Expert Mother tongues: English, German Posts: 7848 Joined: September 26, 2003 Location: Canada
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
This is not a business. You are not a stakeholder. I'm a volunteer and cannot spend any more time on this conversation. It is not fruitful and leads nowhere as far as I can see.
Any complaint you have ever sent me has been dealt with promptlly, usually within the half hour, and to my knowledge, anything you have written me has received a prompt answer.
Maxi
[Edited by Maxi Schwarz-Bastami on November 20, 2008 6:17 PM]
Mother tongue: English Joined: November 2, 2002 Location: United States
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
Maxi,
This is the last time I will attempt to communicate my idea. I am a stakeholder. Being a stakeholder has nothing to do with being in business per se.
And I do have a stake in this site. I want the site to be successful, attract a lot of good translators and good agencies. That is my stake here. All that rubs off on one, so to speak. The more successful the site, its translators and agencies, the more Everybody's Boats rise.
I respectfully suggest you look into what that means, before telling me what I am and what I am not. Stakeholding is a wonderful concept and if more people knew about it, the better the world would be.
Secondly, I am not complaining about you. And I wish you moderators would loosen up a bit. I am merely saying that I have a right to say what I feel I need to say without being "rapped on the knuckles" like a child. I think I have a right to discuss what I think works and what I think doesn't work here. Now, if you don't have time, that's fine. Don't discuss it with me. But I don't accept that only moderators have a voice in thing. I just don't.
Frankly, I think there are others who contribute a lot too, and it would be nice to hear them as well. I don't think for one minute that this site depends only on what moderators think or do. They are also stakeholders. We all have an interest is seeing this site be successful.
Peace.
PS...Virtual Communities + Stakeholders provides lots of reading material. Just one example:
Gatekeeping in Virtual Communities: On Politics of Power in Cyberspace Barzilai-Nahon, K. System Sciences, 2006. HICSS apos;06. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Volume 6, Issue , 04-07 Jan. 2006 Page(s): 135c - 135c Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/HICSS.2006.193 Summary: Gatekeeping/Information Control is exercised frequently and daily in virtual communities. Gatekeeping exists in four different levels: Regulators, service providers, communities’ managers and members of communities. **The article analyzes the sensitive balance of relationships among these stakeholders. ** Additionally, it examines how information control is being exercised in forums and more specifically constructs explanatory models which explain different reasons for deleting messages in forums. The empirical examination combined qualitative and quantitative methods, integrating content analysis along aside data mining, over data of three years on 715 virtual communities. The results suggest behavior patterns of users in virtual communities that can be identified and addressed. Three levels that impact gatekeeping nature are analyzed — the gatekeepers, the community and the gated while addressing: first, the duality of gatekeepers as protectors or manipulators; second, the politics of power of marginalized groups in cyberspace and finally, the meaning of anonymity to information control through looking at history of users’ activities and gender.
Just an example of available literature on the idea of virtual community and stakeholders.
[Edited by Jane Lamb-Ruiz on November 20, 2008 8:01 PM]
Member Mother tongue: English Posts: 43 Joined: May 12, 2007 Location: United States
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
Ok, I'll bite. I would like to see more politeness on the TC Terms. Answer a question. Great. Disagree strongly. Great. But be very careful how you disagree, know what I mean? Sometimes I see comments that belittle other answerers, such as, "even a six year old should know that" . That is an extreme example, and not necessarily you, Jane. I've seen answers, that made my jaw drop. What I want to say is "that doesn't even make sense," but there are more tactful ways to get the point across.
So my post goes to everyone on the TC Terms forum. If someone posts a ridiculous answer, they are going to look ridiculous to anyone that knows the language pair. We (all of us) could stand to stick to the topic more.
I alway enjoy reading the TC Terms. I've learned a lot from your postings, Jane. You asked for other opinions, so I'll just throw mine in and hope it is not too offensive
Mother tongue: English Posts: 1 Joined: August 23, 2008 Location: United States
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
This could be a bit off message, but I do have to say something about TC Terms. I'm a degreed translator with six years of experience both in-house and freelance. My first experience with TC Terms was negative. I participated in TC Terms to help out a colleague who was translating work that had to do with printing. I'm a former member of the Quark documentation and localization team, so I thought I could help. I conducted research into Quark and Adobe forums and wikis and used my Quark and Adobe software to replicate the verb in question (using the Adobe wiki). I observed what the software did in reference to this verb and came up with an appropriate translation.
Several people on the TC Terms forum suggested that the verb was simply a misspelling (which was wrong) or they came up with terms that really had nothing to do with this term. I also noticed that these people were constantly answering questions about TC Terms--every entry, no matter what the topic, was answered by these "experts." Many of them were native speakers of neither the SL nor the TL. They were totally off-base and did not understand what they were talking about. Where is the moderation and censorship for these kind of comments? It makes me question the validity of TC Terms.
Jane: I've read much of what you have to say--in this thread and others. I respect you. My rant is somewhat tangental, and I apologize for that. I appreciate just a moment of hijacking. I don't post often. However, I understand the basis of what you're saying, and perhaps that's why I'm deciding to write now.
[Edited by Christen Sohnholz on November 21, 2008 2:16 AM]
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
Originally written by Christen Sohnholz on November 21, 2008 8:05 AM My first experience with TC Terms was negative. ... My rant is somewhat tangental, and I apologize for that. I appreciate just a moment of hijacking. I don't post often.
On the contrary, Christen, words of wisdom like yours are always appreciated. I don't know how the point system works on Wikipedia or other collective international efforts, but here it definitely does not work.
Originally written by Laurent Chiacchierini on November 21, 2008 10:24 AM
Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on November 21, 2008 10:10 AM
... I don't know how the point system works on Wikipedia or other collective international efforts, but here it definitely does not work.
The point system makes an easy scapegoat...
I agree that the point system doesn't work here and that it "makes an easy scapegoat" when so many users behave like small children fighting over a few cookie crumbs.
Whenever I venture into TCTerms again, people whose native languages have nothing to do with English try to help, which would be appreciated, but for the fact that their answers often float in outer space.
Why help when you don't have the language expertise to do so? And the answer is...?
Expert Mother tongue: French Posts: 5568 Joined: December 31, 2003 Location: France
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on November 21, 2008 11:07 AM
... people whose native languages have nothing to do with English try to help, which would be appreciated, but for the fact that their answers often float in outer space. ...
This is not an English-centric issue, as the same can be seen in other target languages.
It's not a matter of "native languages" but "working languages". Sometimes, native speakers of the target language fail to understand the source language properly, and this is where native speakers of the source language can prove helpful to point to the right meaning, or at least the most likely one.
Ideally, this should result in a wonderful collaborative effort to get to the best translation for the given context (if any, that is). Unfortunately, it often turns into a "I-know-my-language-better-than-you" tug-of-war .
Many people came to the forums (terminological ones or not) just for confrontation (of opinions, in the best of cases), and a point system encouraging participation only marginally aggravates this.
Laurent
[Edited by Laurent Chiacchierini on November 21, 2008 5:33 AM]
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Oh Boy.....and round-up of comments
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on November 21, 2008 11:07 AM
people whose native languages have nothing to do with English try to help, which would be appreciated, but for the fact that their answers often float in outer space.
Does anyone know whether the same happens on the numerous wikipages? That is, whenever there is a stub article accompanied by an invitation to develop it, scores of volunteers from all over the world flock in, regardless of their language or expertise, and try to "help" by writing articles on subjects they have no clue about?
Originally written by Laurent Chiacchierini on November 21, 2008 11:31 AM
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on November 21, 2008 11:07 AM ... people whose native languages have nothing to do with English try to help, which would be appreciated, but for the fact that their answers often float in outer space. ...
Ideally, this should result in a wonderful collaborative effort to get to the best translation for the given context (if any, that is).
Unfortunately, it often turns into a "I-know-my-language-better-than-you" tug-of-war.
I do not care if you speak, read and write Polish, French, Greek, Russian or Latin, what I care about is the right answer to my TCTerms question.
Last, I used TCTerms, I was in a dreadful hurry and needed help. Instead, I had to write four or five polite and pleasant replies to answers that I could not use. I could easily have hammered down a DISAGREE, but I have never used it and I don't see any reason to start now.
I found the answer in a few very helpful comments.
Nanna
[Edited by Nanna Mercer on November 21, 2008 6:05 AM]
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