New York Times & American Translators Association Join LinkedIn Translation Debate

| 03-07-2009| Translation & Cross-Cultural Relations

Professional translators’ clash with LinkedIn aroused further interest this week: the New York Times has published an article and ATA has sent a strongly worded letter from its President Jiri Stejskal to LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner.

The New York Times

New York Times Article

The New York Times article, which most of you have read by now and in which I am quoted along with other professional translators, presents all sides of the story, as it should, with a strong headline: “Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour“.

It was generally very well received by translators although I’m very surprised LinkedIn declined to be interviewed for the article.

Andrew Adam Newman, the journalist who wrote the article and who had previously written about illustrators feeling offended by Google when they asked for free drawings, said in an e-mail that he thought the story was interesting because:

“It’s sort of a clash of cultures, Internet companies which I think are probably well-intentioned asking professionals to contribute work because they think the exposure will be of great value to the contributors, but those contributors taking umbrage because they feel like they’re being asked to do free work by a for-profit company.”

Andy managed to find a translator who said yes to LinkedIn, Erica Baker, and she further explained her position on the professional translator’s site Proz.com:

“Whenever I have been publicly credited as the translator of a text, I have generally had an immediate increase in traffic on my website. I first discovered this when I did voluntary translations for the charity sector, and each time it has resulted in more paid work than the free translation “cost” me. Voluntary work has been an extremely successul marketing tool for me.”

American Translators Association Letter

In a further development, ATA took sides in the debate, defending professional translators in a strongly worded letter (pdf) from President Jiri Stejskal to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner:

Companies seeking global reach regularly lose face and money by relying on amateurs to translate key materials, and the embarrassing results are generally set right by professional translators (…) We urge you to practice the professionalism you preach and support your member translators rather than exploiting them.

There have also been articles published this week in BusinessWeek and on the Wikinomics site which make reference to the debate.

I think that’s enough about LinkedIn for now, unless there are any more interesting developments, but I will continue to analyse and write about the debate surrounding crowdsourcing and how it affects translation, translators and our clients in future blog posts, so stay tuned.