In his excellent and appropriately timed Labor Day article, David Alan Grier outlines a taxonomy for the crowdsourcing industry. In his taxonomy, he defines microtasking as "breaking a large project into tiny, well definable tasks for a crowd of workers to complete." Since he saw fit to include Lingotek as one example of microtasking, it is worth discussing in some detail of how Lingotek uses microtasking to accomplish large translation projects and some of the benefits that come from doing so.
The importance of translation in business and the world.
With the advent of social media technologies it has become easier than ever to publish and consume information. Being able to rapidly deploy increasing amounts of information helps organizations and corporations to grow and foster community growth. Even more important, lowering the barriers to communication can alleviate the problem of information poverty wherein many societies don’t have access to basic information to help improve their quality of life.
Crowdsourcing has been firmly established as a valid and often preferable method for reaching organizational goals and accomplishing more with the same dollars. However, while crowdsourcing works very well for some problems, it may not be a viable solution for others. As the tools become available to crowdsource translation projects, it’s important to evaluate why organizations crowdsource in general and if those criteria are a good fit for crowdsourced translation initiatives.
The ability to leverage the crowd for your translation projects can not only increase the speed and lower costs, but it can fundamentally shift how your organization approaches and relates to translation in general. Many organizations are starting to have an “ah-ha” moment as they realize that translating their content with new crowd-enabled technologies is now within their reach. Localization initiatives no longer have to consume prohibitive cost or time resources. Let’s look at five ways the crowd is revolutionizing how organizations approach translation projects.
Lingotek is involved with several non-profit NGO's; here is an example and a nice letter from the "Communications Officer"
Not all content is created equal. This is something the translation industry has not yet addressed. The mindset of “all or nothing” pervades and prevents many localization projects from launching. But it’s not the fault of a broken mindset; technology is mainly to blame. The tools simply haven’t been available to efficiently translate content at varying levels of depth to match its importance. As the translation industry starts to embrace cloud-based solutions that leverage the crowd, new opportunities become available for small and large companies alike to vary their approach and use the right workflow for the job to translate their content in an efficient, cost-effective manner.
The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), the language industry’s oldest association, announced today that it was shutting down operations effective 28 February 2011 in order to limit further financial commitments. Nonetheless, the Standards Summit scheduled for Boston commenced as scheduled. Director Michael Anobile notified LISA members in an e-mail earlier today.
So far in this series we’ve talk about why the traditional translation model breaks down in today’s socially-driven online environment and how new technologies now allow you to translate content quickly, cost-effectively and accurately. But there’s one critical piece that’s missing – the ability to do all of this directly from your website. The ability to translate needs to be accessible at the right time to the right people in the right place.
In part 3 we explained the various channels for translating your content. We implied that sometimes your crowd may be able to translate your high-value content as accurately and consistently as using a traditional translator. Today we’ll explore that idea in more depth.
In part 2 of this 5-part series we established that all content is not created equal and that you should match the translation method to the value of the content. In part 3 we will elaborate on the various channels available for translating content and how to leverage the crowd to lower the cost and increase the speed of your translations.