Translation and Ethics

If you would like to sign our petition, just follow the link at the end of this post.

Petition Statement:

For the past few months, professional translators and interpreters all over the world have been expressing their concerns over the ethical problems posed by crowdsourcing and how this practice negatively impacts an already suffering industry, but our concerns have not been heard and more unethical practices have arisen as a result of crowdsourcing. The reasons why we are against crowdsourcing are the following:

1. Professional translation requires years of training, extensive general culture, and excellent command of both the target and source languages. The job of translators and interpreters is not simply to translate words, but rather to convey meaning and concepts as well as to provide cultural localization. This is why being “bilingual” or “knowing another language” is not enough to be a translator. We train, we study, and then we train some more... and for all that hard work we, as any other professional, feel we deserve fair rates and recognition. Crowdsourcing bases itself on non-professional translation provided either by people who are not qualified to translate in the first place (which shows utmost disregard for language and language professionals) or by people who, as a result of other unethical practices, are desperate to find ways of promoting their services and hope this form of exploitation will later translate into paid work.

2. We are users of the sites that resort to crowdsourcing and we feel insulted that the sites we are supporting show such disrespect for our line of work. We don’t see sites like Twitter and Facebook asking doctors who use their sites to provide free online medical services. We don’t see Twitter and Facebook asking lawyers who use their site to provide free online legal services. So we wonder, why do we see Twitter and Facebook asking professional translators who use their sites to provide free online services?

3. For years, universities and professional associations have been providing certification to translators as a way of raising industry standards and homogenizing linguist quality. We ask, what ethical and professional criteria (if any) do sites like Twitter and Facebook use to provide “awards” and “recognitions” to their “best” translators? Where exactly did these sites get the authority to do so?

Translation and interpretation are not hobbies or pastimes, they are professions. As users and supporters of the sites that are resorting to crowdsourcing we ask that these practices stop, that they leave translation to the pros, that they pay translators fair rates for their work, and that they show respect not only for language and culture, but also for their users. This petition was created by the group Translators for Ethical Business Practices, but we feel we speak on behalf of all translators and interpreters and invite all our colleagues (including non-members) to sign this petition and make their voices heard.

Professional Translators Against Crowdourcing and Other Unethical Business Practices Petition

I have nothing against Proz.com. Quite the contrary, I’m overall happy with most site features and recommend the site to anyone looking to make great new clients and meeting interesting translation professionals. I’ve had the chance to meet many site staff members in person, and know they work really hard to try to provide a great service to site users.

However, what I do have a serious problem with is censorship. Although I’ve been told the site had resorted to censorship many times in the past, as far as I know, the main problem began when the site’s new service (turn-key translations) raised serious ethical questions, which have yet to be answered. As far as I can tell, after the turn-key translations thread was censored and some very valuable members were either kicked out of or left the site, Proz moderators have been systematically resorting to censorship any time they are unable to effectively handle a discussion.

I have no problem with site moderators either, I’m sure despite the questionable way in which they go about censoring people, they mean no harm. I’m guessing they are either simply following orders, or just are really unaware of the bad customer service and negative impact censorship is having on the site’s overall image.

A new thread, questioning whether such a harsh level of moderation/intervention was necessary, was opened, censored, closed and removed from the site yesterday. I guess the philosophy behind it is what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve. As a paying member, I would have loved to be able to participate and have a chance to voice my opinion on an issue that is seriously making me wonder whether or not I’ll be renewing my membership, but the Thought Police beat me to it. Now instead of engaging in a productive conversation on the site with fellow site members, I am left with no choice but to discuss it elsewhere on my blog or Facebook group.

As a Law student, I obviously have a problem with censorship: it violates basic human rights and breaks international law. Every time a Proz moderator resorts to censorship they let you know the reason they are doing it is because something in the thread broke a site rule. Yes, the site does reserve the right to impose its own rules in its user agreement. Yes, our user agreement is a legally binding contract that creates rights and obligations for both parties. Yes, the principle of autonomy of the individual will is a guiding principle in most contracts, but no, the principle does not constitute a green light for violating the right to freedom of speech.

What does all this mean? It means Proz has the right to pretty much stick anything they want in the site rules, as long as it does not conflict with superior interests. The site rules are part of a contract, and that contract is subject to a principle by which that contract becomes “law of the parties” (i.e. only applicable to the parties in the contract) but that principle has a limit: the law (i.e. general laws that apply to everyone). They can write whatever they want in their rules, and enforce these rules however they deem fit, provided neither the rules nor the measures they take to enforce them violate the laws by which the agreement is bound. As I have mentioned before in certain censored threads, our user agreements are subject to “all applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations.” This of course includes article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that ensures that “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” and by “without interference” they mean censorship, moderation, intervention, etc. So, are the actions of the Thought Police simply bad customer service? No, they are not just bad for business, they are also violations of members’ rights to express themselves on the site –and this is very serious.

After turn-key translations I was sure that given the negative image said censorship was creating for Proz, the number of people that were thinking of canceling their memberships, the way site moderators were mocked online, etc. site authorities would smarten up and find more productive ways of handling customer dissatisfaction (after all, let’s be honest, censored threads all happen to be the ones in which users complain about something). I was wrong. Like dictators on power trips, site moderators and authorities have been abusing the rights they reserved in our user agreements and have turned the site into Big Brother’s wet dream.

What does that say about Proz? To me, it reads insecurity. In the words of Potter Steward, “Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” A lesson I honestly hope Proz learns in time is that “censorship always defeats its own purpose.” Much smarter people than Proz staff and moderators learned a long time ago that censorship will turn on you: they wrote constitutions around that lesson and drew out international laws protecting freedom of speech. Let’s hope H et al. learn their lesson while there are still members left on the site.

Crowdsourcing, machine translation, bottom feeding… we all know what these are: threats to professional translators. What we don’t know is just how serious these threats are and what, if any, impact they’ve already had on our industry. On October 8, Tech Crunch published a post called Twitter Needs you to Translate its FIGS. This post tells us about the difficulties Twitter is facing when trying to “expand to the global community” and it describes how other social networking tools like Yahoo Meme have tried to “fill the gap” by offering Twitter-like services in Spanish and Portuguese. Twitter, apparently, is in danger. But do not despair, Twitter plans to “roll out support for FIGS: French, Italian, German, and Spanish […] and while Twitter is going to be doing some of the translations in-house, they are mostly trying to crowdsource translations, which is a strategy that Facebook has used in the past.” Twitter, like Facebook, has found a way to save thousands of dollars on translation. Kudoz to Twitter!

Just for the record, I love Twitter and Facebook. Thanks to these two great social utility tools I was able to reconnect with long lost childhood friends, stay in touch with my relatives, and meet amazing new people. I fully support their efforts to expand to the global community, and as someone who is half-American and half-Argentinean, I know just how much my loved ones in Argentina benefit from having these services in Spanish. What I am uncomfortable with are the ethical implications of crowdsourcing, particularly with Twitter’s added new twist.

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdousourcing is a system that social utility tools have been using lately to get their interfaces translated for free. It’s based on user-suggested translations. Volunteer users suggest a translation for a particular sentence or phrase which is posted somewhere on the site, and other users vote for the best translation. The most ironic part of crowdsourcing is that implementing it is not fully free; the site has to spend money developing the features that enable crowdsourcing to work. So it’s not that they are not willing to invest to have their sites translated, they just don’t want to pay actual translators when they have thousands of multilingual users willing to help for free.

What was Twitter’s new twist?

Volunteer “translators” on Twitter will be given a level which will be added to their profiles and, according to Tech Crunch, the more their translations are used, the higher their level. Kind of like a game.

Why are professional translators unhappy about this?

The system seems fair and fun enough: participants volunteer so the site isn’t actually forcing anyone to translate for free, and there are many other professions in which people offer their services pro bono. Technically Twitter is not hurting anyone –except pro bono work is usually done for a cause, and I hardly think filling Twitter’s pockets is a worthy cause. Meanwhile, there is much more to it than that. First, translation is not a trade or a hobby; it is a profession that requires training, skills, and constant development. People actually study to become translators because it’s not enough with just being bilingual. Meanwhile, Twitter’s twist to crowdsourcing actually “certifies” a person’s level as a translator (they even use the word “translator”) simply based on popularity and votes by other eager, non-professional translators whose language skills may be great, but might be far from “translator level”. After all, where does Twitter get the authority to “certify” translators? They seem to follow no criteria, other than popularity, for choosing the most suitable translation or assigning levels. It’s almost like certifying a layman’s legal or medical skills based on how well the person is able to answer legal and medical trivia. Would we accept this kind of certification in any other profession? If you were sick, would you hire someone to treat you because they read and understood a couple of medical articles online? If you were on trial, would you hire an eloquent actor as your lawyer to represent you in court? If we respect other professions because of the level of skill and knowledge they entail, why not show the same respect to translation?

Second, the more non-professional translators are willing to translate their profit-earning, social utility tools for free, the more they are affecting overall freelance translation prices. Why would clients pay to have their texts and sites translated by professional translators when they can just hire agencies that use crowdsourcing or Google translator and have a pro “edit” it at half the price? Translation is becoming cheap, not because it’s not a serious profession, but simply because so many people are willing to work in exchange for nothing but online recognition from other users. But is online recognition from other users really enough to make anyone a translator?

However, companies that have the means to pay for their translation services finding ways to get their translations done pro bono is only part of the problem. Although it is true that social utility tools, for the most part, offer their services for free, it is also true that they profit from people using their sites. The more traffic their sites receive, the more their advertising spots are worth or additional products and services they are able to sell, which is where they make their profit. So when they “let” you use the site for free, they are not really giving you any more than what you are giving them. You are in a win-win situation. You get the perks, they get the cash. But when you start saving them thousands of dollars by working for free, where is the reciprocity in your relationship with your social utility tool?

What can we do?

As far as crowdsourcing, a lot of people seem to think there’s not much we can do. It’s here, it works, and it’s profitable. In fact, in the time it took me to write this post, Twitter has already been released in one of its FIGS: Spanish. But what if they’re wrong? What if there is something we can do? In my opinion, there’s still a lot that can be done to prevent practices like crowdsourcing from spreading.

First, as professional translators we can simply not take part in them. Second, we can try to create awareness outside the translation community of the impact and ethical implications of crowdsourcing. Not so long ago, when LinkedIn got enough negative international media coverage for trying to get its site translated using similar methods, it had to succumb to public pressure and cancel the project altogether. Finally, one of the best things we can do to fight unethical practices like crowdsourcing is, as Andrew Bell (author of the blog Running to Work: Thoughts on Translation and Language) would put it, we can be proactive instead of reactive.