Crowdsourcing in site translations
This is not the first year that we have seen how large sites use crowdsourcing to translate into foreign languages (or, more simply put, visitors to their own site). This is facebook , and vkontakte, and twitter , and linkedIn ( profile translation ), and userVoice , and ... (you can continue this list yourself). 
If you still don’t understand what it’s about, then check out facebook.com/translations/ - there the translation of the Facebook into Russian is almost complete and if you have been on facebook for more than a year, you can take an active part in it.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, there is another form of crowdsourcing that is hidden from the general public - when the site is translated only by invited people or hired for little money, as a rule, unprofessional translators, and site visitors only see the final result. Many companies have gone this route, including such well-known as eBay, foursquare, Scribd, Adobe, Novell, The Library of Congress and many others.
At the same time, many companies still have a distrust of crowdsourcing, preferring to translate their sites in the traditional way or not at all (since the traditional way is not cheap). First of all, they are afraid of the lack of control over content in foreign languages and quality guarantees.
Let's try to figure out whether it is so dangerous to use crowdsourcing as most companies believe and why those who are “trendy” prefer it.
1. The cost of translation - as a rule, is almost the main selection criterion. For example, facebook (which is more than 100,000 words of text) has been translated into 70 languages. With a translation cost of, say, $ 0.10 per word (let’s take the price just below the industry average), it would cost him more than 700 thousand dollars.
2. Translation speed.A striking example is the translation of facebook into French. 4000 users translated the whole site in 24 hours! This can be considered a world record for translation speed. Obviously, this speed is not available using traditional translation methods. And as we all know, “time is money”: at one time facebook outperformed MySpace precisely due to the growth of foreign audiences.
3. The quality of the translation. This is the most controversial moment. Most people think that professional translators translate better than volunteers. However, studies have shown that this is not always the case 1 . Volunteers are often better versed in the subject of the site, and bilingual volunteers can even better speak the language.
In fact, here we can definitely say only that in crowdsourcing the quality ranges from acceptable to exceeding professional translation.
4. Marketing benefits or user engagement. When translating, the user delves deeper into the texts of the site, reads what he wouldn’t even pay attention to in a different situation, and puts his time and energy into the translation. All this cannot but affect the level of brand loyalty. For a company, it’s the marketing benefits that can become part of a strategy to reach an international audience (in other words, when crowdsourcing a company does not just translate a site with the help of volunteers, it also acquires an audience of volunteer users from the country into which it is translated.)
Thus, we can conclude that the main risk is quality (it may turn out to be slightly worse than a professional translation), and the advantages are price, speed and marketing. The advantages clearly outweigh and the giants of the Internet industry have already made their choice, but would you decide to give the site translation to crowdsourcing?
Sources:
Benefit List is a free translation of the Top Reasons For Translation Crowdsourcing
1 eBay article - Traditional vs. Crowd
If you still don’t understand what it’s about, then check out facebook.com/translations/ - there the translation of the Facebook into Russian is almost complete and if you have been on facebook for more than a year, you can take an active part in it.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, there is another form of crowdsourcing that is hidden from the general public - when the site is translated only by invited people or hired for little money, as a rule, unprofessional translators, and site visitors only see the final result. Many companies have gone this route, including such well-known as eBay, foursquare, Scribd, Adobe, Novell, The Library of Congress and many others.
At the same time, many companies still have a distrust of crowdsourcing, preferring to translate their sites in the traditional way or not at all (since the traditional way is not cheap). First of all, they are afraid of the lack of control over content in foreign languages and quality guarantees.
Let's try to figure out whether it is so dangerous to use crowdsourcing as most companies believe and why those who are “trendy” prefer it.
1. The cost of translation - as a rule, is almost the main selection criterion. For example, facebook (which is more than 100,000 words of text) has been translated into 70 languages. With a translation cost of, say, $ 0.10 per word (let’s take the price just below the industry average), it would cost him more than 700 thousand dollars.
2. Translation speed.A striking example is the translation of facebook into French. 4000 users translated the whole site in 24 hours! This can be considered a world record for translation speed. Obviously, this speed is not available using traditional translation methods. And as we all know, “time is money”: at one time facebook outperformed MySpace precisely due to the growth of foreign audiences.
3. The quality of the translation. This is the most controversial moment. Most people think that professional translators translate better than volunteers. However, studies have shown that this is not always the case 1 . Volunteers are often better versed in the subject of the site, and bilingual volunteers can even better speak the language.
In fact, here we can definitely say only that in crowdsourcing the quality ranges from acceptable to exceeding professional translation.
4. Marketing benefits or user engagement. When translating, the user delves deeper into the texts of the site, reads what he wouldn’t even pay attention to in a different situation, and puts his time and energy into the translation. All this cannot but affect the level of brand loyalty. For a company, it’s the marketing benefits that can become part of a strategy to reach an international audience (in other words, when crowdsourcing a company does not just translate a site with the help of volunteers, it also acquires an audience of volunteer users from the country into which it is translated.)
Thus, we can conclude that the main risk is quality (it may turn out to be slightly worse than a professional translation), and the advantages are price, speed and marketing. The advantages clearly outweigh and the giants of the Internet industry have already made their choice, but would you decide to give the site translation to crowdsourcing?
Sources:
Benefit List is a free translation of the Top Reasons For Translation Crowdsourcing
1 eBay article - Traditional vs. Crowd