What's your take on TM Town?

Kevin Dias wrote:
This is our segmentation library which we released as open source software under the MIT license. You are free to improve it and submit a pull request. I would greatly welcome that. Our library does perform very favorably in terms of accuracy when compared against other libraries though as you can see here.

Joëlle Bouille wrote:

..... sooner or later, true knowledge and quality will win out over automated processes and intellectual laziness.

FarkasAndras wrote:

Can I package it into a standalone .exe, pass a utf-8 txt and language code to it and get back a utf-8 txt with line breaks at sentence boundaries?

FarkasAndras wrote:

Also, how were the abbreviations collected? Some of the abbrev lists are very extensive, while some not-so-small languages are missing entirely.

Joëlle Bouille wrote:

Speaking of giants, I think future will be the end of giants making huge money on those who do the actual work, on “the masses”.

I think future will be discernment and empowerment of “the masses”, thanks to universal access to knowledge – reliable and meaningful knowledge.

I think the future of translation will bring an increasing divide between quality-oriented LINGUIST-like translation on the one hand (i.e. the “writer’s approach” to translation), and automation-oriented machine-like “hard discount” translation on the other (i.e. the “software developer/programmer’s approach” to translation). This divide is already there (and it certainly doesn’t favor machine-translation or PEMT, considering overall quality of written materials keeps decreasing).

And once we reach the absolute bottom of the writing pit, I think the flaws of automated approaches will become obvious for everyone, and will promote a return to “old-school” quality-oriented approaches, which exclude any PM handling any language she/he knows nothing about.

Kevin Dias wrote:

We are trying to give the power back to the individual specialized translator.

Kevin Dias wrote:

That's great.

It is entirely possible to have a successful and thriving business without using any services or tools. One could have a successful translation business without even having an Internet connection.

there are many specialized translators out there that do have a use and need for tools to help them grow their business.

Tom in London wrote;

I do find it a botheration that this advertising campaign for your product continues to be permitted in these forums.

Tom in London wrote:

Have you the statistics for this, or are you just guessing?

Tom in London wrote:

I do find it a botheration that this advertising campaign for your product continues to be permitted in these forums.

Kevin Dias wrote:

I I can also click on my ProZ.com profile and see that I am the 1,979,687th person that signed up (to a service/tool which you are a paying member). .

Kevin Dias wrote:

I think you hit on exactly what we are trying to do at TM-Town. We are trying to give the power back to the individual specialized translator. The freelance professional whose focus is on quality and domain knowledge.

TM-Town's goal is to help the professional specialized translator find more work in his/her field(s) and get introduced to the clients who care about 'quality-oriented LINGUIST-like translation'. Our goal is to help clients who need specialized translators find you directly, instead of having to go through 'giants making huge money on those who do the actual work'.

This is not to say that large translation agencies don't provide value, they certainly do...but not every company is a Honda, Facebook, Toyota, etc. that needs the coordination of hundreds of translators and proofreaders across many language pairs. I think there are many small and medium-size businesses that could benefit by easily being able to directly go to the specialized freelance translator.

Ward Whittaker wrote:

Our individual TMs are the only things that differentiate us from other translators out there. I see them as my intellectual property. After 17 years in this industry, I can not see myself giving them away just for the hollow promise of work with no guarantees. I've worked too damn hard to create them and they pay for themselves with every job I do.

I work specifically in the technical, engineering area, including contracts and public tenders and my TMs and termGuides cover everything from government tenders for anti aircraft systems to hydroelectric systems and my clients would freak out if they knew these translations were in the public domain and don't kid yourself folks, TM-Town is for all intents and purposes, the public domain.

There is absolutely nothing to stop TM-Town and perhaps even Proz from opening a pseudo MT system in the future utilizing the fruits of my labor and offering it directly to end user clients.

Remember folks, once you hit the send button, they are out there forever and despite the promises that TM-Town are making that they will never leverage them, who is to say that this policy will not change in the future.

Nope, my TM's stay on my computer only. Giving them to anybody else like this is madness. I also think that translators who are willing to upload their TMs to a service like this are contravening their NDAs as well and I take my NDAs very seriously. So the answer from me is an unequivocal NO.

Ward Whittaker wrote:
Our individual TMs are the only things that differentiate us from other translators out there. I see them as my intellectual property. After 17 years in this industry, I can not see myself giving them away just for the hollow promise of work with no guarantees.