| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Rating others' entries when you've entered yourself Thread poster: philgoddard
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Samuel Murray wrote: philgoddard wrote:
I can see his point, but I don't agree with this approach. I'm effectively being forced to comment on other entries in self-defense, even though I don't particularly want to. I don't see it this way. I'm not sure to what extend the comments affect the final voting. When I vote for an entry, I base my vote on my impression of the translation itself and not on the number of comments or the content of the comments. I don't even agree with all the comments. I don't know if others base their vote mainly or solely on the balance of positive and negative comments on entries. But I don't see why it would be necessary or why you should feel pressured into it to comment on other entries. I don't understand why it would be considered "self-defense" to do so. In addition, I think translators who have struggled through the text while translating it, and not just regarding the text as a passive reader, are in a very good position to comment on the translations of others (even more so than people who did not send in entries).
Dear Samuel, let me keep it short and simple, are you familiar with the term 'conflict of interest'?
I rest my case.
[Edited at 2020-12-04 22:52 GMT]
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As you speak Portuguese, you should find interesting what I said in another thread regarding the way some contestants tag other fellow contestants:
See more
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:55
Member (2008)
Italian to English
I think we have an abundance of evidence here to suggest that no thinking translator should participate in these translation contests. As a result, the only remaining participants will be those who (to slightly misuse an Italian saying) will be pulling the bedsheet towards themselves.
| | | | | Calling all my ProZ buddies | Dec 5, 2020 |
Would you be so kind as to go and upvote my entry and downvote all the others?
I’ll do the same for you. Quid pro quo and all that.
They don’t do my languages so I entered Swahili into Japanese for a laugh. Mine’s the one that’s obviously straight out of Google Translate. But that shouldn’t matter. With a bit of teamwork I think we could clean up this year!
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Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:55
Serbian to English
+ ...
| Where exactly it the problem? | Dec 5, 2020 |
philgoddard wrote:
I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I can't find any previous posts.
I recently entered some ProZ translation contests for the first time, and was surprised to discover that I'm allowed to rate other people's entries.
That means I have two options:
1. Sit back, do nothing, and hope for the best
2. Pick holes in others' submissions, just as they're probably doing to me
The rules say that if you make nothing but negative comments, or if they are otherwise abnormal, your entry may be excluded. But surely I should just be barred from commenting on others' contributions, period. Can you imagine if the contestants in (say) the Eurovision Song Contest were allowed to mark one another?
"Pick holes in others' submissions, just as they're probably doing to me"
WHERE EXACTLY is the problem with that?
That sounds to me like a pretty accurate description of what is called "peer review" - the lack of which would make any scientific publication considered as untrustworthy / not worth bothering with, last time I checked.
I would rather look at that kind of publications for comparison, not to Eurosong.
All entries are initially anonymous, so all that can be evaluated is the offered translation, with nothing else to influence the opinion.
Yes, there might be some people deliberately under-valuing or over-valuating some proposed translations, but these need not be other contestants they could as well be no more that friends of some contestant. But these kind of shenanigans are not going to be the bulk of given rating, and will have a limited influence.
So what next? you can't vote on entries because you could know which one is your friend's entry?
I did participate in one Translation contest, in 2012. I found it a quite interesting exercice, but ways too much time-consuming.
What definitely put me off from spending my time on a another contest again was when in one the following Translation contest a "translation into Serbian" that was blatantly and glaringly obviously an unedited "Machine Translation" output was allowed to remain. Funny there is no mention in the rules about that, apparently!
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:55
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| I just checked entries in my language pair. | Dec 5, 2020 |
Out of 10 entries, 9 have nothing but dislikes, while the 10th one has some likes, but a bigger number of dislikes. I assume the latter one has a couple of good friends.
That's not even statistically possible. If I went through all those entries, I am sure I could find at least 1 (one) thing (word, phrase, solution) that I like in each of them.
If contestants can vote for each other, I would label it a game or recreational exercise, not a contest. Somebody mentioned Eur... See more Out of 10 entries, 9 have nothing but dislikes, while the 10th one has some likes, but a bigger number of dislikes. I assume the latter one has a couple of good friends.
That's not even statistically possible. If I went through all those entries, I am sure I could find at least 1 (one) thing (word, phrase, solution) that I like in each of them.
If contestants can vote for each other, I would label it a game or recreational exercise, not a contest. Somebody mentioned Eurosong, "independent jury" etc., well those contests have a budget in place. Independent jury is not volunteers. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mina Chen
United States
Local time: 17:55
English to Chinese
+ ...
| It is a flawed mechanism, but in general fair | Dec 6, 2020 |
In the absence of an independent jury, allowing the contestants to comment and rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Because they’ve studied every word of the source text and have a vested interest in the outcome.
I wondered how many non-contestants took the time to read all or some entries (in some language combination, it is 10+) and rate. It could be hard to pick the best one when translations can read quite similar. There were not enough votes/ratings to determine a winner in t... See more In the absence of an independent jury, allowing the contestants to comment and rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Because they’ve studied every word of the source text and have a vested interest in the outcome.
I wondered how many non-contestants took the time to read all or some entries (in some language combination, it is 10+) and rate. It could be hard to pick the best one when translations can read quite similar. There were not enough votes/ratings to determine a winner in the last few contests in my language pair (English-Chinese).
So giving contestants the permission to rate and comment in such circumstance is quite necessary, and it also opens a conversation for them. Results of the last few contests in my language pair , even though no winner named, the overall ratings in general matches what I considered the best ones .
And mind you, even the Proz certified status is in part determined by peer review. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:55
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Mina Chen wrote:
....even the Proz certified status is in part determined by peer review.
...which makes it equally meaningless. I used to have it but I voluntarily got it removed.
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Mina Chen
United States
Local time: 17:55
English to Chinese
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| It works to some extend | Dec 7, 2020 |
Tom in London wrote: Mina Chen wrote:
....even the Proz certified status is in part determined by peer review.
...which makes it equally meaningless. I used to have it but I voluntarily got it removed.
Not necessarily. I’ve rated a few submissions and I tried to be objective and fair. I’ve also rejected a few that I feel I am not competent to rate, highly technical stuff—will they be able to find someone who can do a satisfactory job rating?
So yeah it is more of an honor system and not perfect. But overall I’ve observed that fellow translators with this title seem to demonstrate a good level of capabilities and credibility.
| | | | mughwI
United States
Local time: 17:55
English to Spanish
+ ...
| Things that make you go hmmm... | Dec 7, 2020 |
Felipe Lacerda wrote:
Not sure about other languages, but, in PT-BR, the hardest thing to find is honest feedback. Sometimes I work as a third-party arbitrator and you can smell the reviewer's unfairness and arrogance from the computer screen. Even when the project is great (let's say, two style edits in a document with 5,000 words), most reviewers only write "Work is OK".
I think some linguists are too concerned that they won't get more work if they admit that their peers are doing a good job.
Although I agree with the sentiment that some reviewers might be unfair in their judgment, I have been instructed by a few agencies to specifically mark flawless translations as OK, acceptable, or 'complies with requirements' in my reviews.
I can only guess that they put this policy in place to prevent translators from realizing how good they are and therefore demanding a well-deserved higher rate. On the other hand, a new client recently shared with me that the "fail" marks I gave to a set of awful translations (typos, misunderstanding of the source, missing text) would be changed to "pass" because management had already approved the translation providers with the lowest rates.
My optimist side feels that what I experienced is purely anecdotal, but my cynical side is convinced that off-the-cliff is where most of the industry seems to be going, full steam ahead.
| | | | philgoddard
United States
German to English
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TOPIC STARTER | I can even comment on my own translation! | Dec 7, 2020 |
If someone makes a negative comment about my submission, I can disagree with them anonymously, which presumably has a positive effect on my overall rating. I haven't done this because I think it's wrong, but there's nothing to stop me.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 23:55
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
philgoddard wrote:
If someone makes a negative comment about my submission, I can disagree with them anonymously, which presumably has a positive effect on my overall rating.
You seem to misunderstand what commenting/tagging is for.
https://www.proz.com/faq/3598#3598
Adding tags will not change the outcome of voting; the purpose of tagging is to compare notes with other voters and provide feedback to contestants. Winners are determined by the rating/votes their entries receive.
Positive or negative comments have no effect on your rating or your chance to win. The commenting stage is there to allow translators to comment on the translations. The stage after that is the voting stage, and some of the voters may take some of the comments into account when voting.
So feel free to respond. It may be obvious that the responses are from the translator who did the translation, or not, but as long as your responses are reasoned, I don't think they'll cause anyone (or many one) to consider your translation in a negative light just because the translator chose to defend his translation. After voting is completed, the identities of the commenters will be revealed.
https://www.proz.com/faq/13237#13237
During the voting and qualification phases, tags will be anonymously visible to other raters who will in turn be able to agree or disagree with them. However, when the contest finishes, all taggers' identities will be shown. You can see this if you visit some of the old contests.
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philgoddard
United States
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I wasn't aware of that particular piece of small print, and it seems none of the other contributors to this thread was either. But people's overall ratings will still be determined almost solely by the amount of red or green "ink" that appears on their translations. The contestants should not have a hand in the judging process.
[Edited at 2020-12-07 18:10 GMT]
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:55
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| ExtenD, it works indeed. | Dec 7, 2020 |
Mina Chen wrote:
It works to some extend
It works to some extenD, pun intended. Extend is a verb, but perhaps I'm not in a position to judge, as I was not holding your pen, pardon your keyboard.
[Edited at 2020-12-07 19:17 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 23:55
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| @Phil and @Lingua | Dec 7, 2020 |
philgoddard wrote:
I wasn't aware of that particular piece of small print, and it seems none of the other contributors to this thread was either.
I suppose if one isn't aware of something, it can appear to be "a particular piece of small print". (-: But take heart: I was also surprised at some of the rules that I did not know of or must have forgotten about.
I'm not sure how many of the other contributors who appeared to agree on this issue were also confusing tagging with rating (i.e. confusing commenting with voting).
In the recent past it was not possible to vote for your own entry, but I've just noticed that they changed the rules and you are now allowed to vote for your own entry (though if you do that, your vote does not count).
The other threads that people linked to relate to a time when the contest went through drastic changes.
And I agree that it was a long and painful teething process that put many people off from wanting to participate in any subsequent contests. Yes, four years... one of the contests took four years to go through the various phases because Staff designed it in some way and did not want to admit that it didn't work and did not want to start a next contest until the previous one was done and dusted. It was a sad chapter in contest history.
(Lots of broken promises, too. I remember being told that if only we can get X number of people in my language combination to vote in the current round of voting, we would proceed to the next round, and I contacted dozens of people individually to get them to vote, but in the end we did not go to the next round despite having reached relevant thresholds. And even though most of the contestants said "look, we don't mind the lack of votes in this round, just move us to the next round so that we can get closure", Staff wouldn't budge.)
The "new" design in those days was supposed to help ProZ.com deal with the fact that while earlier contests had only a couple of dozen participants, the later ones had hundreds...! So I understand the reason for new designs, but that particular contest was tanked by a lack of leadership and will-power.
But people's overall ratings will still be determined almost solely by the amount of red or green "ink" that appears on their translations.
I can only speak for myself, but when I vote for the best, second best and third best entry, I try to choose the best translations, not the translations with the most greens and the least reds. But I'm sure you're right: no doubt some people will vote for the entries with the most favourable colouring. This should encourage you to disagree whenever you can.
Lingua 5B wrote:
Out of 10 entries, 9 have nothing but dislikes, while the 10th one has some likes, but a bigger number of dislikes.
It is the same in my language combination, but it makes sense: it's easier to notice a mistake than it is to praise. I myself put a thumbs up only if something is truly spectacular, but thumbs down at the smallest infraction (though it is astounding just how many bad translations there are).
[Edited at 2020-12-07 20:35 GMT]
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