53:38ZSearch Terms in the TM-Town Terminology MarketplaceThe TM-Town Terminology Marketplace has just been updated. In addition to some design changes the marketplace now also has a brand new term search feature. Search a term and you'll be able to see if there are any glossaries on the marketplace that include your term. In addition to searching for a term you can also filter your search by language pair or seller.
The TM-Town Terminology Marketplace has now had more than 100 sales. Give it a try - search a term and if you find a glossary that would be useful for you be sure to support your fellow translators by making a purchase.
If you would like to sell a glossary on the marketplace check out our FAQs and seller guidelines which includes a video showing you how to get started.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/492015-12-28T06:02:48Z2015-12-28T06:02:48ZIntroducing Membership TiersStarting today TM-Town is introducing two paid membership tiers to complement our free plan. By offering these new paid tiers we believe we will better be able to serve professional freelance translators going forward.
At TM-Town we experimented in the past with allowing clients to purchase translation directly from our platform. However, we are not an online translation agency nor are we necessarily equipped to be one, so we moved away from this business model as our strengths have always been in serving the professional freelance translator.
We believe that our new pricing structure (i.e. charging translators as opposed to charging clients) allows us to best serve you - the professional freelance translator. Charging translators allows us to stay in tune to your needs and to focus our development efforts on features and tools that improve TM-Town for you and help you to grow your translation business and manage your TMs and terms. Nate and I are excited about the future of TM-Town as we have many plans for new great features for translators.
The other benefit of this model is that it let's us get out of the way when it comes to dealing with your clients. Our goal is to help clients find you without creating needless obstacles in order for them to reach out to you. Clients that discover you on TM-Town are yours to negotiate with as you see fit. Our interests are aligned with yours. Conversely, this also makes TM-Town more attractive to clients as they can use TM-Town to find the best professional translators in the world and don't have to worry about paying a middleman or finder's fee.
So what do the new paid tiers look like? Take a look at our membership pricing page to learn all of the details. Basically speaking, the paid tiers allow you to load more documents and index more segments and terms in our search (and thus leverage those segments and terms through our CAT tool extensions).
To reward all of the great translators who have supported us to this point we are giving all current TM-Town members (those who sign up to TM-Town before January 1st, 2016) 1,000 document uploads for the free tier.
Thank you to all the wonderful translators who have supported us so far and we hope that you can continue to support our mission by purchasing a paid tier. Nate and I will continue working hard to improve TM-Town and help you grow your translation business.
If you have any questions or comments on the new pricing tiers please let us know in the comments below.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/482015-12-21T03:01:56Z2015-12-21T03:01:56ZThe Lighter SideAt TM-Town we spend a lot of time on design and user experience. Just in the past few months we have launched beautiful new profiles, a redesigned homepage, and a brand new directory search.
While we take great pride in the design and layout of TM-Town, we are also cognizant of the fact that design and page weight are often, but not always, in conflict with one another. As we have translators signing up from all over the world we are also aware that what looks great and loads fast in one country might load sluggishly in a country where the Internet connection speeds are much slower.
With this in mind, we have released TM-Town lite, a version of the TM-Town web application without images or JavaScript. This version is not for the faint of heart and most definitely will not be winning any design awards. However, for those using screen readers, or those in countries with slow Internet speeds, TM-Town lite provides a fast alternative to the main TM-Town page while still maintaining the majority of the functionality of the regular site.
TM-Town lite can be accessed by clicking the 'Lite' link in the footer. This link will keep you on the current page you are on (for example, this blog post that you are reading), it will just serve the lite version of it. Subsequently, you can return to the normal TM-Town site by clicking the 'Leave Lite' link in the footer of the lite page.
While TM-Town lite is certainly not for everyone, in our quest to serve translators from all over the world we hope it makes TM-Town easier to access for those who use screen readers or for those in parts of the world with slower Internet connections.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/472015-12-15T04:05:51Z2015-12-15T04:05:51Z6 Ways Our Translator Directory Search Just Got a Whole Lot BetterRaise your hand if you want more freelance translation work…
Or let me rephrase, more translation work that pays you what you’re worth and is in your field of expertise.
As part of our commitment to make better ways for freelance translators to be matched with the jobs best suited to their needs, we began the process of revamping our traditional directory search.
While we did a major overhaul last week, we’ve still got a few minor adjustments to make. With that said, we went ahead and put it out in the wild so that we could get some feedback from you.
So, let’s dig into what improvements we’ve made, and then I’d like to ask for your thoughts.
Filter by just about anything under the sun
As you’re probably well aware, we took our profiles to the next level a couple of months ago. During that process, we added several more details to your profile.
Well, that information needed to be put to work, so our new directory now allows filtering of any and all the details that you can enter about yourself in your account settings.
2. More detailed search views
People browsing the directory don’t need to leave the search page now to get a more in depth view of a translator.
We have a condensed row with only the vital information of the translator displayed, but if you click on the expand icon, you can open up a detailed view of that translator.
You can then move on to view that translator’s profile if her details seem to fit your criteria.
3. Message directly from search
You no longer need to visit a translator’s profile to send a message. That can be done directly from the search page!
4. Even more result ordering options
Before, we ordered our results based on translation unit numbers, but now you can sort by these additional parameters:
Term concept number
Years of experience
Lowest rate
Highest rate
5. Save and share searches
This is one feature I’m personally very excited by.
We are now saving your searches so you can re-run the same search super easily in the future. How nice is that?! No more setting the same filters you always set. Enter it once, and search it every time you need it.
Need to share a search view with someone else? That too is now possible!
Simply copy the URL and send that on to whoever you need to.
6. It’s easy to make search variations
Say you have a saved search for English > Japanese translators in Tourism, but today you also need to search by availability.
You can more easily create that new search by first clicking on your saved search, and then by adding the new filter and clicking search again. This creates a new search that you can now reuse again when you need it!
Like I said, we’re still going to be improving the way some things look, but we wanted to give you a chance to play around with these new search features.
Please comment with your feedback below, or feel free to send us a message!
We’d also really appreciate it if you shared this news with any small agencies you may know.Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/462015-11-19T08:03:57Z2015-11-19T08:03:57ZDocument Alignment Tool UpdateTM-Town's document alignment tool just received a makeover! It still has all of the functionality you loved about the previous version but it is now faster and works better even for longer alignments.
Translators loved the GUI and ease of use of the previous version of our alignment tool; however, translators sometimes encountered trouble with longer documents. TM-Town's updated tool is a little slimmer but maintains all of the functionality you have grown to love.
TM-Town's alignment tool focuses on 7 core actions that allow you complete flexibility to make sure you get the perfect alignment. Why is this important? After testing many different automatic alignment options, no matter how good the algorithm was, nothing beat giving translators the option to quickly and easily manually check and edit the alignment.
Maintaining quality translation memories will have a big impact on your efficiency over time. No more worries about misalignments or mistakes in your TMs - you can have complete confidence as you translate.
7 Core Actions
Move segment up
Merge segment up
Remove segment
Split segment
Merge segment down
Move segment down
Click on a segment to edit the text of that segment
To get started with TM-Town's alignment tool is easy - just upload a source and target document and then click on the pink alignment icon next to the source document. Watch this video to see how easy it is...Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/452015-11-16T01:18:46Z2015-11-16T01:18:46ZSet Your Translation RatesRates can sometimes be a contentious topic for translators, but on TM-Town we make it simple for you. Starting today, if you so choose, you can set a public rate range on your TM-Town profile. This helps to give clients browsing your profile a better feel for whether you are the best translator for their job.
We at TM-Town know that your rates will vary. Many factors can influence the rate you decide to charge for a job including the language pair, the difficulty of the source text, file format, deadline and more. By allowing you to set a range on your profile (both a per word and hourly range) you can communicate to potential clients the typical rates you charge while still maintaining the flexibility to negotiate with the client after you learn the specific details of the job.
You can set your rate ranges from your account settings page. To keep things simple and consistent for clients browsing the site, we ask you to specify your rate range in USD (U.S. dollars) even if you have a different preferred currency.
Also, don't forget to set your Don't Bother Me Rate. We have updated the profile message so that clients now have to specify their budget in one of the following categories:
Entry Level (less than $0.07/word)
Intermediate ($0.07/word - $0.14/word)
Expert (greater than $0.14/word)
If the client's budget is below your Don't Bother Me Rate it's simple - you won't be bothered.
If you aren't yet a TM-Town member be sure to set up your free account today and let TM-Town help you create a beautiful online home for your translation business.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/442015-11-09T07:56:11Z2015-11-09T07:56:11ZFreelance Translators Can Now Develop Professionally by Directly Asking the ExpertsWhy are people so timid to seek help?
If you aren’t, you may be in the minority.
Even though we live in the most globally connected age ever, we still struggle to swallow our pride and admit we need help in certain areas of our professional and personal lives.
That’s no different for freelance translators. You face numerous challenges when it comes to professional development and growing your business.
But imagine if there was a place for freelance translators to go where they could have access to ask one expert anything in his or her area of expertise.
No need to be shy…
No need to feel that you were asking a stupid question…
No need to be afraid of the typical forum trolls…
That’d be great, wouldn’t it?
If you’d love to be able to pick one expert’s brain and develop professionally in this way, you’re in luck!
Introducing Expert Translator Q&A
Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve released version 1.0 of Expert Translator Q&A.
How is it different from a typical forum?
Unlike a forum where one user starts a topic and others give their advice, we personally go out to the experts we know in the translation industry and ask them to answer questions on one area that makes them an expert.
You then get to ask them any question related to that topic and get direct answers back.
It’s like becoming the interviewer of someone you would otherwise rarely ever get the chance to talk with. We’re talking about people who have mastered a certain translation tool, experts at one aspect of building a translation business, or the creators of tools and services that translators love.
But unlike a completely live Q&A like a Google Hangout, these will be semi-live events.
That means you don’t have to worry about only getting to see a recording because you’ll have a few days of access to ask questions and comment, but after that, you can still view the questions and answers that were submitted.
So even if you’re unable to stop by and ask your own questions, the conversations will be there to serve as an excellent resource.
However, it’s our hope that by making the events last a few days, translators all over the world in any time zone will get the chance to participate by asking their questions or contributing their own expertise.
Register and get notified for our first ever Q&A events.
To launch this all new format for Q&A, we’ve put together three simultaneous events that you’re sure to love.
Click on the links below to register for any or all of the three events below that appeal to you.
How and Why You Should Mentor — hosted by Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah
Adding Speech to Text to Your Workflow — hosted by Michael Beijer
Exclusive Q&A with CafeTran Creator — hosted by Igor Kmitowski
Quite a lineup right?!
Register today and we’ll let you know when the events are live, as well as send you a daily digest of the action so you don’t miss the top questions.
It’s our hope to create regular events with professionals answering questions on the topics you want, so please feel free to suggest anyone to us by emailing info@tm-town.com.
Lastly, if this news comes as music to your ears, please take a second to click on one of the share buttons or forward this link to your colleagues.
See you at one of the events above!Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/432015-11-03T08:25:17Z2015-11-03T08:25:17ZFreelance Translators Have a New, Beautiful (and Free) Online HomeBuilding your freelance translation business is tough, right?
I mean, you’ve worked hard to learn the skills you need to turn your translations into an art, and if being a top translator alone were enough to build a booming business, that’d be great…
But as soon as you open up shop, you discover a never ending list of other skills you’ve got to master. From marketing to web design to SEO, there’s a ton of advice on the web for how you should build your business.
At TM-Town, we had a different vision for translators. One in which a lot of the heavy lifting of being discovered by clients is done by none other than… your previous work.
Now that we’ve created a number of tools that help you work better, we spent the last couple of weeks developing all new profiles that will put both you and your work in the best light possible.
So, if you’re tired of updating countless profiles and optimising your personal website, I know you’re going to love the new profiles that we’ve rolled out.
Here’s the short story. When you set up your TM-Town account, the result you get is a beautiful online portfolio site through which you can connect with peers and potential clients.
In other words, you focus on your work, using our tools to align and back up your work, and we do the heavy lifting of putting you in front of clients who are looking for a translator with your exact skill set.
And on top of that, we give you a great online home base to operate your business. If our profiles were a premium WordPress theme, you could easily drop $60+ on it…
But we want you to look as great as your translations, so it’s included for free for everyone who signs up.
Take a Look and Set Up Your All New Profile
After you watch the video, I’d like to walk you through each section of the new profiles now and show you how to set it up so that it looks great.
To get started, click on the Manage Your Data > Edit Your Profile. Scroll down to the Account Settings area.
Header
The header area of your profile allows you to showcase not only your skills, but your own personal style.
Let me walk you through where the information for the header comes from.
Under the General Information section under Account Settings, choose a professional headshot of you and your pearly whites.
Directly under that, choose a background image that is at least 2000px wide by 605px high.
Next, fill in your name, preferred name, and native language.
If you scroll down a little, you’ll see a field for ‘Tagline.’ You’ll want this to briefly tell clients why they should work with you.
To finish up all the info in the header area, choose a theme color based on what you think would go nicely with your photo.
As for your language pairs, these are either added when you first join TM-Town, or set during document uploads. In addition, fields of expertise cannot be directly edited after the sign up process. If you would like to edit these items, kindly email info@tm-town.com and choose up to five fields of expertise from our FAQ page.
We do it this way because we believe highly that everyone should have a finite list of fields, and areas of expertise shouldn’t really change that much. But if they do, please send us an email and we’ll get you sorted!
About Me
The About Me section is directly under the header. This gives a peer or potential client a snapshot of the work you’ve done through pie charts, as well as shows them how you work (what CAT tools you use, accepted payments, your location, etc.).
First, from the General Information section, make sure your country of residence is selected.
Then continue filling out the rest of the General Information section. You’ll need to give a descriptive summary of your work and why you excel in the About Me field, and choose your years of experience.
To add CAT tools, use the dropdown tool under Software You Use. Click on the ‘Add Software Tool’ link to add multiple tools.
To finish up the sidebar in the About Me section, from your User Account Settings scroll down to Social Media and Other Profiles. Connect your ProZ.com account and fill in the URLs to any of the other profiles you may have.
To add payment methods, go to the Payment Methods section and fill out all of the information there.
Now, to show potential clients what you specialise in through your work, you’ll want to make sure your Translation Units and Term Concepts numbers are not zero. Uploading work or completing sample translations is how you can add this information to your profile, which will also unlock pretty pie charts so visitors can quickly see what you specialise in.
Once you’ve done that, your profile should now be looking pretty nice!
My Work
The My Work section is a place for you to show off up to six of your past projects. There are two types of projects shown.
One comes from the sample documents you have in ProZ.com. They show information like the language pair, title, and keywords.
To import those into your TM-Town profile, make sure your ProZ.com account is linked in your account settings.
The second type of project you can show are files that you’ve directly uploaded to TM-Town and given a public title to. What’s great about these type of projects is that we can show visitors your actual translations. They’ll be able to click to see the source and target translation units.
To allow these types of projects to show up, remember to set a public title when you upload any documents with us.
My Experience
In the My Experience section, you can show visitors a little bit more about you. There’s a max of three boxes that will appear there. One for each of: years of experience, education, and memberships.
You’ll need to add at least two of the below to unlock this section on your profile. To fill them in is super simple. Just head to your profile settings again and look for:
Years of Experience as a Professional Translator
Education
Associations and Memberships
Map and Availability Calendar
This section is self explanatory, and there’s not much you need to do here.
To make sure the map is showing your current location, select your country from the drop down in your General Information settings.
The availability calendar is really simple to use. Simply click on the days you’re unavailable, and they’ll turn to red. If you need to make an unavailable day available, again, simply click on it and you’re done. Easy!
Terminology Marketplace
If you've got glossaries for sale in our Terminology Marketplace, up to three of your best sellers will show up here, along with information such as your total number of glossaries for sale, your number of sales, and your average rating. Below that will be a place where the latest three reviews from your customers is shown.
If you haven’t yet set up shop in our marketplace, get started now. It’s a great way to get a little extra spending cash and show you’re really any expert. If you’re selling high quality glossaries that other translators want, potential clients will see that and know you’re one of the leaders in your field.
Recent Activity
This section has some updates coming in the near future, but for now it shows details for five of your latest uploads.
Not only is this fun, but again, it’s a way to show visitors the kind of fields you’ve been working in recently. If I need brain surgery, I’d like to know that the surgeon has recently done some brain operations. I don’t need a brain surgeon who’s been taking a break selling real estate for the last 10 years.
Similar Translators
This area does what it says and shows other translators who are similar to you.
Well, that does it!
We’ve now walked through each of the sections of your new shiny profiles, and I’ve shown you how you can optimise each section so that you are putting yourself in the best light.
Usually online profiles for translators are dull and drab, so no one really wants that to be their only online presence. This means setting up your own portfolio site that takes money or another set of skills you simply don’t have time to learn.
We set out to do something different by giving you a free online profile that also has the personality and style of a portfolio site. Plus, it’s linked into a network where clients and peers alike will have no trouble finding you as long as you constantly work on your expertise.
If you haven’t signed up for your new TM-Town profile, it’s easy to get started here!
And for all of you who have been with us for the last several months, it will only take a few minutes to get your new profile to look amazing.
As always, I welcome any comments you have. If you’re excited about the new profiles, I also ask that you take just a second of your time to share the word with your friends and colleagues!
(PS - If you notice anything strange about your particular profile, please give me a shout at nate@tm-town.com. As we just launched, there might be a few issues here and there.)Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/422015-10-30T05:31:06Z2015-10-30T05:31:06ZDragon Professional IndividualDragon is a software that allows you to dictate your translation while it does the heavy lifting, i.e., typing. In my opinion, if you aren’t utilizing dictation software of some kind, you’re really missing out. I’ve heard from a few people recently that said they had tried it and not liked it, but the more I probed, the more I realized that they just didn’t know how to get the most out of it to actually see productivity results.
First, let’s talk about the benefits
Lighten your load. First and foremost, it just makes translating easier. Plus, if you put forth less effort to translate the same number of words, in theory, you can translate a few more of them…or just take the afternoon off!
Goodbye hand cramps. I was developing a real case of carpal tunnel and it’s completely gone now because I’m not typing nearly as much. Translation can wreak havoc on our bodies and using dictation software can help protect your body. You can even stand up or walk around if you get a wireless headset.
Focus on the source. If you’re translating a PDF document, you’re usually forced to go back and forth looking at the source then the target, then the source and then target, etc. Dragon virtually eliminates this problem.
Hear your translation. We’ve long heard that reading a translation out loud can help eliminate things that just don’t sound right and with Dragon, this is not a separate step.
Translate faster. I think most people translate much faster with Dragon. It makes lists of phone numbers or lab values and especially dates a breeze. Even on complex medical documents, I am still faster than I was before using Dragon, even though I often do a lot of research.
Use commands to automate your repeated tasks. Even if you have used Dragon before, you may not be aware that Dragon Pro has the added feature of being able to create commands. Commands are similar to macros in Office if you’re familiar with them. If not, basically, any task that you do on a computer can be automated and linked to a voice command. For example, when you receive a job request and you’re all booked up, you could create a voice command, “all booked up” and have it insert an entire template e-mail for you. Or, if you come across text that repeats, you can create a command for it. I once had a patient record and it said something like “Patient 12345-6789, DOB 01/01/2001” which was covering the patient’s redacted name. I linked this text to the voice command “watermelon” knowing that “watermelon” was unlikely to be in this patient’s records and every time I said that word, it inserted that entire string of text for me. It’s also great if you come across brand names or molecule names that seem to have 478 characters…I mean, who has time to spell that every time? Not to mention, you can update your Facebook status, close and open windows and programs and lots more.
Translate consistently and translate better. I call this the “interpreter phenomenon” and I admit that it isn’t scientific—it’s just my experience. However, I find that sight translation and interpretation make me more decisive and make my brain work faster as I translate. Using Dragon is basically like practicing sight translation all of the time, which only makes you more decisive, thereby making you faster and faster.
Multitask. Dragon eliminates the absolute requirement that you must be looking where you are typing. For example, I might use Dragon to type in a search on Google or in a dictionary while I’m reading my source. Or, I might have looked something up and be reading the information I need as I’m dictating my newly found terminology into my translation.
I know you’re sold on dictation software now, but hold off on pressing “buy” before you read the pitfalls
Tomato: tomayto or tomahto? You need to know how to pronounce words. Think it’s obvious? Well, you might think you know how to pronounce it, but Dragon might not agree with you. Don’t worry, either you or Dragon will learn. You can even train Dragon with new vocabulary it doesn’t know.
Proofread differently. You have to proofread for mistakes that you know you never would have made. I recently had Dragon decide that when I said “NM” I meant “New Mexico.” I didn’t. It was an acronym for an institution. It also wrote March 42 7 when I meant March 4 to 7. You get used to looking for these things the more you use Dragon so don’t let this scare you off.
Heavy program. If you’re using a computer that is on its last leg, it probably won’t be able to handle Dragon, but most decent computers don’t seem to have problems.
No distractions. Yes, that is a pitfall…and an advantage. No listening to music or other sound. I do, however, sometimes manage to listen to music through the headset and it doesn’t seem to affect Dragon.
So, how much can Dragon increase your productivity? Well, that depends. I can say that just by adding Dragon to my own workflow, I’ve increased my speed by about 25% on highly technical jobs and by up to 100% on less technical jobs, including careful proofreading. There’s certainly no doubt that the software is now on my list of absolutely essential tools in my workflow, but don’t forget to proofread carefully.
Note: I am in no way affiliated with Dragon and there are several other dictation software programs available, it just so happens that my experience has been with Dragon.Jenae Sprytag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/412015-10-28T09:24:06Z2015-10-28T09:24:06Z7 Freelance Translation Job ‘Monsters’ and How to Defeat ThemThere's a rite of passage that every freelance translator must go through.
That is, learning how to spot and avoid potential ‘monster’ clients.
If you constantly find yourself in bad situations with clients, it might be because you’re missing the signs of what are really not clients at all — but one species of monster that is always on the hunt for unsuspecting translators.
In today’s post, I’d like to offer you a handbook that introduces you to six of the most common monsters, and what you should do to test the waters before jumping into any translation work with potential clients who express the below qualities.
The Translation Monsters Handbook
Monster #1 — The Bloodsucker
Perhaps one of the most feared monsters in the handbook, these jobs don’t pay you for top quality work until months after you’ve finished. In some cases, unfortunate translators were never paid for their hard work.
This client can come in the form of agency work or direct clients, and is not one you want to tango with. In fact, anyone who’s been stung by this creature before will be extra cautious not to be trapped in its snares again.
How to engage:
Any first time job with a client should be treated with caution. If it’s a big agency who you know of and have heard good things about, then there’s no need to fear in most cases. But if it’s a name you’re unfamiliar with, it’s a good idea to look into them a bit. Ask around on forums or to translation association lists you might be a part of. Check out their score on the ProZ.com Blue Board. Try to find out if anyone else has worked with them. If not, you should ask for 25% upfront that must be paid before you begin working on the project.
Long term agency clients can also go bad. Get to know someone personally at the agency and give them a call every once in a while to ask how things are going. If there’s a lot of stress, layoffs, or revenue worries, you’ll probably want to be on the lookout for late payments. If they have trouble paying you a large fee, ask for it to be financed out over the coming months as it could mean they’re going belly up. Better to at least get some cash while you can than be completely out of pocket because you waited for a full payment that never came.
First time direct clients should also be treated with caution. Asking for some percentage upfront is usually enough to guarantee that someone will become a paying client.
Monster #2 — The Test Imp
To the untrained eye, a simple unpaid test seems like a reasonable request for a cautious client to make in order to determine a translator’s quality. But be weary of any job offer that includes an unpaid test before you get started. The test could very well be a way for a bad client to piece together a free translation.
How to engage:
Remind the potential client that you’re a professional.You have a body of work and recommendations that prove your quality of work, so send that over along with your CV or a link to your TM-Town profile.. If they’re still in need of ‘convincing’, tell them any samples they require to be translated will need to be paid upfront. Also, learn what testing scams may be going around at the time and avoid anything that seems suspicious.
Monster #3 — The Ghost in the Machine (MT post-edit)
PEMT (post-editing machine translation) jobs are when the client runs a source text through their machine to get a translation, and then looks for a translator to edit it. While they may mistakenly view this as easier work, most translators view these jobs as being more difficult and time consuming than translating a document from the beginning.
How to engage:
Always inspect the document the client needs edited. If it’s going to take you longer than usual and cause more headaches, your rates need to reflect that. You can also pitch them on the fact that your work is an investment for them. They need their machine translation engine to be trained by the best so that it will provide more accurate translations in the future in order for future translators to edit the documents more easily (saving them more money). Thus, your work now is worth a higher rate because they are also paying for improved future benefits.
Monster #4 — The Crossroads Demon (bad negotiation tactics)
This kind of potential client will likely haggle with you on everything. Why? Because they’re probably looking for a quality that is above their budget.
How to engage:
This monster is fairly harmless if you stand your ground. But if you bend to their desires, you’ll be kicking yourself for taking a lower rate. Be honest, and tell the client if they truly want a cheaper translation, they’ll be able to find it for sure. Then, ask them if they’re willing to lose even more money due to having a poorly translated document that doesn’t optimally communicate their message. If they still can’t see the benefits they’ll gain by having your specific quality of translation, politely decline the offer and move on.
Monster #5 — The Unreasonable Minotaur (short deadlines)
There are plenty of legitimate rush jobs out there, but there are also rush jobs that have become rush jobs simply because the client has exhausted a list of other translators who have turned the project down. Regardless of which kind you find in your inbox, you need to make sure they’re offering expedited rates.
How to engage:
When determining whether a rush job is for you or not, it’s important to first ensure that you’ll be able to provide the level of quality you provide for all jobs. If so, remind the client that in order to achieve that quality and value, you’ll need to work nights and weekends to meet their rushed deadline. Also remind them that when any worker in any industry works overtime, they are compensated fairly for that schedule. Your situation is no different. If they’re not willing to pay you a higher rate, you’ll need to think very carefully about working with them or not. Most likely, it’s not worth the headache.
Monster #6 — The Discount Ogre (large document discounts)
Known for needing very large documents translated, the discount ogre believes this entitles him to some reduced rates. He is, after all, bringing you a ton of work. Isn’t it in his right?
No way.
Read on why not.
How to engage:
Large documents usually require 100% of your professional attention. They’ll probably require time to correct formatting issues, consistencies, and any number of other things to guarantee the quality you’ve become known for. Because you’re able to handle such a large document and provide a translation that is top quality, you should actually be entitled to a higher rate — yet the discount ogre is obliged to think he’s the one in need of a break.
In addition to the attention you must put on such large documents, you’ll also probably be stretched thin on your typical business activities such as marketing, networking, and looking for new clients. All of these are grounds for you to negotiate the contract in favour of you receiving your usual rate, at the very minimum.
Remind the client of the above, and if they’re unwilling to see eye-to-eye, simply move on.
If anything, I hope this handbook has reminded you that both in dark corners and in broad daylight, there are numerous monsters lurking about, looking for their next unsuspecting victim.
But little do they know, you’re wielding the very knowledge you need to expose them for what they really are. Knowledge that has been passed on for generations from translator to translator in a secret society, now exposed for all to see…
If you’ve enjoyed this bit of Halloween season fun, please take a moment to share it around! You can use the share buttons on this page or copy and paste the link in an email to some colleagues.
Also, this is not an exhaustive list, so if you wish to add your own knowledge of a monster that deserves to join the ranks of those above, kindly send me an email to nate@tm-town.com. I’ll add it to the handbook and also provide a link to your own personal website. If you prefer, you can simply leave it in the comments below.Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/402015-10-21T00:32:20Z2015-10-21T00:32:20ZWhat Photography Can Teach Us About TranslationWhile there are many freelance translators who embrace technology in their daily lives, I often come across a certain segment of the freelance translator community that tend to take a negative view toward new technology. In today's post I'll explore some of these fears to see if they spell doom for the translation industry and also give some advice on how you, as a freelance translator, can make sure that evolving technology doesn't hurt your business but rather helps it.
I'll begin with a personal story. My mom started her own freelance professional photography business when I was a child. She specializes in child sports photos, family photos and school photos. Since she started the business she has been able to continue to grow it year in and year out. It has by no means been easy, but in thinking about it recently there are many parallels to the translation industry and freelance translators, specifically related to how technology has impacted each industry.
Why do parents still order photos from my mom when they have a smartphone with a powerful camera in their pocket? How has my mom's business not only survived but thrived with technological advances seemingly a huge threat? I'll explore these topics in today's post and I think the answers to these questions offer good insights and parallels to the translation industry.
What is worrying freelance translators?
The issues I see that most often worry and frustrate translators include:
Low barriers to entry in the industry to become a translator
Downward pressure on rates throughout the industry
Issues related to machine translation (PEMT rates, misuse of MT, fear of MT)
Concern: Any bilingual with an Internet connection can become a "translator"
Advances in technology have certainly lowered barriers to entry to the translation industry. Between free machine translation services and a huge increase in terminology resources available on the web, it is easy for any bilingual hobbyist to set up shop and call himself/herself a translator. So how do you distinguish yourself as a professional translator? How can you grow your business when facing increased competition from untrained bilinguals? How do you win translation jobs when these "translators" seem to be undercutting on every job posting?
Well, here's the good news. There is still a market for quality translation done by a professional. While the barrier to entry into the translation market as a translator has become lower, the barrier to entry to become a professional translator has actually become much higher. Here's why:
The number and sophistication of the tools you need to know as a professional translator have increased - no longer is it possible to survive as a professional translator with a pad of paper and a dictionary, you need to be proficient with CAT tools, file formats, and more
Expectations are higher - clients expect fast turnaround times and great customer service
Mastering professional tools is extremely difficult - the efficiency gains a professional can see from the proper use and leverage of technology can lead to order of magnitude differences in the quality, consistency and speed of one's translations
So how does my mom stay relevant when all the parents are snapping photos with their smartphones? This same phenomenon is happening in the freelance photography world - while the barrier to entry is lower, the barrier to become a professional is much higher.
My mom knows her equipment inside and out. She has spent countless hours doing test photos in every type of lighting condition imaginable. On the back end, my dad has made our basement into a digital darkroom. While my mom uses a lab to print the photos, all of the color balancing is done in-house. Between my mom's knowledge of her camera and lighting equipment and my dad's knowledge of software tools for processing and color balancing the photos, they have been able to consistently produce to a very high quality standard and a quick turnaround time.
How does this apply to you as a freelance translator? You need to be an expert in translation software - learn and master your tools. Take the time to learn your CAT tool of choice in depth. Maintain your TMs and glossaries - keep them organized and free of mistakes. Know which resources you should use (and which you should not use) depending on the project. Be knowledgeable of different file formats and how to handle them. Learn and leverage new technologies. Find out how to best incorporate machine translation into your translation process. Start using voice recognition technology to increase your efficiency.
While some of the advice above may be seen as controversial by a vocal minority, I can tell you that I have been personally messaged by many professional translators who are leveraging new technology to achieve efficiency levels and earnings that exceed their louder peers.
All that said, utilizing technology in your work flow is only one piece of the puzzle. Understanding what professional translation (the art) entails and having deep domain knowledge in your specialty are what will ultimately make you stand out and keep your clients coming back to you. As they say, "A fool with a tool is still a fool."
Concern: There is a continued downward pressure on per word rates
Far and away the loudest complaints by translators tend to be related to rates. If you search popular translator forums for phrases like "peanuts" and "bottom-feeding" you'll turn up enough reading material to keep you busy for a few days.
While there is a lot of negative chatter around low per word rates, the data suggests that incomes for translators and interpreters have actually risen at a higher pace than inflation over the past 15 years. How can this be if per word rates are falling? Either translators are working much longer hours or they are translating more words per hour. While it may be a combination of both, I think that increases in efficiency have had a much larger impact. The average words per hour that one can translate today compared to 15 years ago is night and day due to advances in software applications built for translators.
This means that more important than optimizing for per word rates you should be optimizing for your per hour rate on a job. This is not to say that the client will be paying you per hour (the majority of clients will pay per word), rather that you should estimate on your own what your per hour rate will be and optimize for jobs that increase this rate. Your ability to accurately estimate the hourly rate of a potential job can help you be more selective and increase your earning power.
Factors that you need to take into account when estimating your per hour rate for a potential job include:
Is this translation in a domain you know well? How many words per hour can you translate on this subject matter?
Do you have resources for this client / domain (i.e. TMs, glossaries, etc.) that will help you to work faster and more efficiently?
What is the format of the files you need to translate? Is it something you need to spend 30 minutes tinkering with or a format that is handled easily by your CAT tool?
Is this a new client or someone you have worked with before? (e.g. a new client will probably take up more of your time for administrative tasks and communication compared with a client you have successfully worked with in the past)
In addition to the low barriers to entry on the supply side that I mentioned above, technological advances have also increased demand for translation. Day by day there are more and more web sites, marketing materials, etc. that need translating as the world economy becomes more global. While on the surface this sounds like a great thing for the professional translator, in reality companies have gotten smarter about this new demand and, when they run the numbers, it often makes more sense for the bulk of this material to be translated on the cheap to a lower standard of quality.
This is a tough pill to swallow for some translators - the mere idea that quality is not binary. There are clients for whom a low or medium quality translation is all they need. This part of the market exists and will continue to exist. With that knowledge in mind, your duty as a freelancer should be to:
Be self-aware and know where you stand. No one is born a professional. It takes years of experience and hard work. If you are a new translator know where to go to learn about appropriate rates. A great resource is the ProZ.com community rates page.
Assess your ability to produce translations of a professional caliber in your chosen area(s). If necessary, improve your knowledge and skills.
Confirm with a third-party that you are capable of translating to a professional standard in your chosen area(s) of specialization.
At the end of the day, don't let low rate jobs bother you and don't waste your time with them. On TM-Town we have the Don't Bother Me Rate that you can set when you sign up. If a client or agency sends you a message for a job that is below your DBM rate we'll make sure you don't have to see it.
In the photography industry, my mom feared that cheap, powerful digital cameras and the ability to print photos at home would end her business. However, that hasn't happened. Parents actually spend more money per child today than they did in the past. Why? Parents understand the importance of a photo of their child...and not just a photo on a memory stick, but a physical photo they can keep in the house. While they could print their own, they are willing to pay for not only the convenience of not having to worry about printing it themselves, but more importantly for the quality.
Even with the best home printer and digital camera, a parent would never be able to match my mom's quality - just like running a text through Google Translate is never going to match the quality you provide. Your unique value is the level of quality of the translations you provide. If you can build a deep trust with your client base that you are the expert in this field who provides the highest quality, most consistent translations - then your business will be successful and grow.
Concern: Issues related to machine translation
While there are many various concerns that translators have around machine translation, I think the big ones in the context of this post are:
An increase in low-rate Post-Editing Machine Translation (PEMT) jobs
The fear that machine translation will ultimately replace human translators
PEMT jobs are translation jobs where the client first machine translates the material and then uses a human to edit the text that the machine translation produced. As mistakes produced by machine translation are of a different nature than mistakes by humans, PEMT jobs require a different skill set than editing human translations.
PEMT has been controversial in the translation industry as the rates offered for these jobs have been lower than editing rates while arguably requiring more mental effort. From your perspective as a freelance translator these jobs should be relatively easy to evaluate - but it involves having a great self-awareness. Just like your other work, I recommend you view this from the framework of your hourly rate. How long does it take you to translate {x} words at the level of quality you provide? How long does it take you to post-edit machine translation of {x} words to the level of quality you provide? If that rate does not satisfy the hourly rate you are looking to earn then ignore those jobs and keep looking elsewhere.
A few translators seem to do well with PEMT (as mentioned above it is a different skill set than regular editing), while many others find PEMT to feel like more work than just translating the sentence from scratch. Whatever your style, be sure that the job satisfies the hourly rate you are looking to earn.
For the final fear, will MT take over the world and replace all human translators? Or to continue with the photography analogy - will cameras get so good that no one will ever hire a professional photographer again? Possibly, on a long enough timeline...but I don't think any of you need to go find a new profession any time soon.
Just like there is a lot that goes into a great photo (the pose, the focus, the smile, the color balance), there is a lot that goes into a great translation. While machine translation has come a long way, there are still many, many domains where machine translation is no where near coming close to replacing a human translator.
Take heart in that the jump from pretty good to professional is still just as difficult as it was in the past (for both machines and humans). To succeed as a professional in any industry it takes a mixture of:
skill
specialization
experience
hard work
Our robot overlords are not here yet
Instead of spending time worrying about if technology is killing the translation industry, instead spend that time thinking about how you can utilize technology to improve your translation business. The smart, professional translators are continually learning and using technology to improve their efficiency, consistency and grow their translation business. There are still many good paying jobs out there for specialists, but it takes a lot of effort and hard work to win the best clients.
One of the goals of TM-Town is to help translators with this - to show you in the best light and to help end clients who need specialized professional translators find the right translator for the job. Currently Nate is working on a new profile redesign which I’m really excited about. Be sure to subscribe to our blog updates in the left sidebar and we'll let you know when it is ready.
Lastly, remember it is easy to start standing out on TM-Town.
Load a document (you'll appear as a featured member on the home page)
Comment on a blog post
Start a new forum thread
Start selling a glossary
Fill out your profile as best you can (we'll be releasing beautiful new profiles very soon!)
If you are ready to find your niche and own it, then sign up for TM-Town today! If you are a client in need of a professional translator be sure to try TM-Town's first-of-its-kind translator search engine which will recommend the best specialist(s) for your specific text.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/392015-10-06T09:55:20Z2015-10-06T09:55:20ZThe 4 Step Proactive Approach to Getting Translation WorkThere are many advantages to the freelance lifestyle, but one particular challenge is that your next paycheck is usually never guaranteed. As a freelancer, you need to continuously work hard to build your client base and win new jobs. So how do you land a great client and take your translation business to the next level? Without a doubt there are no shortcuts - it takes hard work and a proactive approach.
In today's post I'll share some advice to help you get the most out of your TM-Town experience and show you how you can leverage TM-Town's platform to increase your visibility and improve your chances of finding your next translation job.
There is no magic bullet
Every now and then I will see a freelancer post some variation of the following:
"I signed up for [site] some time ago but have yet to get any work. What gives?"
I then always go and check that freelancer's profile, and sure enough it is either:
basically empty
lacking in professionalism
full of mistakes
While there are some great sites out there to support freelance translators - all of them require effort on your part if you want to find success. Sites (like TM-Town) give you the pot, the soil and the seeds...but you still need to water it to make it grow.
The good news is that these are all fixable problems. With a little elbow grease you can greatly increase your visibility, marketability and your chances of landing your next big client. Our job at TM-Town is to help you put your best foot forward and over the coming months we will be working on changes to TM-Town profiles to give you even more control and personalization and to help you build an even better professional online presence for your translation business.
The 4 proactive steps you can take today
1) Perfect your public profile
Have a trusted colleague proofread your profile. Grammar or spelling mistakes in your profile will scare away potential clients. The product you are selling is your expertise in language, so mistakes in your profile can be a strong signal to clients that either you do not have the skills in that language, or that you are careless.
Pro Tip - Add a profile image to your TM-Town account.
You can do this in your TM-Town account settings. Users with a profile image will be featured in a lot more places throughout TM-Town's site, including on the main home page. Even if you are not comfortable having an image of yourself, there are plenty of public domain copyright free images available on the web that you can choose from to help make your profile stand out.
2) Specialize
Focus on your top areas of expertise and language pairs. While it is by no means a golden rule, the best professional translators tend to only translate into their native language. Especially if you are young in your career, we definitely would advise you to follow this and stick to your strengths.
Build out your niche. Become an expert in a specific field. This takes time, but the hard work will pay off as the terminology knowledge you build over time will enable you to be the go-to expert for those clients that care about quality and consistency.
3) Network with your peers
TM-Town is not only a tool that clients can use to find translators in a specific field of expertise, it is also a tool you can use to find peers in your specialty.
Over the past year I have spoken with many translators and often they tell me that their best clients have come from recommendations or word of mouth from peers in their same language pair and area of expertise.
Make the effort to reach out and build relationships with your peers. There might come a time where you have a job that is too big too handle (or vice versa). Having a network of trusted colleagues in your specialty will be very beneficial for your business.
4) Demonstrate your expertise
Here are a few ways that you can demonstrate your expertise and begin to build your online reputation:
Sell a glossary on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace in your field of expertise
Participate in terminology question and answer sites (i.e. KudoZ, etc.)
Participate constructively in translation related forums or mailing lists (i.e. TM-Town Forums, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, ProZ Forums, etc.)
Pro Tip - Load work to get featured in the top right corner of the home page.
The TM-Town Members that are featured in the top right corner of the TM-Town home page are those members with a profile image that have most recently loaded work. Load work every so often and you can easily increase the visibility of your profile.
Our promise to you
Over the coming months we will work to improve the TM-Town interface so that:
You can more quickly and easily see how you can improve your profile and visibility on TM-Town (profile completion help, etc.)
Improve TM-Town profiles to help show you in your best light
Improve our client outreach and marketing to attract more end clients and agencies to TM-Town
Are you ready to be proactive? If you are not yet a TM-Town member take the first step today and register for your free account.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/382015-10-01T08:36:35Z2015-10-01T08:36:35ZWelcome Nate Hill to TM-TownHi everyone, this is Kevin. I'm excited to announce that TM-Town is growing! Nate Hill is joining TM-Town as a developer and today is his first day. Nate is a very talented and hard working individual and I'm looking forward to working with him as we strive to improve TM-Town. Please give him a warm welcome. Now I'll turn it over to Nate and let him introduce himself
Hey there, TM-Town community! What a pleasure to join you and start working on the next stage of TM-Town’s promise to create tools that help translator’s grow their business and utilise technology to make your work more enjoyabl
First, I’d like to tell you a little bit more about me. Originally from a small Texas town, I’ve been living in Japan since 2006. I’ve traveled to almost twenty different countries, and have always loved foreign languages. In fact, when I was six years old, I used to drive my parents crazy by running around the house with Spanish, German, and French picture dictionaries, calling out all of the different items in their respective language. While Japanese is the only language I can speak fluently now, my love of languages has been a major influencing factor in the types of projects I’ve always worked on. For example, I created Fluentli, a Q&A community with audio for language learners. If you’d like to find out more about what I’ve worked on in the past, please take a look at the about pag
While I’m not a translator, it’s an amazing profession that I look forward to learning more about as I begin talking to several of you. By learning more about what your translation process looks like, it’s my goal to discover new, exciting possible ways to help you and your busines
Besides language, another one of my first loves was creating art, so I’m much more leaning in the design sense as a developer. One of the first projects I’m pumped to start is the revamping of your translator profiles on TM-Town. In fact, if you have some ideas on how you’d like to see profiles improved, please leave a comment below! It’s my goal to give translators an easy way to have a beautiful home online where potential clients will be impressed by your work, even if you have no web development skills whatsoever. Exciting stuff coming this way I think, so stay tuned and let me know your thought
I’ll leave it at that for today, but please say hello in the comments! If comments aren’t your thing, feel free to drop me a line at nate at tm-town.com. Be sure to let me know what you’re looking forward to most about TM-Town. I’ll read every one of them and get back to you as I ca
Alright, TM-Towners, that’s all for now. Stay classy!Nate Hilltag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/372015-09-17T04:15:38Z2015-09-17T04:15:38ZIs TM-Town for Me?When translators come across TM-Town for the first time, it often takes some time to understand what exactly TM-Town is and what TM-Town offers translators. TM-Town is rather unique - it is not a traditional translator directory or portal, it is not a CAT tool, it is not an online translation agency -- but TM-Town does include some elements of the aforementioned businesses and tools.
So how does it all fit together? Is TM-Town right for you? In this blog post I will try to answer some frequently asked questions of translators who visit TM-Town for the first time so that you can more quickly evaluate whether TM-Town is the right choice to help you grow your translation business.
TM-Town is not for me - most or all of my prior translation work is covered by NDAs
It is true that up until now, translators who could not load work (due to NDAs) could get little value from TM-Town. However, this is changing and going forward TM-Town has new features on the road map to help translators who can not (or choose not to) load work use TM-Town and grow their translation business.
The first step in this direction is Nakōdo - TM-Town's brand new translator search engine. While translators who have loaded the most work appear higher in the traditional TM-Town directory, Nakōdo is a whole new innovation in translator search and discovery.
Nakōdo is a first-of-its-kind translator search engine by TM-Town that utilizes state-of-the-art natural language processing technology to match translation professionals with clients in need of translation. With Nakōdo a visitor enters the text of a document she or he needs translated and the language of the desired translation. Nakōdo analyzes the terminology of the document and compares it against documents translators have loaded into TM-Town's system and recommends the best specialists who have translated similar material (watch video).
So how does this help the translator who can not load their prior work? The really neat part of Nakōdo is that the chance of a translator being recommended as the best match is independent of the amount of work they have loaded into TM-Town.
This means that if you can load a sample translation (a 1 or 2 page translation you have done that is public) that includes a lot of specialized terminology from your field of expertise you can start benefiting from TM-Town.
TM-Town also has a great new feature that makes it easy to complete a sample translation. TM-Town has a catalog of source texts across many different fields of expertise that you can choose from to easily get started on TM-Town.
Yet another feature that all translators can benefit from (whether you load work or not) is TM-Town's new productivity tracking tool. In less than 5 minutes per day you can start tracking your daily work and get instant insights to help you better manage your freelance business.
TM-Town is not for me - I don't believe in sharing or pooling translation memory files (TMs)
This seems to be a common misconception about TM-Town, which I can understand as TM-Town does have a feature that allows translators to share a specific document with another TM-Town member for purposes of collaborating on a project. However, general sharing of TMs or making TMs public is NOT allowed on TM-Town.
To be clear:
TM-Town does NOT make public any TM files
TM-Town does NOT allow translators to make public any TM files
TM-Town does NOT pool or publish your TM files
TM-Town does NOT sell TM files
TM-Town does NOT allow translators to sell TM files
The content of your work is NOT made public
Other translators, clients, site visitors can NOT view your documents
For more details on TM-Town's policies with regards to the work you load, please read TM-Town's Terms of Service. I think you will find that they are clear, fair and translator-friendly.
TM-Town is not for me - I was told to never use cloud services
TM-Town is a cloud service and cloud services may not be for everyone. Most likely though, you already use cloud services every day.
Common cloud services include:
Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.)
E-Mail (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.)
Document/Spreadsheet/Other Hosting Services (Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote, YouTube, Flickr, etc.)
Backup Services (Mozy, Dropbox, etc.)
Banking and Financial Services (Visa, Mastercard, H&R Block, etc.)
TM-Town takes privacy, security and confidentiality very seriously. You can read TM-Town's full confidentiality and data usage policies as well as TM-Town's security policy to learn more.
TM-Town is not for me - it seems interesting for experienced translators, but what about translators who are just starting out.
Every translator starts somewhere. In my opinion TM-Town gives you a great opportunity to start specializing at the beginning of your translation career. Start with a sample translation and grow from there. As mentioned in the answer above, Nakōdo search will help you get discovered as you don't need to have a library of work loaded to get matched by Nakōdo.
Over the coming months I will be focusing on making TM-Town more accessible to all translators. The path to a better translation world includes translators both new to the industry and those with deep experience, those with prior work they can load and those who have work they can not load. So join TM-Town and let's make TM-Town the place for end clients to find the best freelance translation specialists in the world. It's free to register and become a TM-Town member.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/362015-09-16T23:32:40Z2015-09-16T23:32:40ZTM-Town to Provide Additional Ways to Demonstrate ExpertiseOne goal of TM-Town's translation enablement platform is to help match clients in need of translation with the best subject matter translation expert(s) for the job.
Since TM-Town launched at the end of last year I have spoken with a lot of translators and one thing I have learned is that there are a significant number of translators out there who are experienced and who have substantial domain expertise, yet for whom loading prior work into the system is not an option. In some cases this is because all of their prior work is under NDA or similar restrictions. In other cases, the translator is simply not comfortable having the work leave her/his own systems.
I have always understood this, and always respected it. Until now though, my focus has been primarily on serving the translators who do have work that can be loaded in. Those who can not load in work have largely been outside of TM-Town's purview.
Serving all translation experts
My intention in this blog post is to signal that this will no longer be the case. Which is to say that:
Going forward, TM-Town will be providing powerful new ways for translators who can not or choose not to load in work, to demonstrate their expertise and get discovered by clients.
I will be posting some of the particulars of how TM-Town will try to accomplish this in the future. For now, I will just say that at the end of the day, TM-Town's goal, when it comes to the site's matching functionality, is to enable clients to find the best, most capable translators for a given job.
In my opinion the status quo of traditional directory search leaves much to be desired. While TM-Town is not yet positioned to replace this status quo, I believe TM-Town is making big strides in this direction. TM-Town recently released a first-of-its-kind translator search engine called Nakōdo. Nakōdo is a first step to better discovery and allows translators who have only loaded small samples of work in their field of expertise to be successfully matched with translation jobs in their area of specialization.
While term-based analysis of prior work is a new and effective approach - many other ways of ascertaining expertise, not involving analysis of prior work, can also be imagined. TM-Town intends to explore these alternative approaches aggressively, so that they can be used in parallel with the methods based on prior work.
The bottom line is that if you are an experienced and capable translator who happens to have no plans to load in prior work, TM-Town is now setting out to serve you as well. So join TM-Town and let's build the best place for end clients to easily, simply and accurately find the best expert for their translation job.
I welcome your ideas and feedback on this topic in the comments below.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/352015-09-15T02:46:00Z2015-09-15T02:46:00ZProductivity Tracking for Freelance TranslatorsTM-Town is releasing a new feature today to help you, the freelance translator, easily track your daily productivity. In less than 5 minutes you can record your day's work and TM-Town's tool will visualize your productivity data for you.
Designed for Simplicity
TM-Town's tool is dead simple to use and in only a few minutes you can easily fill out your daily report. Just slide the bars and that's it. TM-Town even has a setting to set up an automatic email reminder for the next day's report.
Visualize Your Productivity
With TM-Town's tool you can view various graphs and charts and see how your data changes over time.
Data Export
Your data is yours and you can easily export it at any time. TM-Town may report aggregate data across all translators from time to time; however, your individual data stays private and can not be viewed by anyone but yourself.
Give it a try! If you are logged in you can create a new report here.
Are you a freelance translator? Sign up for a free TM-Town account today and start tracking your productivity.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/342015-09-09T10:14:57Z2015-09-09T10:14:57ZNakōdo Preview for End ClientsTM-Town is releasing a new personalized Nakōdo search preview page that you can send to potential clients to help differentiate yourself from the crowd. This feature was requested by a TM-Town member as an additional way he could use to demonstrate his experience when applying for a translation job or wooing a potential client.
How to differentiate yourself and win clients
I think freelancer translators (and freelancers from all professions) share common career goals including:
Developing and improving one's skills
Finding and retaining good and reliable clients
Increasing one's income
The path to achieve these goals has one undeniable thing in common - hard work. There are no shortcuts to building a professional reputation and a great client base.
In addition to hard work, one point I often stress here on TM-Town is the importance of specialization. If you have to choose between being a generalist and a specialist, I recommend specializing.
TM-Town is built to help translators who choose this path. On TM-Town you can carve out your niche and own it - and TM-Town's Nakōdo search will help you get discovered in your field(s) of expertise.
Stand out through specialization
Freelancers often seek advice on how to increase their income or raise their rates. A large part of this comes down to conveying and marketing your value to clients. While you may consider yourself a linguist, being a freelancer also means you need to excel at business and marketing.
One of TM-Town's goals is to help you with this. To help translators better demonstrate their expertise and experience. To help translators get discovered by clients needing translation in that translator's field(s) of expertise.
Nakōdo is one manifestation of this goal. With Nakōdo a client enters the text of a document she or he needs translated and the language of the desired translation. TM-Town's system analyzes the terminology of the document and compares it against documents translators have loaded into TM-Town's system and recommends the best specialists who have translated similar material.
The interesting part of Nakōdo is that it favors translators who have specialized. Translators who have loaded documents heavy with domain specific terminology are much more likely to come out on top of a Nakōdo search than those who have only uploaded very general documents.
Your Nakōdo preview page
So how can you use Nakōdo to help you achieve your goals and boost your translation business? The first step is loading work in your field(s) of expertise. If you are not able to load work try completing a sample translation from TM-Town's source text catalog.
Your Nakōdo preview page is a personalized search engine that you can share with potential clients. From this link clients can search different source texts and see where you appear in the results. Other translators are shown in the results, but their data is anonymized. Only your profile information is fully visible to the potential client. This is a great way to demonstrate your experience to potential clients.
You can either share a link to this personalized page with your client, or you can include your personalized Nakodo preview badge on your homepage or in your email signature.
While one motivation for providing this preview page is to help you put your best foot forward to clients, a secondary objective is to raise awareness of TM-Town and Nakōdo amongst end clients. Ultimately, the ability to monetize services for end clients and/or translation agencies will help TM-Town continue to provide great products for freelance translators. Additionally, the more end clients and translation agencies are aware of TM-Town, the better chance you'll have of getting discovered.
One more tool for your marketing toolbelt
When you apply for a job as a translator you need to work hard to make yourself stand out. A polished CV, a personal web page, profiles on the major translation portals, and industry certifications are all ingredients to a better chance at landing your next client. Your Nakōdo search preview page is one more way to make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Are you a professional translator who understands the importance of specialization? Have you tried TM-Town? If not, give it a shot, TM-Town is a free service for freelance translators.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/332015-09-04T07:20:35Z2015-09-04T07:20:35ZGive Your Documents a Public TitleAfter you load a document in TM-Town's system you now have the option to give that document a public title. The idea behind the public title is to give potential clients a feel for the type of projects you have worked on without revealing any confidential or sensitive information.
Adding a public title to a document is optional but highly recommended. The public titles you give documents will appear on your TM-Town public profile as in this example here:
Try to make your public titles as descriptive as possible without revealing any sensitive information. This is a great way to let potential clients know about the type of work you have experience in.
To add a public title first click on the document you would like to add a title to from the Your Work page. You will see the option to add a public title at the top of the page under the document title. To edit a public title you have already added, just hover your cursor over the public title and click to edit it.
Are you a professional translator who understands the importance of specialization? If so, register for a free TM-Town account and create a profile that emphasizes your unique areas of expertise.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/322015-09-02T07:31:55Z2015-09-02T07:31:55ZSample Source TextsFor some translators, loading work into TM-Town's system is not possible due to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or similar restrictions. For these translators, TM-Town now has a new feature that makes it easy to get started on TM-Town, even if you can't load work.
If you do not have a public sample translation that you can load into your TM-Town account, TM-Town now provides a catalog of public source texts across a variety of fields of expertise that you can use to complete a short sample translation.
Choose a Source Text
The source text library is currently not very large and contains mostly English texts. So if you can't find a sample in your source language or field of expertise please email me and I'll try to add a sample in your source language and field of expertise. Also, if you know any good resources for public domain texts in languages other than English, please let me know by email or in the comments below.
If you would like to do a sample translation in lieu of loading work, you can begin by browsing the sample source texts and choosing one that is in your field of expertise. Then, just click the Translate button to start translating the sample source text. It's that easy!
Not yet a TM-Town member? Sign up for a free TM-Town account today, and start building a profile that shows off your areas of expertise.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/312015-08-18T02:28:59Z2015-08-18T02:28:59ZIntroducing Nakōdo - A Translator Search EngineOne of the main goals of TM-Town is to help you - the freelance translator - get found when someone needs translation in one of your fields of expertise. Today TM-Town is releasing a first-of-its-kind translator search engine which will hopefully be a big step toward helping you reach clients in your areas of specialization.
What is Nakōdo?
Nakōdo is a first-of-its-kind translator search engine by TM-Town that utilizes state-of-the-art natural language processing technology to match translation professionals with clients in need of high quality translation.
With Nakōdo a visitor enters the text of a document she or he needs translated and the language of the desired translation. TM-Town's system analyzes the terminology of the document and compares it against documents translators have loaded into TM-Town's system and recommends the best specialists who have translated similar material. During this process the content of all documents (both the document the visitor needs translated and the documents translators have loaded) stay private and secure.
The Results
Nakōdo returns three scores for each recommended translator:
Similarity Score
Quantity Score
Match Strength
The Similarity Score is a reflection of how closely the material of the document that needs translation matches the most similar document in a translator's portfolio. The Similarity Score is a number between 0 and 100.
The Quantity Score is a reflection of the amount of material that translator has loaded that has similarity to the document that needs translation.
The Match Strength can fall into one of three categories and is TM-Town's interpretation of the strength of a match after considering all factors:
Golden Match
Strong Match
Weak Match
The Similarity Score is independent of the amount a translator has loaded into TM-Town. In other words, a translator could load only one or two documents in their specialty and still come out on top in Nakōdo's search results if the content strongly matches the document that needs translation.
Video Demo
Watch a demo of Nakōdo in action:
Blacklist Tool
Is it possible that Nakōdo will leak confidential information about me or the translations I have done?
If a visitor searches a query such as "ABC Company" and a translator were returned in the matches, this may convey to the visitor that this translator has done translation work for "ABC Company" (whether true or not). For some translators this may be a highly undesirable outcome (other translators may find it desirable).
To protect translators, TM-Town provides translators a simple tool to maintain a blacklist of terms. The blacklist works by redacting any term a translator enters across all documents that translator has loaded. This means that if a translator adds "ABC Company" to their blacklist that translator would NOT appear in the results for a query of "ABC Company". If "ABC Company" appears as part of a much longer query submitted to Nakōdo, that translator may still appear in the results based on matching of other terms in the translator's document ("ABC Company" was redacted from the translator's document, but the rest of the document has high similarity to the submitted search query).
Nakōdo Blacklist Tool Video Demo
Any terms entered to your blacklist will not affect your actual documents. In other words, the terms you blacklist will not actually be redacted from the documents you have loaded into TM-Town, they will only be redacted for purposes of displaying results in Nakōdo.
Opt-in Only
Nakōdo is currently in Beta and only available to TM-Town members. At first you will only see your own results (other translators will not be able to see your results unless you opt in). After a number of translators have opted in you may begin seeing other translators in your results.
Thank you for opting in! If you can, please help spread the word about Nakōdo.
Please opt in if you like what you see. Not only will you have a better chance of getting matched with clients who need translation in your field(s) of expertise but you will make the search engine more useful for end clients and LSPs to begin using, as a search engine without translators is unfortunately not very useful.
If you like what you see, please be sure to opt in. Not only will you have a better chance of getting matched with clients who need translation in your field(s) of expertise but you will make the search engine more useful for end clients and LSPs to begin using, as a search engine without translators is unfortunately not very useful.
You can opt in by logging into your TM-Town account and going to either the Nakōdo search page or your account settings.
If you are a Language Service Provider (LSP) or end client interested in using Nakōdo please email TM-Town to learn more and get notified when Nakōdo becomes public. If you are a translator, sign up for a free TM-Town account today, load in some work and give it a try yourself!Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/302015-08-10T11:45:29Z2015-08-10T11:45:29ZEmbeddable BadgesToday TM-Town is releasing embeddable badges. These personalized badges can be used on your website, blog, email signature, or other translation profile (for example your ProZ.com profile).
Your TM-Town badge is dynamic and will update as you load documents and build out your TM-Town profile. Your badge will link directly to your TM-Town profile page. The badge includes:
Your general tagline (this can be edited in your account settings)
Your translation unit count
Your term concept count
Translators who have loaded more than 100,000 translation units will get a special gold badge.
To embed your badge, just go to your account settings and you will see 3 different sized badges to choose from. Copy the embed code and use your badges where you like.
Not yet a TM-Town member? Give it a try today, TM-Town is a free service.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/292015-08-07T08:35:25Z2015-08-07T08:35:25ZDocument DeclarationStarting today on TM-Town you will be asked to declare your document when you load it into TM-Town's system.
Document declaration - what's that?
When you a drag a document into TM-Town's uploader you will first be asked to choose one of the following options:
I translated this document myself
I partially translated this document
I only proofread this document
This document is for reference only
Let me explain each option:
I translated this document myself
Choose this option if:
The document is a source document which you translated
The document is a target document and you did the translation
The document is a translation memory file and you translated all of the target segments
The document is a glossary that you created
I partially translated this document
Choose this option if you did not translate all of the document, but you did translate parts of it. Documents marked "Partially Translated" will still get limited credit in matching; however, these documents will not count toward your translation unit or term concept count.
I only proofread this document
Choose this option if you did not translate the document, but you did proofread it. Documents marked "Proofread" will still get limited credit in matching; however, these documents will not count toward your translation unit or term concept count.
This document is for reference only
Choose this option if you did not translate the document, but you would like to keep it on TM-Town for storage or reference purposes. Documents marked as "Reference Only" will not count toward your translation unit or term concept count.
For documents that have already been uploaded you can manage this setting in the "Document Management" tab (see image below).
Locked documents
TM-Town's system also analyzes documents for certain heuristics to detect public TMs and glossaries and may automatically classify a document as "Reference Only" and lock the classification. If a document you loaded was classified as "Reference Only" by TM-Town's system by mistake, please contact TM-Town support.
If you haven't signed up for TM-Town yet be sure to give it a try - TM-Town is a free service. You can register here. For help getting started, be sure to check out the TM-Town Getting Started User Guide.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/282015-08-03T04:02:15Z2015-08-03T04:02:15ZSharing Files with CollaboratorsOn TM-Town it is easy to share documents with other TM-Town members. This may be useful if you are collaborating with other translators on a project or in a team setting.
Shared documents can be searched, edited or updated by the translator(s) the document is shared with. The shared document can not be deleted and other "Document Management" options are disabled.
This feature can also be used with TM-Town's CafeTran Espresso integration to allow multiple translators to collaborate on and update a shared translation memory file in real-time.
How to Share
To share a document is easy. First click on the document you would like to share from the Your Work area. Once on the page of the document you would like to share, navigate to the "Document Management" tab. At the top of the "Document Management" tab you will see the Share Settings area. Search for the TM-Town username of the translator you would like to share the document with. When you select a translator you will see his/her TM-Town profile image appear. Then click "Share", it's that easy.
To remove a translator from the list of people the file has been shared with, just click the "X" to remove him/her and that translator will no longer be able to access the document.
When a document is shared with you, you will see a new tab in the Your Work area titled "Documents Shared with Me".
Video Demo
TM-Town is built to help you, the freelance translator, manage your work and grow your business. Not yet a member? TM-Town is a free service. You can register here. For help getting started, be sure to check out the TM-Town Getting Started User Guide.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/272015-07-25T08:57:11Z2015-07-25T08:57:11ZUpload Excel Translation Memory FilesIt is now possible to upload Excel (.xls, .xlsx) translation memory (TM) files into your TM-Town account. TM-Town accepts both bilingual Excel translation memory files as well as multilingual Excel translation memory files.
Excel Translation Memory Formats
Your Excel file should contain the data you would like to import on the first sheet. Data on other sheets will not be imported. The source segment should be in column A with the ISO 639-1 two-letter code for the source language in cell A1. The target segments follow the same pattern starting in column B. If your file has one target language it should be in Column B with the ISO 639-1 two-letter code for the target language in cell B1.
Bilingual file with language codes in the header (.xls or .xlsx)
Multilingual file with language codes in the header (.xls or .xlsx)
For a list of all of the different file types TM-Town accepts, please see the TM-Town Getting Started guide.
Finally, if you are a freelance translator and haven't yet signed up, be sure to give TM-Town a try. TM-Town is a free service that can help you improve your translation business. Sign up for TM-Town today.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/262015-07-21T01:55:10Z2015-07-21T01:55:10ZSell Your GlossariesOver the past few weeks many translators have expressed interest in selling glossaries on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace. Today I'm excited to announce that it is even easier to get started selling your terminology glossaries. You can now submit a glossary for approval directly from your TM-Town account.
Sell Glossary Button
If you upload a terminology file into your TM-Town account you will now see a Sell Glossary button for that file. If you would like to sell that glossary on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace, you only need to click that button to get started.
After clicking the Sell Glossary button you will be asked to give your glossary a:
title
overview
description
price
For more details about selling your glossary please visit the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace Seller Guidelines and FAQs page.
If you have a glossary that you think other translators would benefit from but you do not want to sell it, it is also possible to list a terminology glossary for free (€0.00).Getting Paid
TM-Town accepts payments for purchases on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace using the payment processor Stripe. Customers can purchase a glossary with a credit card.
For sellers, the easiest way to get paid is to set up a Stripe account and then link your TM-Town account to your Stripe account in your account settings.
If Stripe is not supported in your country, TM-Town can pay you through PayPal once a month based on your sales. For sellers who choose to get paid through PayPal, please enter your PayPal email address in your account settings.
TM-Town takes a 20% commission on sales (payment processor fees are separate).
TMs vs Glossaries
I'm sometimes asked by translators if it is possible to sell a translation memory (TM) file on TM-Town. The answer is no, you can not sell translation memory files on TM-Town, only glossaries. The difference being that a TM file typically consists of segments that are generally a sentence in length. Glossaries, on the other hand, consist of terms that are generally 1 or 2 words in length. If you are unsure of the difference between a translation memory file and glossary feel free to email me and I can help guide you.
I have a lot of ideas for improvements planned for the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace to make it even better and more useful for translators and sellers alike, so stay tuned. If you purchase a file from the marketplace be sure to leave the seller some feedback and a star rating. This will help other potential buyers make an educated decision on their purchase. Thank you for your support and feel free to leave any ideas or suggestions for the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace in the comments below.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/252015-07-05T01:47:33Z2015-07-05T01:47:33ZUploader and Alignment ReduxThe art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.
- Douglas Horton.
This quote really resonates with me. One of my goals with TM-Town is to make the user experience as simple, intuitive and user-friendly as possible. In theory I'm sure this is what every developer wants to do, but in practice it is very difficult. Especially with translation related software. You must deal with many different languages, file formats, encodings, the list doesn't end.
At TM-Town, the user experience usually starts with uploading a document. While TM-Town's upload experience wasn't terrible, I felt it also wasn't great. There were things that frustrated me about it. Parts that weren't intuitive nor easy. So I've worked hard over the past few weeks to completely redesign the upload experience. While this is probably the most notable change you will see with today's update, I also have included some other great goodies that I think you will love:
New & redesigned uploader with drag and drop functionality
New OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology for PDFs or image files in over 40 languages
New & redesigned alignment tool
A new "cleaner" that makes it super fast and easy to fix any segmentation or import issues in your document
And many more smaller enhancements and improvements...
New Uploader
TM-Town's new uploader allows you to easily drag and drop files from your computer into your web browser. Additionally you can still select files from the file picker using the + Add Files button in the lower left.
When you drag a file into the new uploader the first thing you will need to do is tag that file with between 1 and 3 fields of expertise. Then click the Start Upload button. By the way, you can change the file name just by double clicking on it, changing the text and then hitting enter.
If your resource type (i.e. TM File, Terminology File, Source Document or Target Document) can be automatically detected by TM-Town then that's it. Your file is now being processed and will appear down below.
If your resource type can not be detected automatically you will see something like this after the file uploads:
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Technology
If your file is a PDF, you will be given the option to import it as a text PDF or use TM-Town's new OCR feature. TM-Town's new OCR feature is available in 47 languages! Just check the "OCR" option and then select the language of your document and its resource type.
TM-Town now also accepts the following file types that will be imported using this OCR technology:
.jpg
.jpeg
.tif
.tiff
.png
.gif
Cleaner
As OCR imports will probably not be perfect and may have unwanted mid-sentence line breaks TM-Town has a tool that lets you quickly and easily clean up your import.
For example, in the above image you can see there are some unwanted line breaks that we can then easily fix. This tool gives you complete control over the final segmentation of your imported document.
New Alignment Tool
With this update I have completely redesigned the alignment tool. You can now see your source and target document side-by-side and make any necessary changes before TM-Town's system aligns your documents.
To start a new alignment first upload both the source and target document. When both documents have finished importing and processing click the pink alignment button in the Source Documents tab.
Next you will be brought to a new screen where you will be asked to choose the target document that you will be aligning that source document with.
After choosing the target document you will be brought to TM-Town's new alignment tool. This tool allows you the ultimate flexibility to completely control how your alignment will turn out.
You will see your source document on the left and your target document on the right. The new GUI gives you various options:
Double click on a segment to edit the text of that segment
Drag and drop a segment to rearrange its order in the document
Click the up arrow to merge a segment with the segment above
Click the down arrow to merge a segment with the segment below
Click the scissor icon to split a segment into two
Click the 'x' to delete a segment from the alignment
As you make changes the columns will automatically resize so that the height of the source segment is always the same as its corresponding target segment. So all you need to do is make sure that the source segment on the left corresponds to the target segment horizontally to its right. Once you are finished click the Align Documents button at the bottom and that's it! Your new aligned document will appear in Your Work.
This new alignment GUI may not be for everyone though. Some of you may just want a quick and automatic alignment. Don't worry! You can still do that. Just skip to the bottom and click the Align Documents button and your document will be automatically aligned.
Confidential Information Redaction
If you would like to redact confidential information from your document look for the button with the Eraser icon. TM-Town's confidential information redaction tool is available for documents smaller than 1MB.
A Final Note
It has been about a year since the first lines of code for TM-Town were written. I want to thank all of the great translators who have tried out TM-Town, emailed me, given me feedback and supported me so far. This is just the start! Hopefully you will like this new functionality. Please give me your feedback in the comments section below.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/242015-06-26T08:25:38Z2015-06-26T08:25:38ZFeature UpdatesIn today's post I'll go over some recent changes to TM-Town that will hopefully help to improve your TM-Town experience and increase your efficiency as a translator.
Better Search
TM-Town's search interface is now improved thanks to some great suggestions from translator José Fonseca. TM-Town's search now incorporates a simple UI that allows you to filter your results more easily.
The new options include:
Filter by language pair
Exact match
Search in source, target or both
As the number of segments and terms in your translation memory continues to grow I think these options will help you to more quickly find the exact segment or term you need.
TM-Town's search feature can be accessed directly from the Search Your Translation Memory page.
Terminology Management
On TM-Town it is easy to create a new terminology glossary from terms that are automatically extracted from your document. I've added some new functionality that should help you to maintain these glossaries going forward.
With TM-Town's new Term Concept Viewer you can easily view and update glossary entries, or even create new glossary entries.
It is also simple to add pertinent data such as the part of speech, gender, etc. to a term with TM-Town's Term Concept Editor.
These new tools should help you to more easily create and leverage your terminology. Additionally, after putting great effort into creating and maintaining your glossaries, why not try selling them on TM-Town's Terminology Marketplace? Currently it is a manual process to get your terminology files added to the marketplace, so please contact me if you are interested. However, stay tuned as soon you will be able to automatically get set up and start selling your terminology files with the push of a button.
Not yet a TM-Town member? Get started on TM-Town today - it's free.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/232015-06-12T23:15:09Z2015-06-12T23:15:09ZBuild Your Presence on TM-TownToday's post will cover some recent changes I've made to TM-Town that will help you, the freelance translator, more easily get discovered in your language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise. I'll also give you some tips on how to build out your profile and raise your presence on TM-Town.
Selecting your top language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise
Upon registering for TM-Town, you are now asked to select your top language pairs (up to 3) and fields of expertise (up to 5). For translators that registered before this change went into effect, you will see the option to enter your language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise when you navigate to the Load Work page.
Select your language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise upon registering for TM-Town
What the "Load Work" page now looks like for translators that registered before this change went into effect
Isn't it too limiting?
You may be asking why only 3 language pairs and 5 fields of expertise? TM-Town's mission is to create a better translation world through technology and specialization. As part of this mission, various functionality in TM-Town's system is built to specifically encourage you to specialize, as it is my belief that this will help you to increase your translation business. In my experience the specialized translator wins out over the generalized translator almost every time.
"...but Kevin, I translate in way more than 3 language pairs and 5 fields of expertise!!". Don't worry, regardless of the language pairs and fields of expertise you choose when you initally register for TM-Town there is actually no restriction on the number of language pairs or fields of expertise you can ultimately load work in. TM-Town is also built on the principle of "showing" what you can do, not just saying it. Therefore your actual language pairs are determined based on the work you load into TM-Town's system and you can tag each document with up to 3 fields of expertise. Thus it is possible to appear in more language pairs and fields of expertise than your initial choices.
Combination-specific taglines and messages
You do however get a few special benefits for the initial combinations (a combination is a language pair and field of expertise) you choose when you register. One of these benefits is being able to customize how you appear when searched in this combination. After loading work in a combination you unlock the ability to add a combination specific tagline and message. In other words, you are able to add more customization to how you appear in the TM-Town directory for your chosen language pairs and fields of expertise.
Customize your tagline and message for a combination
Messaging
TM-Town's goal is to help you get work in your speciality. In order to increase the chances of this I have added in a messaging system where clients can contact you from your profile.
Message translators directly from their profile
I think TM-Town has a great infrastructure and tools to help freelance translators
Reduce their risk of bad clients / non-payment
Painlessly handle payments
Using TM-Town to handle payments will make your life easier and lower your risk; however, if you want to handle everything yourself TM-Town's system should support you. This new messaging system allows potential clients to contact you from your profile.
With this new messaging system TM-Town will filter spam to the best extent possible. Please fill in your Don't Bother Me Rate in your account settings to ensure that TM-Town knows which jobs to send you and which to ignore.
Filling out your profile
One of the best ways to improve your chances of attracting clients is to have a full profile. A large portion of your profile is generated based on the work you load into TM-Town's system, so again my best advice is to load work in your areas of expertise. However, don't forget to visit your account settings page and fill out as much information as you can.
Changes to the translator directory search
TM-Town's directory search setting have been expanded to include translators who have set their language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise but have not yet loaded in any work. Where (and how high) you appear in the directory still depends on the work you load into the system, so the best way to improve your presence on TM-Town is to load work in your areas of expertise.
There are a lot more improvements in the pipeline so stay tuned to the TM-Town blog for updates.
Your TM-Town profile was designed to highlight your expertise and the portfolio of work you have built over your career. If you have any suggestions on how to continue to improve it please let me know in the comments below. I look forward to checking out everyone's new profiles!
If you don't yet have a TM-Town account get started today and create your own profile. TM-Town is a free service.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/222015-05-26T09:56:26Z2015-05-26T09:56:26ZTM-Town Terminology Marketplace LaunchBack in March I wrote a blog post about the idea of a Terminology Marketplace. Today I am excited to announce that the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace is now live and features glossaries available for purchase across 552 unique language pairs.
These first terminology files were provided by Henk Sanderson and are bilingual files extracted from the European Union’s IATE Termbase and formatted for various CAT-tools. Henk has spent a considerable amount of effort to clean up issues and problem areas found in the raw IATE download to save you the time and hassle of having to deal with the large download and extraction process yourself.
The terminology files currently available on the marketplace range in price from €5.00 to €7.50 and can be purchased by credit card. Once purchased the files remain backed up in your TM-Town account and you can re-download them at any time.
Join Us!
The TM-Town Terminology Marketplace is open to all translators. If you are a professional translator with a terminology file that you think would benefit your fellow translators and you would like to try selling it on TM-Town, please send me an email.
If you have any ideas, thoughts or suggestions about this new marketplace, please leave a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you!
Finally, don't forget to shop the new TM-Town Terminology Marketplace for high quality terminology glossaries in your language pair.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/212015-05-21T00:38:50Z2015-05-21T00:38:50ZAdditional Terminology File Upload Formats Now AvailableTM-Town has added additional terminology file formats for uploads. Now you can upload Excel glossaries (.xls, .xlsx), CSV (.csv) glossaries, or TSV (.tsv) glossaries.
Previously if you wanted to upload a terminology file on TM-Town it needed to either be a .tbx file or a .csv file specifically formatted from CafeTran. From today you can now upload general .csv, .tsv, .xls, and .xlsx terminology files. You should have the source term in one column and the target term in a second column. If you have a header row that is OK, if you don't have a header row that is OK as well. The system will detect that and will also automatically detect the languages for you.
Acceptable Glossary Formats
Excel file with language codes in the header (.xls or .xlsx)
Excel file with no header (.xls or .xlsx)
Comma-separated values (CSV) file with language codes in the header (.csv)
Comma-separated values (CSV) file with no header (.csv)
Tab-separated values (TSV) file with language codes in the header (.tsv, .csv)
Tab-separated values (TSV) file with no header (.tsv, .csv)
Upload a terminology file and let me know how it goes! If you have any issues or if you have any other terminology formats you would like to see please let me know.
If you haven't signed up yet for TM-Town, give it a try - registration is free.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/202015-05-12T03:08:31Z2015-05-12T03:08:31ZGetting the Most out of Your Translation MemoriesLast week I gave a free webinar about TM-Town hosted by ProZ. In this webinar I presented about the different features of TM-Town including the new confidential information redaction feature. If you were unable to attend the webinar you can now view the recording online.
(Video Link) Getting the Most out of Your Translation Memories
If you are a freelance translator be sure to give TM-Town a try. TM-Town is a free service that can help you improve your translation business. Sign up for TM-Town today - registration is free.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/192015-04-27T10:21:28Z2015-04-27T10:21:28ZConfidential Information RedactorTM-Town is releasing a new feature today that provides translators with a convenient way of redacting confidential information from a document before saving it into TM-Town's system. This new feature allows translators to benefit from TM-Town's unique matching platform without having to save any confidential client data in TM-Town's system.
Why build this feature
TM-Town takes privacy and security very seriously. Every document a translator loads into TM-Town's system is automatically private and secure. Even with these protections, some translators have mentioned they would be even more comfortable if confidential information could be redacted from a document before it is loaded into TM-Town's system.
I thought this would be a great feature as TM-Town's matching algorithm is heavily focused on domain specific terminology and removing confidential information such as names, places, dates, numbers, emails or web addresses will not affect the ability of the algorithm to select the best translator for a job. Any feature that helps improve privacy and security while still allowing TM-Town to pursue its mission of a better translation world through technology and specialization is a great addition in my opinion.
How it works
When you load a document into TM-Town's system you can check the Redact confidential info checkbox. This can be done with translation memory files (TMs), source documents, target documents or alignments.
The only caveat is that your document must be smaller than 1MB (approximately 4,000 segments for a TMX file or ~160,000 words for a monolingual text document). The reason I set this limit is that it can get unwieldy for larger documents as there are more potential candidates for a translator to check - and a higher chance a confidential candidate may be overlooked.
TM-Town makes it easy to enter a word or phrase you would like redacted from your document - just enter it into the box and click the purple button.
In addition, TM-Town’s system will automatically suggest potential confidential candidates from your document and show them to you for review. You can remove a candidate from the list if it is not a confidential word by unchecking it, or you can add a word or phrase that is missing by entering it into the input box and clicking the purple button.
This feature can also automatically redact dates, numbers, emails, and web urls.
Once finished your new redacted document will be saved into TM-Town's system. Your original document will not be available as it is never saved into TM-Town's system and is immediately deleted from memory after the confidential information redaction is finished.
Video Demo
Supported languages
While this feature will work for a document in any language, it will only automatically extract candidates for the currently supported languages. For non-supported languages you will need to manually add the words and phrases you would like to redact. I will be working to add more languages in the future. If there is a language you would like to see added please email me and I will bump it up the priority list.
Currently supported languages:
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Open source
TM-Town benefits from many open source natural language processing technologies and advancements and in turn tries to give back to the community by open sourcing various libraries. Confidential Information Redactor is one such library. TM-Town has also open sourced Pragmatic Segmenter (a sentence segmentation engine) and Word Count Analyzer (a tool to analyze differences in word count across various tools).
Put your linguistic assets to work for you
By loading your prior translation work into TM-Town's system you can start earning interest on of your valuable translation assets. TM-Town's system uses natural language processing techniques to match incoming translation jobs to the best translator for the job. In essence, your work is working for you - attracting you new clients and translation jobs.
Give it a try - TM-Town is a free and safe way to leverage your past translations. You can register for free here.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/182015-04-22T23:41:56Z2015-04-22T23:41:56ZCafeTran Espresso IntegrationI'm excited to announce that TM-Town is now integrated into the recently released CafeTran Espresso 2015 CAT tool. Translators can search and download TM-Town terminology repositories directly within CafeTran.
This is just a first step and I am working with Igor from CafeTran to make it possible to easily leverage your TM-Town files from directly within CafeTran, so expect more features and tighter integration with your TM-Town account in the near future.
Download TM-Town public terminology files in CafeTran</h3>
If you have never heard of CafeTran Espresso I definitely recommend checking it out. Although CafeTran Espresso is not necessarily one of the big name CAT tools, Igor has consistently been first to market with different cutting edge features. In addition to that the software is reasonably priced and has a great free trial so you can see for yourself. For more details on this latest version of CafeTran Espresso check out this forum post with a list of all the new features: CafeTran Espresso 2015 Release Notes.
Setting up TM-Town in CafeTran
To activate the TM-Town service from within CafeTran Espresso follow these steps:
Go to Edit > Options in the top menu bar and click on the Web Services tab on the left
Check both boxes: TM-Town and Transfer TM-Town glossaries
Type in the following key: <code>a6a5cd4844f16d8393efa3e2a2b91d5c</code>
After the restart of CafeTran Espresso, the interface will open with a TM-Town tab for searching and the Glossary menu will have a new item called Download TM-Town glossary...
This is a first baby step in my plans to ultimately make TM-Town seamlessly integrated into all of the popular CAT tools. If you want to try out this new feature be sure to sign up for TM-Town - it is free to register.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/172015-04-06T10:35:13Z2015-04-06T10:35:13ZWebinar Recordings Last week I gave two free webinars about TM-Town - one hosted by TAUS and one hosted by ProZ. In both webinars I presentated about different features of TM-Town and how to get the most out of your translation memory. If you were unable to attend the webinars fear not - recordings of both webinars are available online (please see the links below).Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/162015-03-23T07:11:58Z2015-03-23T07:11:58ZUpcoming: Webinar WeekNext week TM-Town will be presenting in two separate free webinars - one hosted by TAUS and one hosted by ProZ. In both webinars I will demo different features of TM-Town and how to get the most out of your translation memory. If you are interested in learning more about TM-Town, or how to get the most out of TM-Town as a translator, be sure to sign up for one of the free webinars below.
TAUS Translation Technology Showcase Webinar
Date
Wednesday, April 1st, 2015
Time
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM GMT
Cost
Free
Registration Link
TAUS Translation Technology Showcase Webinar - Text United and TM-Town
More Info
Program details
Agenda
Introductions
5 minutes
The translation technology landscape, Trends, Opportunities & Challenges
5 minutes
Text United presentation
15 minutes
TM-Town presentation
15 minutes
Panel questions and discussion
15 minutes
Q&A
4 minutes
Schedule of upcoming webinars
1 minute
ProZ.com - Getting the Most out of Your Translation Memories
Date
Thursday, April 2nd, 2015
Time
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM GMT
Cost
Free
Registration Link
Getting the Most out of Your Translation Memories
Agenda
TM-Town - Getting the Most out of Your Translation Memories
45 minutes
Q&A
15 minutes
If you haven't signed up yet for TM-Town, give it a try - registration is free.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/152015-03-16T06:53:46Z2015-03-16T06:53:46ZSearch Your Translation MemoryIt is now possible to search your personal translation memory files and terminology files on TM-Town. This powerful new feature will search any documents you have uploaded to TM-Town and break out the results for both relevant segments as well as relevant terms.
This new search feature can be accessed directly from the Your Work page or from the new Search your Translation Memory page.
Advanced Search
Just typing in a search query will return the most relevant results in most cases; however, if you need a more powerful search you can take advantage of the advanced features built into TM-Town's search.
Exact match search
For an exact match search, enclose your search query in dollar signs.
$computer$
Exact match search is case-sensitive. This search is useful when you are looking for an exact term in one of your terminology files.
Regular expression search
Regular expression search allows you to search your translation memory and terminology files using a regular expression, a powerful type of "pattern matching".
To search using a regular expression, enclose your regular expression search query in forward slashes. Note that the regular expression must match the entire string you are searching for.
/.+computer[^s].+/
Anchoring
Most regular expression engines allow you to match any part of a string. If you want the regular expression pattern to start at the beginning of the string or finish at the end of the string, then you have to anchor it specifically, using ^ to indicate the beginning or $ to indicate the end.
TM-Town's searches are always anchored. The pattern provided must match the entire string. For string "abcde":
ab.*
# match
abcd
# no match
Allowed characters
Any Unicode characters may be used in the pattern, but certain characters are reserved and must be escaped with a backslash. The standard reserved characters are:
. ? + * | { } [ ] ( ) " \n
Match any character
The period "." can be used to represent any character. For string "abcde":
ab...
# match
a.c.e
# match
One-or-more
The plus sign "+" can be used to repeat the preceding shortest pattern one or more times. For string "aaabbb":
a+b+
# match
aa+bb+
# match
a+.+
# match
aa+bbb+
# match
Zero-or-more
The asterisk "*" can be used to match the preceding shortest pattern zero-or-more times. For string "aaabbb":
a*b*
# match
a*b*c*
# match
.*bbb.*
# match
aaa*bbb*
# match
Zero-or-one
The question mark "?" makes the preceding shortest pattern optional. It matches zero or one times. For string "aaabbb":
aaa?bbb?
# match
aaaa?bbbb?
# match
.....?.?
# match
aa?bb?
# no match
Min-to-max
Curly brackets "{}" can be used to specify a minimum and (optionally) a maximum number of times the preceding shortest pattern can repeat. The allowed forms are:
{5}
# repeat exactly 5 times
{2,5}
# repeat at least twice and at most 5 times
{2,}
# repeat at least twice
For string "aaabbb":
a{3}b{3}
# match
a{2,4}b{2,4}
# match
a{2,}b{2,}
# match
.{3}.{3}
# match
a{4}b{4}
# no match
a{4,6}b{4,6}
# no match
a{4,}b{4,}
# no match
Grouping
Parentheses "()" can be used to form sub-patterns. The quantity operators listed above operate on the shortest previous pattern, which can be a group. For string "ababab":
(ab)+
# match
ab(ab)+
# match
(..)+
# match
(...)+
# no match
(ab)*
# match
abab(ab)?
# match
ab(ab)?
# no match
(ab){3}
# match
(ab){1,2}
# no match
Alternation
The pipe symbol "|" acts as an OR operator. The match will succeed if the pattern on either the left-hand side OR the right-hand side matches. The alternation applies to the longest pattern, not the shortest. For string "aabb":
aabb|bbaa
# match
aacc|bb
# no match
aa(cc|bb)
# match
a+|b+
# no match
a+b+|b+a+
# match
a+(b|c)+
# match
Character classes
Ranges of potential characters may be represented as character classes by enclosing them in square brackets "[]". A leading ^ negates the character class. The allowed forms are:
[abc]
# 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[a-c]
# 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[-abc]
# '-' or 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[abc-]
# '-' or 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[^abc]
# any character except 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[^a-c]
# any character except 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[^-abc]
# any character except '-' or 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
[^abc-]
# any character except '-' or 'a' or 'b' or 'c'
Note that the dash "-" indicates a range of characters, unless it is the first character or if it is escaped with a backslash.
For string "abcd":
ab[cd]+
# match
[a-d]+
# match
[^a-d]+
# no match
Regular expression examples taken from the ElasticSearch documentation.
Getting the most out of your TMs
Remember, any files you upload to TM-Town are automatically private and secure. No one will be able to view or search your files except you.
TM-Town's new search feature is a small step to help you leverage your translation memory assets. In the future TM-Town is planning tighter integration with your favorite CAT tool(s) so that you can easily and securely access your private TMs from within those tools.
Get started on TM-Town today and start getting the most out of your previous translations.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/142015-03-10T08:44:26Z2015-03-10T08:44:26ZA Terminology MarketplaceRecently TM-Town launched Terminology Repositories. Terminology is at the heart of what translators do and Terminology Repositories is an effort to create a central location where professional translators can easily search, browse and download relevant terminology files. When a new term file is added it:
can be easily downloaded in its original form
can be downloaded as a CafeTran term CSV file coming soon
is added to the TM-Town terminology search index
What if I don't want to share my terminology file for free?
A few translators have contacted me and told me that they have terminology files that they have poured a lot of blood and sweat into creating. As such, they would like a place where they could earn a small fee each time someones downloads their file.
I think this is a great idea. An excellent example of this is Henk Sanderson's SanTrans site. Henk has put a lot of effort into cleaning up the IATE term files, extracting the language pairs, and making them easy to import and use in your favorite CAT tool. As such, he asks for a small payment for his time and effort.
As the goal of terminology repositories is a central place where translators can easily upload terminology files to share with the world - why not add an option where translators can decide to set a price for their repository if they so choose?
In a recent survey I did on TM-Town, 40% of you said you would be interested in selling terminology glossaries and 30% of you said you would be interested in buying terminology glossaries.
Licensing
Of course, there is one big caveat. You must be within your rights of the license of the file to sell it commercially.
This also applies to free terminology repositories. When a new repository is created on TM-Town the translator must choose an appropriate license.
This is not for TMs (translation memories)
One point of confusion in the survey seemed to be that translators were conflating translation memories (TMs) and terminology glossaries. Let me state clearly that this is <strong>only for terminology glossaries</strong>. TM files can not be added, only term files (TBX, CSV).
Additionally, let me point out that TM-Town's Terminology Repositories are entirely separate from the files you upload to TM-Town. Your files that you upload are automatically private and will always stay private. To create a terminology repository requires a specific action by the translator with the understanding that doing so means that file will now be public.
Terminology Marketplace Beta
TM-Town is going to be setting up a small beta to test out this idea of a term marketplace. If you are a professional translator with a terminology file that you think would benefit your fellow translators and you would like to try selling it on TM-Town, send me an email to get into this beta. If all goes well and it seems there is interest for a terminology marketplace I'll open it up to the wider TM-Town community.
If you have any ideas, thoughts or suggestions on the idea of a terminology marketplace, please leave a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you
Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/132015-03-03T02:20:49Z2015-03-03T02:20:49ZThe Fuzziness of Fuzzy MatchesMost translators have probably heard of fuzzy matches (a similar, but not identical, match to the source segment found in a translator's translation memory; however, few understand exactly how a fuzzy match is calculated. For good reason, as CAT tool vendors seem to be overly protective of their calculation.
Today's post will look at some of the factors that might come into play when calculating a fuzzy match. Although I can't give you the answer to how other tools calculate their fuzzy matches, hopefully I can shed some light on the different possible ways a fuzzy match could be calculated.
A little background
With your favorite CAT or TEnT tool you can utilize fuzzy matches to get more leverage from your translation memory. If your tool only showed you exact matches (aka 100% matches) you would be missing out.
Take for example the following sentences:
John went to the store. (source segment)
Bob went to the store. (translation memory segment)
As you can see, except for the name highlighted in orange, the sentences are the same. By leveraging fuzzy matching in this example, a translator would only have to translate one word instead of the whole sentence.
Types of matches
Fuzzy Match (1% - 99%)
A fuzzy match can be any match between 1% and 99%. What exactly does the percentage mean - well, that is the million dollar question that I'll explore in more detail below.
Example:
John went to the store. (source segment)
Bob went to the store. (translation memory segment)
Exact Match (100%)
An exact match (aka 100% match) is when the your source segment matches word for word a segment in your translation memory.
Example:
John went to the store. (source segment)
John went to the store. (translation memory segment)
Context Match (101%)
A context match (aka in-context match, 101% match) is when your segment is an exact match to a segment in your translation memory, including its context (i.e. the preceding and following segments are also exact matches).
Note: some tools may only look at the preceding segment when determining a context match.
Example:
It was a rainy day. John went to the store. He needed to buy some eggs. (source segment)
It was a rainy day. John went to the store. He needed to buy some eggs. (translation memory segment)
Other terms you may come across
Fuzzy Match Threshold
As fuzzy matches with a low percentage are usually not particularly useful for a translator, CAT and TEnT tools typically allow you to set a fuzzy match threshold. For example, if you set your fuzzy match threshold at 75% the tool will not show you any matches that are below 75%.
Internal Fuzzy Match
An internal fuzzy match is a fuzzy match that is found within the source document you are translating. So, for example, if the first sentence in the document you are translating is "John went to the store." and the last sentence is "John went to the store again." you have an internal fuzzy match. The fuzzy match isn't coming from your translation memory, but from the current document you are translating.
Fuzzy Match Repair
Fuzzy match repair involves using machine translation to try and "repair" the portion of the segment from the translation memory that does not match the source segment. This is a more recent innovation that may not yet be available in all tools.
Factors that may influence a fuzzy match calculation
There is no set method or formula for how to calculate a fuzzy match. Although tool makers do not release their algorithms, it is easy to see that they all use slightly different calculations just by trying out some tests and seeing that each tool produces a different fuzzy match score for the same test example.
So what are the factors that influence these variations in fuzzy match scores?
Common factors that influence fuzzy match score calculations include:
Word order
Punctuation
Stop words
Partial substring matches
Formatting and tags
Matches longer than the source segment
Word order
When determining the fuzzy match percentage it is important to take into account the word order. Take for example the two segments below. If word order is ignored, these segments would be an exact match (each segment has the same 4 words and one question mark). However, it is clear to see that this should not be an exact match. The segments have very different meanings.
Will you do it?
Do you will it?
Punctuation
When calculating a fuzzy match, should punctuation be:
ignored?
weighted less than a regular word?
weighted the same as a regular word?
Punctuation is a difficult issue. Sometimes punctuation is not important in determining whether a translator can leverage a segment.
John went to the store. (source segment)
John went to the store (translation memory segment)
Other times punctuation can completely change the meaning of the segment, and thus ignoring the punctuation may have negative consequences. For example:
Woman, without her man, is helpless. (source segment)
Woman! Without her, man is helpless! (translation memory segment)
Stop words
Should stop words be given the same weight as other words, or should their weight be adjusted?
Take the following example:
Description of the Service and Definitions. (source segment)
Ownership of the Services and Marks. (translation memory segment)
In the above example, if stop words are weighted the same as regular words we might end up with a fuzzy match score of 65%. 3 of the 6 words are the same and 1 word has one additional character (Service vs. Services). Thus 4/6 = 66% minus a 1% penalty for the additional character is one potential way the above fuzzy match score could be calculated. If we ignore stop words it quickly becomes more obvious that the above two segments are not a useful match.
Partial substring matches
One method of calculating a fuzzy match score could be to think of each individual word as a unit that can have only two states - it is either a match or it is not a match.
Thus Service and Services would not be a match.
Another method would be to examine the words that are not a match even deeper and see how close they might be (i.e. are they a true 0% match, or could there be a partial substring match). This involves using techniques similar to how spell checkers work. Techniques such as the Levenshtein distance that look at how many single-character edits (insertions, deletions or substitutions) it takes to change one word into the other.
In our example above it takes one insertion to change Service into Services. Thus, instead of treating words as a binary (match or not match) a potential fuzzy match algorithm could give a weight to words that show a partial substring match.
Formatting and tags
Many CAT and TEnT tools use the concept of tags to encode information about the format or structure of a word, phrase or segment.
Formatting and tags are another area where different fuzzy match algorithms might produce different results.
Take for example the following two segments. Should they be treated as a 100% match, or should there be a penalty applied as the formatting is not exactly the same?
John went to that store. (source segment)
John went to that store. (translation memory segment)
Matches longer than the source segment
Inevitably there will be cases where the source segment is an exact match to a substring of a segment in the translation memory. For example:
John went to the store. (source segment)
It was Friday and Betsy needed some eggs so John went to the store and picked up a dozen for her. (translation memory segment)
How should the above be treated? Although there is an exact match within the translation memory segment, there is still work that the translator needs to do to extract that information. Should this be a 100% match (probably not), a 99% match (one may argue), or something else?
Other difficulties and trade-offs
Performance
When you are working in your favorite CAT or TEnT tool, the performance (speed) of that tool is very important. Especially as the size of your translation memory grows, the performance of a fuzzy match algorithm can have a big impact on your workflow.
This is one thing to keep in mind when evaluating different options for fuzzy match algorithms. It might be worth forgoing some "accuracy" (i.e. is this a 67% or a 60% match) for speed.
Language differences
What works for English or Spanish or French may not work for Chinese or Japanese or Korean. A generic fuzzy match algorithm might have cost or performance benefits, while a solution tailored by language might be more accurate, but be more expensive to develop.
Bringing it all together
There are different factors to take into account when thinking about an ideal fuzzy match algorithm. Additionally, the ideal algorithm with respect to accuracy might not be the ideal algorithm when thinking about performance on today's hardware.
Over the coming weeks and months TM-Town will be building out more functionality to search and analyze your translation memories and termbases. Once implemented, I will follow-up in the future with a more detailed description of how TM-Town scores fuzzy matches. As with other parts of TM-Town (such as rates), I believe transparency is important to build trust within the community.
If you'd like to be notified of future blog posts, please sign up for TM-Town's mailing list. If you are a translator, give TM-Town a try today - it is free to register. Finally, if you know of any other factors that impact fuzzy match calculations, please leave a comment below!
More reading
Internal fuzzy matches explained, with memoQ, Wordfast Pro and Studio 2011 - CATguruEN (video)
Approximate string matching - Wikipedia
Yet again: Trados fuzzy match woes - Riccardo Schiaffino
How are Trados fuzzy matches defined? - ProZ.com forums
About Translation Memory Matches - SDL Product HelpKevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/122015-02-16T14:29:22Z2015-02-16T14:29:22ZDeconstructing Word CountDoes this situation sound familiar: your client's (or your agency's) tool reports one word count, and your tool reports a different word count? As your pay as a translator is most often based on word count, this seemingly mundane number can be a source of stress and confusion.
Fear no more. Today TM-Town is releasing a new tool called the Word Count Analyzer which will help you clearly see what is causing the discrepancies in your word count totals.
A first-of-its-kind tool
TM-Town's Word Count Analyzer is a highly configurable tool that lets you choose how each word count gray area should be treated. For example, should "first of its kind" and "first-of-its-kind" both be counted as 4 words, or should the latter be counted as 1 word. Now with the click of a button you can choose your preference and see how it impacts your word count.
Knowledge is power
There is no one true way when it comes to word count. However, by being armed with the knowledge of how the word count is being calculated, you can make more educated decisions on the effort needed for a particular translation.
Word count gray areas
So what are the areas that most often result in your favorite tools (CAT tools, word processors, text editors, etc.) showing different word counts? The most common gray areas include:
Ellipses
Hyperlinks
Contractions
Hyphenated words
Dates
Numbers
Numbered lists
XML and HTML tags
Forward slashes and backslashes
Stray punctuation punctuation surrounded by whitespace
Other gray areas you might come across that are not covered by this tool:
Headers
Footers
Hidden Text specific to Microsoft Word
Give it a try (Live Demo)
Open source
Word Count Analyzer is an open source tool built by TM-Town. Currently this tool supports English; however, other language support is coming very soon.
Interested in learning more about your translations? In addition to this word count analysis tool, TM-Town provides other professional productivity analysis tools to help you take your translation business to the next level. Get started today, registration is free.
More resources
Want to learn more about word count? I recommend you check out this great blog post by Paul Filkin which helped to inspire this tool.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/112015-02-09T03:35:37Z2015-02-09T03:35:37ZEnhanced ProfilesToday's post will take a look at how to get the most out of your TM-Town public profile. TM-Town profiles are a little different than what you might be used to on other translation sites.
The biggest difference you will notice is that you can not manually set your language pairs or fields of expertise. Instead, your language pairs and fields of expertise are generated after you load work into TM-Town's system.
One ideal of TM-Town is that translators don't just say what they can do, they show it -- and TM-Town profiles aim to be an accurate representation of this goal.
Building your TM-Town profile
There are 2 main ways to build your profile:
Load work into TM-Town's system
By loading work into TM-Town's safe and secure system your language pairs, fields of expertise, translation unit count, and term concept count will all be automatically generated for you.
Complete all relevant fields in the Edit Account Settings section
Here you can add fields such as your name, native language, country, the software you use and more.
Keywords
It is possible to add keywords to your TM-Town profile. These might be terms that show off your expertise or the types of documents you often translate. To add a keyword to your profile you can click on the pink "plus" icon for any term that was automatically extracted from your documents.
Terminology Repositories
Your TM-Town profile features any terminology repositories that you have made public. By creating high quality terminology repositories you can become a trusted name in the translation community. Public terminology repositories aid translators and the translation community by providing a central location to easily search and download relevant terminology files.
Karma
By adding a public terminology repository, translators earn 10 karma points for every term concept in the file and 15 karma points every time another translator stars the repository.
If there are 2 translators who are equally qualified for a job on TM-Town, the TM-Town system will give preference to the translator who has more karma points.
Link to your ProZ.com profile
For those translators who are also members of ProZ.com, it is now possible to link your ProZ.com profile to your TM-Town account. This will add a link to your ProZ.com profile on your TM-Town public profile.
Your work, working for you
Your TM-Town profile was designed to highlight your expertise and the portfolio of work you have built over your career. Get started on TM-Town today and create your own profile. It is free to register.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/102015-02-02T08:08:19Z2015-02-02T08:08:19ZTranslation Enablement PlatformIs TM-Town a CAT tool?
I am often asked - "What is TM-Town? Is it a CAT tool? Is it an online translation agency? Is it a translation memory solution?"
The answer is that TM-Town is something new and it doesn't really fit into any of the above-mentioned categories. I like to describe TM-Town as a translation enablement platform.
What exactly is a translation enablement platform?
In the simplest sense it is a platform that helps to facilitate translation. TM-Town has many different features that help to make translators and translation more efficient.
TM-Town's translation enablement platform is built on the guiding principle that the intersection of technology and specialization will lead to a better translation world.
For a deeper understanding of TM-Town, let's explore the various aspects of TM-Town's translation enablement platform:
Job Matching
One key distinguishing feature of TM-Town is that it incorporates a translator's actual work products in a novel way. TM-Town employs a patent-pending system to match the best translation specialist to an incoming translation job.
On TM-Town translators load their previous work into TM-Town's safe and secure system. When a client uploads a text for translation, TM-Town's system uses natural language processing and text mining technologies to compare that text against the texts that translators have loaded into the system. The result is that TM-Town's system is able to match the best translation specialist to the job. In translation, having a subject-matter expert not only helps to improve translation quality, but it also reduces the time needed for subject matter research.
Translation Memory Management
On TM-Town translators can securely store their translation memories, translation documents, and glossaries. Additionally TM-Town provides a free alignment tool that makes it easy to convert translation documents into translation memory files.
TM-Town also makes it easy to convert files from one format to another format. Do you have a Wordfast text file that you would like to convert to a TMX file? On TM-Town it is as simple as a click of a button and the file can be downloaded in a different industry standard format.
Analytics
The quote "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" is often thrown around. While not always a truism, it can be very beneficial to measure your progress and productivity. TM-Town makes this easy by providing translators with various productivity charts and visualizations on the translation files they upload.
Terminology
Terminology is at the heart of what translators do and TM-Town has various features related to terminology for translators (as well as more in the works).
On TM-Town it is easy to create a multilingual termbase from terms that are automatically extracted from an uploaded TM file or an aligned source and target document.
TM-Town also recently launched Terminology Repositories, a new section of the site where translators can easily search, browse and download relevant terminology files.
Tools for professional translators
No matter what you choose to call it, TM-Town aims to be a platform which professional translators can utilize to become more efficient, produce higher quality translations, and find relevant translation work.
Are you a professional translator? It's free to get started on TM-Town. Register today and see for yourself how TM-Town's translation enablement platform can help you manage your translation life.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/92015-01-26T02:32:16Z2015-01-26T02:32:16ZIntroducing Terminology RepositoriesToday TM-Town is launching a brand new feature that allows translators to download, search and share terminology files. Terminology is at the heart of what translators do and this feature is an effort to create a central location where professional translators can easily search, browse and download relevant terminology files.
What's a repository?
A repository is a terminology file that you would like to share with your fellow translators. You set the license and other translators can view, search or download your terminology file. In return you get some "Internet points", good karma within the translation community, and everyone benefits from a central location to easily search and download relevant terminology files.
How do I add a repository?
Currently there are 2 ways to add a terminology repository on TM-Town:
Upload a TBX file
After your file is finished uploading and processing you will see a purple "Create Repository" button next to the file in the "Your Work" section of the site. Click the button to get started.
Create a new terminology file from terms extracted from your translation memory
On TM-Town it is easy to create a new terminology file from terms automatically extracted from your TM files and aligned documents. Learn more about how this works in my blog post Creating a Multilingual Termbase is Now a Simple, Stress-Free Process.
After clicking the purple "Create Repository" button it is easy to set up your new repository. Just choose a name, description and set the license type. TM-Town automatically generates a standard license you can use, or you can set a custom license.
Searching repositories
You can search through all repositories by terms, the name of the repository, or by the description of the repository. As you start typing the system will give you some suggested matches that you can click to jump to that repository. Give it a try!
What kind of repositories can I add?
You can share any terminology files you have created. Additionally, it is permitted to share terminology files on TM-Town that are not yours as long as the following terms are met:
The license of the file gives you permission to use, copy, and distribute the file.
You include the original license in the "License" section of the repository.
The file is not already posted as a repository on TM-Town.
A better translation world
Are you a professional translator? Do you have a terminology file that you would like to contribute to the community? Get started on TM-Town today and let's create a better translation world together.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/82015-01-16T03:02:23Z2015-01-16T03:02:23ZA New Way to Browse TranslatorsIn my pursuit to upgrade the client and the professional translator’s work environment, I have launched a new section of TM-Town that allows a visitor to browse translators across language pairs or fields of expertise. Now it is even easier to see who the experts are.
This new section of the site can be easily accessed through the "Browse" dropdown menu on the top navigation bar.
Translators - find your niche and own it!
The ability to browse TM-Town by language pair or field of expertise benefits both end clients in need of translation and translators:
Potential translation buyers can see the top experts in the language pair and field of expertise they need translation in before they decide to purchase.
Translators can see where they stand in relation to other professionals in their field and language pair.
Translators can "find their niche". Not only does this new feature allow one to see where the best translators are, it also allows one to see where they are not. Translators can more easily find an underserved niche to make their name.
Just another way that TM-Town is revolutionizing the translation business
This new section of TM-Town will benefit clients and translators alike. For buyers looking for a professional translator with specific skills as well as for translators looking to build their business, this tool will become indispensable.
If you are a professional translator, get started on TM-Town today and you can move to the top of your area of specialization. It's free to register.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/72015-01-07T08:17:52Z2015-01-07T08:17:52ZIs Segmentation a Solved Problem?Many in the translation industry seem to think that sentence segmentation is a solved problem; however, I tend to disagree. While there are tools that can obtain high accuracy in specific languages and specific domains, there still does not exist a free, open-source tool that can handle many languages as well as handle ill-formatted content across any incoming domain.
On TM-Town translators upload documents across many different fields of expertise and many languages. As such, it is important that TM-Town's segmentation engine be able to handle many different languages as well as deal with potentially ill-formatted content (i.e. text imported from PDFs often has line-breaks that fall in the middle of sentences). To deal with these issues I have worked on developing a new sentence segmentation engine.
As TM-Town benefits from a lot of open-source technology I have decided to open source TM-Town's sentence segmentation library in hopes that it might benefit the community. TM-Town’s segmentation tool is called Pragmatic Segmenter and is a rule-based sentence boundary detection library written in Ruby.
The goal of Pragmatic Segmenter is to provide a "real-world" segmenter that works out of the box across many languages and does a reasonable job when the format and domain of the input text is unknown. Pragmatic Segmenter does not use any machine-learning techniques and thus does not require training data.
Pragmatic Segmenter aims to improve on other segmentation engines in 2 main areas:
Language support
Text cleaning and preprocessing
What is sentence segmentation?
According to Wikipedia, sentence boundary disambiguation (aka sentence boundary disambiguation) sentence segmentation is defined as:
Sentence boundary disambiguation (SBD), also known as sentence breaking, is the problem in natural language processing of deciding where sentences begin and end. Often natural language processing tools require their input to be divided into sentences for a number of reasons. However sentence boundary identification is challenging because punctuation marks are often ambiguous. For example, a period may denote an abbreviation, decimal point, an ellipsis, or an email address – not the end of a sentence. About 47% of the periods in the Wall Street Journal corpus denote abbreviations. As well, question marks and exclamation marks may appear in embedded quotations, emoticons, computer code, and slang. Languages like Japanese and Chinese have unambiguous sentence-ending markers.
Why is sentence segmentation important for translators?
Translation memory data is typically stored and exchanged at the segment level. Poor segmentation will at best give the translator extra work within their CAT tool of choice to fix the segmentation issues manually and at worst will reduce the usefulness of a translator’s translation memory.
Why is sentence segmentation important in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) community?
Although segmentation is not a "sexy" problem, it is very important and the base of many other NLP functions and tasks (e.g. machine translation, bitext alignment, named entity extraction, part-of-speech tagging, summarization, classification, etc.). As segmentation is often the first step needed to perform these NLP tasks, poor accuracy in segmentation can lead to poor end results.
Sentence segmentation methods
Typically sentence segmentation tools use one of the following methods:
Machine learning (unsupervised and supervised)
Rule-based
Tokenize-first group-later (e.g. Stanford CoreNLP)
TM-Town’s sentence segmenter uses a rule-based method that is made to work out-of-the-box across many languages. Users of the library do not need to manually create any rules, all the rules are already set up. Additionally TM-Town's library does not require any training data, which can be typical for libraries that utilize machine learning methods.
Language support
Typically segmentation tools focus almost exclusively on English. Sometimes they may also include language packs for a few other languages (i.e. German). As I mentioned above, TM-Town has translators from all over the globe that work in many different languages. While many languages have similar punctuation to English, some have completely different punctuation. If the segmentation engine is not built for these cases, it will fail spectacularly when given a language that does not use typical punctuation. For example, here are some languages that do not use the same sentence ending punctuation (. ? !) as English:
Amharic full stop (።) question mark (፧)
Arabic question mark (؟)
Armenian full stop (:)
Burmese full stop (။)
Chinese full stop (。) question mark (?) exclamation point (!)
Greek question mark (;)
Hindi full stop (|)
Japanese full stop (。) question mark (?) exclamation point (!)
Persian question mark (؟)
Urdu question mark (؟)
The Golden Rules
The Golden Rules are a set of tests I developed that can be run through a segmenter to check its accuracy in regards to certain edge case scenarios. Most academic research papers that have studied segmentation have either used the WSJ corpus or Brown corpus to test their segmentation algorithm. In my opinion there are 2 limits to using these corpora:
The corpora may be too expensive for some people ($1,700)
The majority of the sentences in the corpora are sentences that end with a regular word followed by a period, thus testing the same thing over and over again
In the Brown Corpus 92% of potential sentence boundaries come after a regular word. The WSJ Corpus is richer with abbreviations and only 83% [53% according to Gale and Church, 1991] of sentences end with a regular word followed by a period.
Andrei Mikheev Periods, Capitalized Words, etc.
Therefore, I created a set of distinct edge cases to compare segmentation tools on. As most segmentation tools have very high accuracy, in my opinion what is really important to test is how a segmenter handles the edge cases - not whether it can segment 20,000 sentences that end with a regular word followed by a period. These example tests I have named the "Golden Rules". This list is by no means complete and will evolve and expand over time. To view the Golden Rules visit TM-Town's Natural Language Processing resource page.
Results of the Golden Rule tests
The Holy Grail of sentence segmentation appears to be Golden Rule #18 as no segmenter I tested was able to correctly segment that text. The difficulty being that an abbreviation (in this case a.m./A.M./p.m./P.M.) followed by a capitalized abbreviation (such as Mr., Mrs., etc.) or followed by a proper noun such as a name can be both a sentence boundary and a non sentence boundary.
The results of how various popular segmentation tools faired against the Golden Rules test set can be found in the table below:
Other segmentation tools not yet tested:
In Conclusion
In my opinion sentence segmentation is not yet a solved problem, but hopefully TM-Town can help to continue pushing the community forward by working to improve segmentation accuracy across many languages. It is certain that more work still needs to be done to further improve accuracy rates across all languages and to add support for even more languages.
Live Demo
Give TM-Town's segmentation engine a try by adding some text below that you would like segmented. If you find any text that does not segment the way you would expect, please let me know by opening an issue. If you are a translator, be sure to try out TM-Town's Professional Account 14-day free trial. You'll be able to see the results of the segmentation engine at work when you upload a document into TM-Town's system.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/62014-12-18T10:17:12Z2014-12-18T10:17:12ZUploading Files to TM-Town (video screencast)On TM-Town it is easy to upload your translation files. By uploading your previous translations into TM-Town’s system you get a safe and secure way to manage, back up and share your linguistic assets. Additionally you will get the potential of being matched with new clients on the basis of your prior work. Watch this short screencast to get a better feel for uploading files on TM-Town. Try out TM-Town today with a free 14-day trial of the Professional Account.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/52014-12-12T10:13:50Z2014-12-12T10:13:50ZUnlocking the Black Box of Translation Memory FilesDid you know that a translation memory (TM) file is just a text file with structure? Maybe you saw the file extension (*.tmx or *.xliff) and imagined it can only be opened with special software. In reality, all you need is a standard text editor (such as TextEdit on Mac or Notepad on Windows) and you can open it up. Additionally, you don’t need a PhD or computer degree to read it or understand the structure. For the most part, a translation memory file is straightforward and functional... it is not a black box.
So what exactly is a translation memory file?
A translation memory file holds translation and linguistic data in a structured format. It’s just a text file. More specifically, it is typically an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file, which is also a text file, but with a well-defined structure which provides ways to represent complicated data structures.
What type of information does it store?
The main info:
Segments (source and target)
Language
Creation dates and times
Additional data it might store:
Author
Usage count
Change dates and times
Creation tool
Domain (field)
Alternate translations
Notes
What are the typical formats of translation memory files?
The two most popular file types in the industry are XLIFF and TMX - both of which are XML files. However, translation memory can also be stored as spreadsheet files such as Excel (XLS) or even just comma separated value text files (CSV). Although XLS and CSV files tend to be smaller in size, the downside to these types is that you store less data about each translation unit (i.e. typically only the segment and language are stored.)
Why do XLIFF and TMX both use the XML format? There are a few advantages XML provides over a raw text file:
It is easy to parse because it has a well defined structure.
The structure and tags of an XML file often help indicate what the data means (i.e. semantic tags such as <segment>, <trans-unit>, etc.).
There are many software tools built around the XML format to validate, import, parse, search, etc.
Different applications and systems can interact and exchange data because an XML file typically has a well-defined structure.
What are the differences between TMX and XLIFF?
TMX and XLIFF are both industry standard file types. Additionally, both are XML-based file types. The two formats have a lot in common, including some inline markup elements; however, each one has a slightly different structure and elements. The following are a few key differences between the two file types:
The TMX and XLIFF formats were created for slightly different purposes. XLIFF was created as a format to store extracted text and carry the data from one step to another in the localization process while TMX was created as a format to exchange translation memory data from one tool to another.
TMX allows any number of languages in the same document. XLIFF is designed to work with one source and one target language.
TMX uses only the encapsulation methods for inline codes (there native codes are enclosed within different elements), while XLIFF provides both the encapsulation method (using elements very similar to TMX's) and the placeholder method (where the native codes are removed to the Skeleton file and replaced by a short element that refers to them, using elements very similar to OpenTag's).
In a TMX file, a collection of <tu> elements has no specific order and contains no mechanism to rebuild the original file.
XLIFF adds a few data types and fields that are not present in a TMX file such as pretranslation and history, versioning, binary objects, and others.
TMX files can store time and date data at the translation unit level, while XLIFF files can not.
Let's break it down
What's in a translation memory file? First is the header. The header contains metadata about the file and the localization process. Let's look at an example header for each file type. As you will see, the semantic naming of XML tags makes the files human readable - even without reading the actual specification you can probably understand most of the fields.
In an XLIFF file the metadata attributes are stored in the file element.
After the header comes the body. This is the section that contains the most important data - the translation units and segments. Let's look at an example body for both a TMX and XLIFF file.
TMX Body
XLIFF Body
Why are translation memory files so important?
Improves efficiency
Translation memory files are typically used by translators in their CAT or TEnT (translation environment tool) tool to help them translate more efficiently. Loading a translation memory file into a translation software tool allows a translator to leverage their prior work. If a segment in the current translation has already been translated before (or even partially translated before) the tool will help the translator by automatically alerting them of the match (or partial match).
Ensures consistency
Translation memory files will also help you maintain consistency as a translator. Over your career you will work on many different projects for many different clients. Some projects might require specific terminology or phrases. Utilizing "client-based" or "project-based" translation memory will allow you to ensure accuracy and stay consistent with every translation you work on.
Which format is better - TMX or XLIFF?
Both TMX and XLIFF are powerful choices. They are both industry standard file formats and both are supported by the majority of translation software tools. Ultimately, whether you end up using a TMX or XLIFF file often depends on the project or tool you will be using. Additionally, sometimes a TM file might be provided to you for a particular job. Both TMX and XLIFF can get the job done well and using translation memory is 1000x better than not using translation memory (regardless of what file format you use). Many times you don't have to "choose" as you can download your translation memory from the tool you are using in either format.
However, given the choice on a new translation project, <strong>I would prefer TMX</strong> for 2 main reasons:
Translation units are (or at least can be) time stamped (Time stamped translation units allow you to later do a productivity analysis on your work).
Multiple target languages can be stored in one file.
On the other hand, if using the TM file to reconstruct or rebuild the original file is important to you, the XLIFF format is much more powerful in this regard.
Quiz
Visit TM-Town on your desktop computer to try out an interactive quiz.
Kevin Dias
TM-Town DeveloperKevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/42014-12-05T02:29:11Z2014-12-05T02:29:11ZWhat is TM-Town?Welcome to TM-Town! TM-Town is a new translation enablement platform that rectifies so many of the hassles translators experience in looking for and securing jobs.
My name is Kevin Dias and I am the developer of the site. Though I am not a translator, I think my unique background has allowed me to bring a fresh perspective to the industry. I have found there are still a lot of inefficiencies that exist. While developing an online CAT Tool called transdraft, it became clear to me that translators needed an online home that protected them and their careers.
With TM-Town, I’m on your side. I’ve developed this platform to set you, the translator, up for success. TM-Town is here to make your work seamless, easy and successful. TM-Town serves you so that you may better serve your clients. In short, TM-Town equips the best translators with the best tools to ensure your end-clients are happy and satisfied.
It’s the Technology
On TM-Town translators load their prior translation work (in the form of translation memory files, source and target texts, or terminology files) into TM-Town’s safe and secure system. TM-Town's system was designed with the importance of keeping your translation data confidential as the top priority. On TM-Town your translation data is private and never made public - the system scans your work to learn your areas of expertise.
When an end client uploads a new translation job TM-Town’s system goes to work using natural language processing and text mining technologies to match the translation job to the subject matter expert with the most relevant experience. The benefits are not just about matching the translator to the most appropriate job; TM-Town’s translation enablement platform makes the whole process more efficient and cost effective by allowing translators to easily leverage their linguistic assets.
Simply - TM-Town's patent pending technology:
Speeds up the translation process by reducing the time needed for subject matter research
Allows translators to easily leverage their linguistic assets (TMs, glossaries, terms, etc.)
Directs work to the specialized expert which leads to higher quality translations
Helps make the process more efficient and in doing so helps translators take a higher margin
TM-Town functions on two main principles
First, translators matter. Expert translators are key to TM-Town’s success. When you have the right person on the job - a well-versed translator who knows their subject matter and doesn’t have to perform additional research - the job gets done better and faster. The results satisfy everyone: clients receive quality products; translators are more efficient and can potentially earn more per hour doing the work they know.
Next, TM-Town’s translation enablement platform incorporates translation memory (TM) technology allowing translators to easily leverage their linguistic assets - improving quality, speed and efficiency.
Why TM-Town?
1. Less Hassle
On TM-Town there will be a substantial reduction of friction involved in getting jobs, finding clients and getting paid.
2. Privacy at all costs
Your translation data is private and never made public.
3. 'Don't Bother Me' rate
On TM-Town you will never be inundated with low-rate work. After sign-up, TM-Town asks translators to state their Don't Bother Me Rate. This is not a minimum rate, but simply a rate that tells TM-Town to never send you orders if the job does not meet your threshold.
4. Low margins
TM-Town's primary business model is providing professional tools to translators. This business model, combined with TM-Town’s matching technology allows for a very small margin on translation jobs.
5. Transparency
The per word rate translators earn is posted publicly on our site. You will always know exactly what you will earn and what the client is paying before starting a job.
6. Efficiency
TM-Town’s translation enablement platform helps translators produce higher quality work in a shorter period of time, which means you can potentially increase your hourly earnings.
It’s Time Translators Got Some Help
TM-Town's mission is to create a better translation world through technology and specialization. The entire system is built to empower translators.
Above all I can promise you, the translator, two things about TM-Town's rates:
TM-Town will never bother you with low-rate work. You set your "Don't Bother Me Rate" and TM-Town honors it.
TM-Town's rates will be transparent and posted publicly on the site.
This innovative enhanced job platform will help translators reach relevant clients and jobs and manage and leverage their linguistic assets. Find out for yourself today, registration is free. It is a fantastic time to be a translator!Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/32014-12-03T10:27:15Z2014-12-03T10:27:15ZCreating a Multilingual Termbase is Now a Simple, Stress-Free ProcessIn a past post we discussed the benefits of TM-Town’s easy automatic alignment tool. Today’s post will go over some additional features you can take advantage of when you align source and target documents on TM-Town.
TM-Town’s terminology tools are one more way that you can unlock the value of your linguistic assets so that you can better leverage them for your next translation job.
Automatic Term Extraction
TM-Town will automatically extract key terms from both your source and target documents. These terms will be ranked according to an algorithm that calculates each term's relevance within the document. This is done through statistical algorithms and natural language processing technology that analyzes the content of your document and identifies the most relevant keywords. A higher Term Rank score indicates a higher relevance within your document.
Term extraction is just the beginning. What is really useful for translators is a multilingual glossary (i.e. a source term in one language and it’s equivalent translation in another language). TM-Town now has a tool that allows you to easily create a multilingual termbase that can be exported to use in your favorite CAT tool in TBX format.
Easy Termbase Creation
TM-Town’s system automatically extracts the top terms (using the Term Rank algorithm) from the source text. TM-Town then extracts the top terms from the target text. With a simple drag and drop user interface, TM-Town’s new tool allows you to quickly match the source term to its corresponding translation. You can also add additional data to your termbase such as the gender, number, part of speech of the term as well as any definitions.
As you are matching the terms, TM-Town’s system automatically creates an industry standard terminology file that you can export in TBX, JTM, XLS, and CSV.
TM-Town has taken the painstaking work out of creating a multilingual termbase. It is now a simple, stress-free process. The majority of the work is done for you automatically through TM-Town’s system.
Interested in trying out this tool on your own documents? Register today with a 14-day free trial of TM-Town’s Professional Account and get immediate access to this tool and many more.Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/22014-12-01T08:34:43Z2014-12-01T08:34:43ZYour Productivity Data and What You Can Learn From ItMany translators I speak to manually keep rough track of how many words they translate per day, though it is time consuming and cumbersome. Others are not aware that the CAT tool that they are using has been timestamping their translation units. Usually CAT tools automatically put a timestamp on the translation units and if the file is exported as a TMX file this time data is preserved. However, without the ability to analyze the data, it is pretty useless. As this data can help you in many ways, TM-Town includes a tool that automatically extracts productivity data from your translation memory (TM) files - data that was hiding that you might have never known was there.
What you will uncover with TM-Town’s analytical tools
Word count data (by year, month, day)
Words per hour
Busiest month
Slowest month
Busiest day of the month
Slowest day of the month
Busiest day of the week
Slowest day of the week
Busiest hour of the day
By understanding your productivity you will be able to better manage your schedule as well as keep your clients happier as you will have your past data to help you make better estimates.
You have questions...TM-Town provides the answers
What day am I most productive?
How many words do I average per day?
Do I get more work done in the mornings, afternoons or nights?
What language pair am I most efficient in?
What specialties take me longer?
What specialties am I quickest at?
What time of year do I have capacity to take on more work?
How many words can I translate in one day if I really had to?
Upload a TMX file and see for yourself
With your TM data uncovered you will be able to better understand and manage your productivity. Additionally, you might learn some interesting things about your work rate that you never knew. Register for your free TM-Town account and give these tools a try!
Kevin Diastag:www.tm-town.com,2005:Blog/12014-11-26T03:14:04Z2014-11-26T03:14:04ZAlignment the TM-Town WayTM-Town's translation enablement platform is designed to help translators get the most out of their linguistic assets. TM-Town's system can help you unlock the value of your prior translations in multiple different ways - finding potential new clients, leveraging your Translation Memory (TM) as well helping you extract valuable analytical business data from your linguistic assets.
In future posts I will go into all of these areas in detail; however, today I will explore one innovative feature of TM-Town that will help you quickly and easily get your previous translations into a form where you can benefit from their value. This feature is TM-Town's free alignment tool.
After interviewing countless professional translators one of the most pressing issues discussed was your inability to access previous work. Sometimes your documents would be in PDF form, other times in Word. Many of you said there were tons of Word documents and PDFs scattered throughout your hard drives, but trying to remember which document had that phrase you need for this current translation...well, that can be time consuming to track down. Frustration sets in because you know that these are valuable assets that you could be using to help you in future or present translation jobs.
Translation Memory and Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools were created to take care of this problem. These tools perform many functions and one is to allow you to leverage your previous translations so if a similar or identical sentence comes up again, you don’t have to waste your time translating the same thing again. The more your translation memory (TM) grows, the more linguistic assets you have to leverage and the better chance of getting a match. This means that over time your previous work will help you to work more and more efficiently.
This is where alignment tools come in.
Since your files are scattered throughout your hard drive as Word files, PDFs, text files, etc., you are probably too busy and don’t have time to figure out how to get these documents into a TM file format so that you can utilize a CAT tool. Many translators’ previous translations are not in TM file formats (such as TMX or XLIFF).
Alignment software segments a source document and its translation (target document) and then matches the corresponding segments together into translation units. It then creates industry standard TM files such as TMX or XLIFF.
All you do is upload the source document and target document and the alignment tool will automatically create a new TM file for you.
Alignment? I'm still not sure I understand.
Sometimes it helps to see things visually. Let's go through an example to better understand the alignment process.
Imagine that you are a Spanish to English to translator. Your client gave you a document that needs to be translated. This is called the source document. To keep this example simple, let's pretend this is the document you were given to translate:
After each document has been segmented, the next step in the alignment process is to match each segment from the source document to its corresponding segment in the target document. In this example it is easy, segment #1 from the source document matches segment #1 from the target document and segment #2 from the source document matches segment #2 from the target document.
After all of the segments have been successfully matched, the final step is to create a Translation Memory file. A Translation Memory file stores the aligned document in a special format so that when the file is read it it is obvious which segments match together.
Here’s the really good news!
TM-Town offers an alignment tool that is not only free but is far superior to most other alignment software. There are some open source alignment tools on the web, but none of them are particularly user friendly to say the least. There is no need for an IT certificate to use TM-Town’s alignment tool. TM-Town’s alignment tool is so simple; you upload the source document, upload the target document and TM-Town’s system does the rest - creating a new aligned file for you that you can download in many different formats.
TM-Town Alignment Benefits
Free
Easy to use
Safe and security - your uploaded work is private.
Your new TM file is available in multiple industry formats
TM-Town’s system will automatically extract terms from your documents, helping you to easily build term bases and glossaries.
Your uploaded work can potentially help you get new work through TM-Town's innovative job matching system.
If you have never used an alignment tool, try out TM-Town and see how easy it is. With TM-Town your previous work is just a click away which will help save you time and effort. TM-Town has some other fantastic free features which I will get into in upcoming posts. In the meantime, please send me your feedback or comment below. I enjoy getting to know the community and it helps me to improve TM-Town.Kevin Dias