Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour.(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/start-ups/29linkedin.html?src=twr
9 comments
There's a huge gap between trying to do translation as a non-professional and the amount of effort required for a professional. I dated a German / English -> Hebrew translator for a while and despite me being better in both German and English, she could translate much more effortlessly from German to English than I could. It's a skill that's separate from raw language ability. She'd just read a line and then immediately start pounding out the translation.
Agreed. I translate one and a quarter million words a year. After a while it truly becomes second nature.
I love clueless product managers who have no idea about communities that they reach out to. This shit is not hard, folks.
If you are going to try to crowdsource something, you don't wave it in the face of the paid professionals. It's like asking the AIGA board if they'd like to do spec work on a redesign of MySpace.
If I was the PM, and I wanted to to take advantage of the fact that LinkedIn knows it has thousands of translators, I would have queried the pool to recommend someone else to translate. That's a process story that Facebook (or Twitter or whoever) can't match.
If you are going to try to crowdsource something, you don't wave it in the face of the paid professionals. It's like asking the AIGA board if they'd like to do spec work on a redesign of MySpace.
If I was the PM, and I wanted to to take advantage of the fact that LinkedIn knows it has thousands of translators, I would have queried the pool to recommend someone else to translate. That's a process story that Facebook (or Twitter or whoever) can't match.
only 300 people were enraged enough to join the group. That's pretty much the equivalent of a movie premiere being boycotted by a few dozen religious nutjobs.
You can't please everyone, and for every "enraged" person, who did the equivalent of signing an online petition, you have others who are glad to help and make your product better.
So you as a product manager, would choose to add $200-300K in expenses(for those professional translation services), just to appease a tiny percentage of users?
Out of those 300 people, how many do you think LinkedIn will lose as users? I'm thinking none. So in the end, they lost nothing, and saved a ton of money.
I didn't hear anyone bitching when facebook pretty much did the same thing...at least LinkedIn is offering some compensation.
You can't please everyone, and for every "enraged" person, who did the equivalent of signing an online petition, you have others who are glad to help and make your product better.
So you as a product manager, would choose to add $200-300K in expenses(for those professional translation services), just to appease a tiny percentage of users?
Out of those 300 people, how many do you think LinkedIn will lose as users? I'm thinking none. So in the end, they lost nothing, and saved a ton of money.
I didn't hear anyone bitching when facebook pretty much did the same thing...at least LinkedIn is offering some compensation.
Welcome to the free market. If there are people that want to do this for free for LinkedIn and LinkedIn is happy with the translation they do, then why should anyone else care?
If you want to revolt against people working for free when they should be paid, come see what some of the "interns" in NYC have to do in journalism and fashion (and even more industries now there are no jobs out there)
If you want to revolt against people working for free when they should be paid, come see what some of the "interns" in NYC have to do in journalism and fashion (and even more industries now there are no jobs out there)
Interns get the benefit of experience. They get to meet people. They get to try out an industry without actually committing to a full-time job.
The LinkedIn translators wouldn't have gotten any of that. It's one thing to sample a career without pay, and another to do a job for free.
The LinkedIn translators wouldn't have gotten any of that. It's one thing to sample a career without pay, and another to do a job for free.
Ok, so don't contribute? No one is forcing you.
Are you just as upset about people fostering rescue animals for free? Why aren't people outraged that they aren't paid.
How can you decide the motivations for someone who wants to volunteer their time to do this?
Are you just as upset about people fostering rescue animals for free? Why aren't people outraged that they aren't paid.
How can you decide the motivations for someone who wants to volunteer their time to do this?
Both points made above are valid. While not a great PR move, LinkedIn is entitled to make that kind of decision and honestly I hope they get what they paid for (nothing).
Something that the free market does not take into account though is fairness or ethics. I'm not an economist, but I have enough sense to know when people are being taken advantage of and that I think is wrong.
Something that the free market does not take into account though is fairness or ethics. I'm not an economist, but I have enough sense to know when people are being taken advantage of and that I think is wrong.
>Something that the free market does not take into account though is fairness or ethics.
Actually, the free market is the most fair of all systems, at least for some reasonable definitions of "fair".
>I have enough sense to know when people are being taken advantage of
No one is being forced to do anything. This is a consensual arrangement. So how is anyone being taken advantage of?
Actually, the free market is the most fair of all systems, at least for some reasonable definitions of "fair".
>I have enough sense to know when people are being taken advantage of
No one is being forced to do anything. This is a consensual arrangement. So how is anyone being taken advantage of?
That's what I first thought when I skimmed the article, but if you look again article implies they were targeting professional translators. It's not "wrong", and Mr. Irwin may have overreacted, but it shows a lack of tact from LinkedIn.
Welcome to the free market. If there are people who want to sell drugs, and people who want buy drugs are happy with it, Why should anyone care?
1. Because its unethical. 2. Because its bad for society. There is a reason minimum wages and employement laws exist.
1. Because its unethical. 2. Because its bad for society. There is a reason minimum wages and employement laws exist.
I accept your first argument, and reject your second.
Um, there is nothing wrong with selling and buying drugs. Nobody should care.
Minimum wage and unionization laws exist to protect certain laborers at the expense of lower skilled labor.
Minimum wage and unionization laws exist to protect certain laborers at the expense of lower skilled labor.
It sounds like this is really exaggerating. LinkedIn accounts ain't cheap, and they do give you ways to contact other professionals. If you could ping someone and say "I'm interested in doing some translation; for an example of my work, check out the official Romanian version of LinkedIn," that would be great. Simply being able to say that you contributed to a site used by the person you're talking to is a great way to start a conversation that ends with them writing a check.
Speaking as a professional translator, I have to agree. But I'm also speaking as an open-source developer, so I'm used to that model, and the translation industry isn't. It sounds to me as though LinkedIn could have approached the matter with some tact, but it should be said that translators as a whole are pretty prickly. We have to be. The better we are, the less visible we become.
And it's a common scam in the industry (less so now that we congregate online) to take a document, break it up into chunks, then send each chunk to a freelancer as a "translation test" to be done free of charge. I think this LinkedIn thing hit some people that way.
But yeah; mostly, this is one of those sound and fury things.
And it's a common scam in the industry (less so now that we congregate online) to take a document, break it up into chunks, then send each chunk to a freelancer as a "translation test" to be done free of charge. I think this LinkedIn thing hit some people that way.
But yeah; mostly, this is one of those sound and fury things.
What would be a reasonable alternative to that kind of translation test? The first thing that came to my mind was critiquing somebody else's translation, but that has the same problem.
There is a way to get free labor, make people passionate about your service and your product and make it super easy. Google translator already does this, if I translate something from Hebrew to English and it doesn't come out right, I correct it.
If they want free work done, they should post to craigslist like all the other sleazy companies do. I'm glad there's a backlash against this.
A few days ago, there was a post on LinkedIn's blog that discussed the results of the survey: http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/06/19/nico-posner-translating-...
It's possible all the translation would bring would be more offers of free work for more sites that are big.
"I will not buy this record; it is scratched."
Come to think of it, translation is a classic market for lemons, isn't it. The people who need it the most are the least capable of assessing the quality of the deliverables, which is why everyone here has heard of All Your Base Are Belong To Us. This results in both people paying absurd amounts of money for mediocre translation and, hmm, large companies thinking that their crowdsourced translation presents their company in the best possible light.
There's so many ways a crowdsourcing solution like this can go wrong. I wish I could show you a concrete example but I don't have any good examples of Japanese businesses that used the technique off the top of my head. If you guys want I can dredge up an example or two from Facebook or whatever, but I'm not quite as plugged into the Japanese Internet so I miss most of the inevitable snickering.