Several months ago I mentioned the work of Alain Désilets who writes on the subject of Wiki-like collaboration and translation. In his papers he refers to MOC (massive online collaboration), the relatively new phenomenon others typically refer to as "crowd-sourcing." When I mentioned it the first time, I had hoped that this would start a discussion in this newsletter. That didn't really happen, so let me try to throw out the bait again: In the recent edition of Multilingual (you can read this and the next three editions if you go to www.multilingual.com/promo and enter D74TKA as your promo code) there is another well-thought-out article by Désilets (in collaboration with Louis Brunette) that expands on the same topics.  

The authors argue that Wikipedia has proven that high-quality work can be achieved with models of crowd-sourcing. And while translation projects are different, the same kind of enthusiasm and quality assurance can be transposed to translation projects in which -- and this is very central to their thesis -- the professional translator has an important and strong position as a guarantor for quality. They point out stylistic aspects as a central responsibility of the translator, but I think the same could be said for the content (see Patricia Highsmith's G-string above). The challenge that they foresee for the professional translator is the need to adapt to a new order that is built on a "do-acracy," i.e., a system where project-internal achievements count rather than merits that may have been collected in the outside world (such as university degrees or work experience). Professional translators will essentially have to come off their high horse -- I am paraphrasing slightly -- and learn to collaborate in a system where they might well be in a leadership position, depending on how well they cope with this new world.

Hmm. (That was my first response.)

Like anyone else who is talking about crowd-sourcing, the authors cite Facebook's example. Rather than giving their translation to professionals, they had their users translate their site. You can read Facebook's (almost identical) press releases for the Spanish and German versions.

Unfortunately, it is always this example that I think gets us on the wrong track when we talk about crowd-sourcing. The truth is, companies like Facebook would be crazy not to use crowd-sourcing. What better way to leverage the passion and enthusiasm their users have into something that most likely will be the exact translation that is needed -- the translation that their users can identify with, that they own in a very literal and emotional sense.

There are tons of blog and other comments claiming that Facebook was just being cheap to do it that way. That's baloney (that's American for nonsense -- by the way, my friend Paul from Britain pointed out that the last newsletter's use of "boogers" had an unfortunate ring to British ears -- sorry -- it sounds OK in American). It really is baloney, because what Facebook has done is to create value rather than to de-value something.

But let's be real: the Facebook experience is strikingly different from our job day-in and day-out. The last couple of days I have been working on an ERP project (the person who came up with that acronym must have been an adolescent who liked carbonated drinks). I was happy to work on the job because I was given the support that I needed and because I was paid well. But I have an extremely hard time imagining some volunteers translating thousands of boring software error messages because they feel passionate about it. So does crowd-sourcing work only for the interesting, cool projects?

Quite a few voices say that it can be used for many other projects as well, and maybe that's true if it's not all based on volunteers. In fact, I think that this concept may turn out to be exciting. That is, IF and only if the driving motivation is not to be cheap but to add value. In Facebook's case, the added value was a sense of ownership and the quirky style (which, at least in the German translation, is not exactly error-free) that their users were looking for. In the case of the vast majority of clients -- those with the unexciting products that you and I often work on -- it could be quality or turn-around time.

Of course, most of us have worked in translation teams before (virtual or otherwise), but what I imagine would be different about crowd-sourced projects -- and maybe we should call the boring ones "pro-sourced projects" instead -- would be larger participation, an on-going effort, and possibly a more detailed hierarchy.

Certainly there are many questions that would have to be answered. One that comes to mind is this: Who will be coming up with pricing structures?

Last week I met with a company that is in the process of trying to find ways to compensate highly specialized translators, some of whom have been working with them for decades, for editing machine translation. Their approach is to find out what the translators make now -- something that most agencies don't exactly know, especially when they pay by the word. Once they figure that out, they will find ways to approximate that kind of earning for the new kind of task. This really is all that is required: forward-looking companies interested in maintaining fair relationships with their translators and simultaneously trying to use new concepts to streamline their work -- but without doing the streamlining on the backs of their translators.

What about the technology platform? Clearly we want to continue to use translation technology. Does it have to be more intuitive? Also, does it need to be freeware if volunteers are going to take part in some projects? Can the upcoming Google Translation Center be a solution? Could it be something like Lingotek? Or would it have to be something that provides connectivity to databases from the very point of the translation activity, independent of whether you work in an HTML editor, Word, or a text editor? Is that one of the roles of professional translators: to teach technology? Would there have to be the same tools for volunteers and professionals alike

Lots of questions and lots of room for discussion.