| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | myGengo's "State of the Translation Industry" Report is now available for download! Thread poster: Robert Laing
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| ATA is not a business, you are... | Oct 13, 2009 |
myGengo wrote:
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
It is thus very surprising to see that your report focuses on the opposite to give the message: "certification is useless" and that it only creates personal satisfaction and nothing else. Can you explain this?
Does it really surprise you that a report published by the ATA would "discover" that "ATA Certification Matters"? Are those earnings values causal or correlative? 
Well, all I can say is that ATA is not a business, you are. ATA does not need to say this or that to promote or protect business, while you surely don't do a survey of this kind just because you have plenty of time to do it.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 15:46
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| ATA does have interest in promoting its own | Oct 13, 2009 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Well, all I can say is that ATA is not a business... ATA does not need to say this or that to promote or protect business...
While ATA does not make a profit (or much) from its certification exams, it does have an interest in promoting it. Most professional associations that have accreditation procedures actively encourage their members to apply for accreditation, regardless of whether the associations make a profit from accreditation sales.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 15:46
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| To me, the most telling... | Oct 13, 2009 |
myGengo wrote:
We are pleased to announce the release of our "State of the Translation Industry 2009" Report! Please click here to go to the download page.
To me, the most telling statistic of the entire survey is the very last one, "What reasons have stopped you from using professional translation?", and 45% having answered "Not sure where to begin". This tells me that we should find out what it is about our services that potential clients do not quite "get" and therefore avoid.
| | | | | ATA promotes certification, and it is perfectly logical and good | Oct 13, 2009 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Well, all I can say is that ATA is not a business... ATA does not need to say this or that to promote or protect business...
While ATA does not make a profit (or much) from its certification exams, it does have an interest in promoting it. Most professional associations that have accreditation procedures actively encourage their members to apply for accreditation, regardless of whether the associations make a profit from accreditation sales.
But of course Samuel. And they should keep doing it! Certification of the good professionals and promotion and advertising of a solid, strict certification scheme is quite logical from the point of view of a professional association: we are a quite diverse bunch and the certification offers the potential customer a "brand" that can be trusted and is equivalent to conscious professional work.
I sincerely encourage every conscious professional out there to make the effort and seek certification with ATA, IOL, ITI or any other renowned institution or association in their language pairs as a solid path to a better future and higher incomes. It DOES make a difference!
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| Oh, is THAT what they mean? | Oct 13, 2009 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
To me, the most telling statistic of the entire survey is the very last one, "What reasons have stopped you from using professional translation?", and 45% having answered "Not sure where to begin".
I thought that was a way of saying "my experience with professional translation was so disastrous I am not sure which of the many things that went wrong is the place to start recounting them."
Perhaps they ought to clarify
I also thought that the last graph was the most telling from an agency that offers "fast, very low-cost human translation", which was how many of their respondents said they stopped because of the expense.
As with the ATA and accreditation, as Mandy Rice Davies might put it: "they would say that, wouldn't they?"
| | | | Robert Laing
United States
Local time: 23:46
English to Japanese
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TOPIC STARTER | Clarification on Pricing Terminology | Oct 14, 2009 |
Thanks everyone for such great feedback! It's helping us tremendously.
One note to Katalin:
We realize that the pricing graph is not clear, and we'll try to provide an updated chart soon. We have responses for each of the language pairs and will correlate their source and target languages with their prices. By breaking it down in this way, we can tell whether or not the prices are by a character or word-based language.
Stay tuned for an update!
... See more Thanks everyone for such great feedback! It's helping us tremendously.
One note to Katalin:
We realize that the pricing graph is not clear, and we'll try to provide an updated chart soon. We have responses for each of the language pairs and will correlate their source and target languages with their prices. By breaking it down in this way, we can tell whether or not the prices are by a character or word-based language.
Stay tuned for an update!
-myGengo ▲ Collapse
| | | | | How "real people" perceive translation | Oct 14, 2009 |
Hello myGengo,
I am bemused at the simplistic questions in this part of the survey. Your questions have focussed on
a) viewpoints from other countries
b) news and opinions
c) blogs and websites
d) video ads
and your survey comes to the conclusion that real people find professional translation too expensive.
Why did you not ask real people if they would pay for professional translations for:
a) investment advice ... See more Hello myGengo,
I am bemused at the simplistic questions in this part of the survey. Your questions have focussed on
a) viewpoints from other countries
b) news and opinions
c) blogs and websites
d) video ads
and your survey comes to the conclusion that real people find professional translation too expensive.
Why did you not ask real people if they would pay for professional translations for:
a) investment advice from other countries
b) legal interpretations and a translation of laws in other countries
c) medical material in other languages
d) company and product web sites in other countries
e) government portals in other countries
to name but a few areas? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Aniello Scognamiglio (X)
Germany
Local time: 15:46
English to German
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What is the scope or purpose of the "survey"?
Did you interview professional translators?
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Just a quick note to say thank you for putting together the report. I found it very informative.
Best,
David
| | | | Aniello Scognamiglio (X)
Germany
Local time: 15:46
English to German
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Still waiting for some answers... thanks.
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 15:46
French to German
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| A good question... | Nov 3, 2009 |
Aniello Scognamiglio wrote:
What is the scope or purpose of the "survey"?
Did you interview professional translators?
aching for a good answer...
| | | | Geraldine Oudin (X)
United Kingdom
Japanese to French
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As Katarin and Aniello have pointed out, we miss some serious background information here...
When I was conducting research in social sciences, I was taught to describe precisely who answered the surveys/interviews I conducted, including how I "found" them (in this case, we don't know who are the translators/"real" people). It gives some insight on how representative/valid is the survey.
Other useful data would be age/number of years in the profession.
****... See more As Katarin and Aniello have pointed out, we miss some serious background information here...
When I was conducting research in social sciences, I was taught to describe precisely who answered the surveys/interviews I conducted, including how I "found" them (in this case, we don't know who are the translators/"real" people). It gives some insight on how representative/valid is the survey.
Other useful data would be age/number of years in the profession.
*****
http://geraldineoudin.com ▲ Collapse
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Robert Laing
United States
Local time: 23:46
English to Japanese
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TOPIC STARTER | clarifications about our survey | Nov 4, 2009 |
Thanks to everyone for your feedback, and we apologize for not being more up to date with our responses to your questions.
To answer Anil's question: perhaps we should have been more clear on who we mean by "real people." As we pointed out in the research conducted by CSA on page 10, the higher the value of the item or service, i.e. those of legal, business and medical nature, the more likely people will NOT buy from a site that isn't in their native language. We therefore assumed t... See more Thanks to everyone for your feedback, and we apologize for not being more up to date with our responses to your questions.
To answer Anil's question: perhaps we should have been more clear on who we mean by "real people." As we pointed out in the research conducted by CSA on page 10, the higher the value of the item or service, i.e. those of legal, business and medical nature, the more likely people will NOT buy from a site that isn't in their native language. We therefore assumed that most people will use and gladly pay for professional translation for these types of items/services, and we didn't ask this specific question. What we were more concerned about on the other hand is how and to what extent people would use translation services on a day-to-day basis. Would they want to read a foreign language blog? Would they be willing to pay for it? How valuable is professional vs. machine translation in these more casual, informal settings?
We didn't mean to ask "simplistic" questions, as you say, but we specifically wanted to get a glimpse into how ordinary people would go about using translation services everyday for everyday things, and not just for highly specialized/skilled areas, in which you would need a professional.
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To answer Aniello and Geraldine's questions: we had 2 surveys - one aimed at translators and one aimed at customers who are interested in translation services. We didn't interview translators per se, but we asked them to complete our survey. All of the data (including demographic information like age, years of experience, gender) and some of the essay responses are under the Appendix (page 20-25), and we used Survs.com to collect and analyze the data.
A link to our translators survey was posted on proZ, groups on LinkedIn, through our Twitter/blog, and sent via email to all of our translators. Our "real people" survey was also conducted in a similar fashion. However we also, in collaboration with our blogger friend Danny Choo, helped spread the word about our survey.
As I alluded to before in answering Anil's question, the scope and purpose of the survey was to get a sense of what the state of the translation industry is today and highlight some trends that will come to influence the industry in the future. We wanted to hear straight from the translators themselves- especially on how they feel about new forms of technology/communication and how it relates to their workflow. It was also important to know how users and potential buyers of translation feel about the industry and how much value they place on the various services offered. With more and more social networking sites becoming popular, and with more and more people from around the world wanting to communicate with one another, we think there's a huge market opportunity to bridge that gap, and we think our survey/report put things into perspective.
I hope this answers your questions!
myGengo ▲ Collapse
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