tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post1224203423238032128..comments2024-03-17T23:13:48.762-07:00Comments on eMpTy Pages: Wanted: A Fair and Simple Compensation Scheme for MT Post-EditingKirti Vasheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16795076802721564830noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-70201415518752973732012-12-21T16:05:50.040-08:002012-12-21T16:05:50.040-08:00Agree, and example.
My cover letter says:
"P...Agree, and example.<br /><br />My cover letter says:<br />"Proofreading rate: from 30% to 100% of translation rate, depending on the quality of the translation."<br /><br />And I refuse MT Post-editing because the compensation rate is 'imposed' by the LSP.<br />JChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04440483805707568262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-55045034506089893992012-01-06T15:27:24.859-08:002012-01-06T15:27:24.859-08:00Thanks for posting, David, and for hosting, Kirti....Thanks for posting, David, and for hosting, Kirti.<br /><br />I like your suggestion: It does seem to provide an accurate measure of the Post-Editor's effort, so the compensation sounds totally fair.<br /><br />On big disadvantage, though, is that the true costs will be known only post-factum. IMHO, I think this is a big problem because, given the status quo, end customers and LSPs want to know in advance how much the job will cost. I suppose one could provide ballpark estimates to be adjusted once the job is completed, but I can anticipate a lot of resistance to change the established cost/price per word model that the localization industry has been using for decades now.Franco Zearohttp://www.translationquality.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-53081104144517157842011-12-14T19:34:34.190-08:002011-12-14T19:34:34.190-08:00Victor Foster •
When it comes to MT post-editing...Victor Foster • <br /><br />When it comes to MT post-editing, I would say that the majority of the time translators provide more services than they are compensated for. It might be true that some translators do the bare minimum required but that's actually what the client is paying for while asking for more, isn't it? Any client using MT and then sending it out for post editing is really just looking for good enough output, not necessarily top quality translation work. Or, at least, that's all they pay for. I'd be interested in learning ideas about making compensation commensurate with the actual services and effort involved.Victor Fosternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-4651857101459243752011-12-08T19:43:12.058-08:002011-12-08T19:43:12.058-08:00Pia F Bresnan •
At e2f translations (Eng->Fre...Pia F Bresnan • <br /><br />At e2f translations (Eng->French SLV), we've been performing MT Post editing tasks for our partners for some time now, and precisely because of the disconnect between client expectation and reality, we always request a sample of the output. This allows us to analyze the productivity, provide feedback to the client and agree on the discount before fully taking on the task. Apart from client's own expectation or comparison with other languages when productivity between languages cannot be compared due to variability in MT output, this approach seems to be working out so far.Pia F Bresnannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-43512238847425064392011-12-04T08:06:03.456-08:002011-12-04T08:06:03.456-08:00Radovan Pletka •
It is not a rocket science.
In ...Radovan Pletka • <br /><br />It is not a rocket science.<br />In fact, it is easy.<br />If I am good translator and I make $50 per hour translating, I will do post editing, if I make the same money for starters, with opportunity to make more when I get faster. Otherwise, why I should bother and lose money (smile).<br /><br />If this doesn't make financial sense for you, it is your problem, not mine.<br />There is plenty of people, who work for much less (smile)Radovan Pletkanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-85045456377491586582011-12-02T10:38:27.339-08:002011-12-02T10:38:27.339-08:00Bob Donaldson • @Patricia -- Good points on the po...Bob Donaldson • @Patricia -- Good points on the potential scamishness of the typical translator ... not sure I am quite as optimistic as you on human nature and mendacity in general, however. That said, we absolutely need to hear more from actual translators on how best to create a fair compensation system. We are always hearing (and some of us saying) that MT can lead to more revenue potential for linguists/translators but until the translators see such a "route to riches" we will not gain much credibility.Bob Donaldsonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-57570214097693660012011-12-02T10:37:36.722-08:002011-12-02T10:37:36.722-08:00Patricia Bown • I would like to see/hear more comp...Patricia Bown • I would like to see/hear more compensation proposals from the performers of services in this conversation. Most busy translators/linguists/freelancers/humans have little time or interest in scamming a system, and even less so if they feel they are part of a fairly compensated, mutually beneficial arrangement. One can look and find examples, but it takes no effort at all to find freelance translators who in essence donate work to their customers in order to adhere to standards they have set for themselves, in an attempt to manage risk for themselves, and because they have a timeline that is relationship rather than transaction based. That they do this is both a credit and detriment to themselves. Some LSPs do this, too...not charging for all of the work performed and delivered, and for similar reasons. (CSA, maybe you know how much of the service provided in our industry doesn't get invoiced?) While things are still in flux, this is an opportunity for both service providers and especially service performers to say more about what it takes to provide the service and what feels fair in compensationPatricia Bownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-84337817736092520902011-12-01T09:47:37.306-08:002011-12-01T09:47:37.306-08:00I wanted to comment on the role of LSPs and the wa...I wanted to comment on the role of LSPs and the way I see MT is happening. These comments are based on my personal experience and I cannot extrapolate this to other LSPs, but maybe others would like to comment so we can start an interesting discussion. In my personal experience, and contrary to what the article says, software developers ask for flat discounts on MT segments onto the vendor (LSP) claiming on many occasions the advantages of the technology and without tests on the actual quality of the output. In our case, we have been the ones analyzing the output to try and establish accurate compensation for translators, and on many occasions applying a lower discount because the quality was simply not at that level. Also, translators, not all of them, but many, have been very reluctant to use MT and we have trained large groups on how to use it properly. We have created post-editing guidelines (at our own costs) based on our output analysis (at our own costs) and offer feedback (at our own costs). As I have commented on this forum before, we have seen that post-editors and reviewers do make a lot of preferential changes or not the appropriate changes (in favour of speed) and without proper instructions and guidelines they do not know how to deal with MT segments efficiently. So, the LSP is often found between a rock and a hard place (the customer asking for a harsh discount and translators not willing to accept a discount or not having the right knowledge to work on MT). I think we should find ways of compensating for MT post-editing for both translators and LSPs, because the job is not only post-editing a segment but it involves other tasks often unseen such as output analysis, guidelines, automatic post-editing, feedback, measurements, etc. The "a posteriori" approach does not seem balanced to me because, as I mentioned, we have noticed that post-editors and reviewers make a lot of preferential changes, although I do agree that it is a good way of checking those segments that have been discarded and that should be paid in full. My impression right now (and this might change) is that we should all work on having better analysis of the outputs (per language, per engine, per domain), and then establish either confidence levels or a discount in line with the quality of the output similar to those for TM. Maybe, we could combine both approaches and use the "a posteriori" analysis to check if the discount applied was accurate, but using only what the post-editors did does not reflect the reality of MT post-editing as a whole in my view.Ana Guerberofnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-55811085440214803692011-12-01T09:42:17.113-08:002011-12-01T09:42:17.113-08:00Diego Bartolome •
It's interesting, Kirti! I...Diego Bartolome • <br /><br />It's interesting, Kirti! In my opinion, the similarity metric that could better handle the issue is in "words" rather than in "characters".Diego Bartolomenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-44349777252053183652011-12-01T08:07:31.820-08:002011-12-01T08:07:31.820-08:00I agree that simply reducing the translator's ...I agree that simply reducing the translator's existing full translation rate is unfair. I also agree that the concept of editing distance is more fair and more theoretically more accurate. But it has imperfections, such as those listed above. What I immediately see is that such editing distance involved measuring the the quality of the MT output versus the quality of the final PE output. But as an industry, we still dont' agree what quality even is. And in recent years, MT itself has caused our industry to speak regularly about how quality can no longer be seen on one set black-and-white threshold. Quality now is relative to the needs of the content and project. SO how do we accurately measure quality at those two stages in the process to be able to calculate distance? I don't know. That is another place where concensus is needed if the math is to be acceptable.Christopher Carterhttp://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-carter/40/22/373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-87090478101785385212011-11-30T14:52:08.258-08:002011-11-30T14:52:08.258-08:00Translators who accept editing jobs have the neces...Translators who accept editing jobs have the necessary skills and know well how to determine the effort required to do the job and put a fair and equitable price to it. This price is strictly dependent on the quality of the translation to be edited, be it human or machine, and on the client's requirements. Why do you think a new compensation scheme is necessary? Do you mean that current compensation schemes as applied by professional translators to editing jobs are not fair and equitable? Why?<br /><br />Cristóbal del RíoAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-13413119295582068332011-11-30T11:00:42.617-08:002011-11-30T11:00:42.617-08:00@Bob You are right that this approach could be gam...@Bob You are right that this approach could be gamed and like many business transactions involving humans it will need trust. But I think it is still an improvement on an arbitrary lower number that is often used today and is very often considered grossly unfair.<br /><br />There is still a great need for an assessment of the difficulty or scope of the work BEFORE you begin post-editing and I hope that we see more there. MT developers are coming forward with confidence limits and there are reasonably good ways to do this with aggregate quality estimates based on sampling. But we still have far to go and fortunately it is getting more attention.Kirti Vasheehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16795076802721564830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-575329432056974592011-11-30T10:53:48.332-08:002011-11-30T10:53:48.332-08:00@Claudio
MT has always had the promise of doing t...@Claudio<br /><br />MT has always had the promise of doing two things:<br />1) Making content that would never be translated otherwise multilingual<br />2) Raising the productivity on repetitive localization projects.<br /><br />It has had much better success with 1) but as my last post pointed out - it can definitely have a place in speeding up some TEP production processes. However this requires much higher quality engines and is more difficult to do.<br /><br />Also GTT is still free for individuals - they have only stopped free access via the API.Kirti Vasheehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16795076802721564830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-57644676365191554232011-11-30T10:24:44.782-08:002011-11-30T10:24:44.782-08:00Bob, this a very valid point - one that has also b...Bob, this a very valid point - one that has also been raised during some of the workshops we did on the topic. We have to see. But personally, I think it should not be a problem.<br /><br />Why?<br /><br />The compensation scheme for MT post-editing should be beneficial for all parties involved - including translators. In other words it should be set up in such a way that making extra changes to an otherwise OK machine translation output would simply not be worth the effort.David Canekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05620734949997256092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-65445698689237063502011-11-30T10:14:45.363-08:002011-11-30T10:14:45.363-08:00Claudio, I do not know why MT was developed :) but...Claudio, I do not know why MT was developed :) but I do think it can sometimes make translating faster for a human translator. However, not always and not evenly across all language pairs/domains/types of content. <br /><br />So I think it would be useful to know when MT helps increase productivity and when it does not.David Canekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05620734949997256092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-75893630775249705782011-11-30T07:22:06.226-08:002011-11-30T07:22:06.226-08:00I applaud David's efforts and the intent behin...I applaud David's efforts and the intent behind this proposal. I also think he has started in the right place with the editing distance approach. However, at the risk of fulfilling the prophesy that the "initial response [is] criticism of how the approach fails", I would offer the following additional disadvantage. Clever (and avaricious) translators can easily increase the "editing distance" by re-arranging word order and other very minor "corrections" to the original. It seems that any truly "fair" approach needs to have some way of detecting or discouraging unnecessary changes, whether or not the motive is to enhance translator revenue.<br /><br />I am looking forward to the discussion.Bob Donaldsonhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/carsonstrategynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748877443699290050.post-13910163964498431622011-11-30T02:10:38.352-08:002011-11-30T02:10:38.352-08:00Hi there
first point: "translating faster, i...Hi there<br /><br />first point: "translating faster, i.e. cheaper"<br /><br />mmmh...<br />I thought (and many voices said so) that MT was developped to manage the otherwise un-manageable increasing volume of documents, so to speed-up translation work-flow, but now I see that rather it is born to make translation cheaper: the industry throws off its mask, finally?<br />;-)))<br /><br />second point: "Interested to Know More and Experiment?<br />Pay for a webinar!"<br /><br />what?<br />If memsource or everybody else is willing to pay ME for gladly testing possible PEMT payment schemes I'm available, otherwise no way!<br /><br />third point: "There is a myth that all translators dislike machine translation post-editing. In fact many translators have started MT post-editing as their standard translation workflow long before anyone requested them to do so."<br /><br />yes, I think so, and I think that the grievance chorus when GT app stopped to be for free, reveals the guilty conscience of many peers ...<br /><br />anyway, except all these considerations, I suspect that this grievance arised even when TM was firstly developped, or I'm wrong?Claudio Porcellanahttp://www.traduxo.comnoreply@blogger.com