| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | Contests: Congratulations to winners in "A translator's life"! Thread poster: Ana Moirano
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Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:30
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
A long time ago, I got engaged in grading/rating entries in a contest. The title of the piece was something like "Letters of an old man to his son" (I paraphrased, can't remember the exact title).
Now there was one entry full of positive agrees. I can't remember the grammar, syntax or accuracy quality, but what I can remember is that the person translated the entire piece in the second person plural, which we would never use when addressing our child or our son. So, the old man is ... See more A long time ago, I got engaged in grading/rating entries in a contest. The title of the piece was something like "Letters of an old man to his son" (I paraphrased, can't remember the exact title).
Now there was one entry full of positive agrees. I can't remember the grammar, syntax or accuracy quality, but what I can remember is that the person translated the entire piece in the second person plural, which we would never use when addressing our child or our son. So, the old man is addressing his son with "you" a lot of times throughout the English source, and this contestant translated the entire piece in plural you without ever considering the macro context and the characters involved. Just one example how these entries are made without any thought, and the rating was also without any thought (a lot of positives). In case the other aspects were good (grammar, syntax, accuracy) - which I can't recall now, this plural "you" mistake throughout the text would immediately disqualify them, in case of a structured voting criteria.
For clarification, "you" would be Sie in German, or vous in French. No, don't use that for your son. Only ProZ translation contestants do. And no, it was not a middle-age text or kingdom court text where they used to use plurals for their children, it was a modern day era. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Thank you for your feedback | Oct 20, 2023 |
Hi!
I would like to thank you all for sharing your views on your different experiences.
At ProZ we value and analyse your feedback as it is a key element to improve upcoming contests.
Thank you again for taking the time to participate.
Regards,
Ana
Member Services
| | | | | A last comment | Oct 20, 2023 |
Thanks for your comments, Ana.
A last word: the whole concept of participants voting is flawed and should be scrapped.
Even if it can be assured that voting is balanced out (see my previous comment), there is still a risk of tactical voting. If a participant considers other entries better than their own, they could avoid voting for them to benefit themselves, instead voting for the worst entries. I'm not accusing anyone in particular, only saying that it's a risk that c... See more Thanks for your comments, Ana.
A last word: the whole concept of participants voting is flawed and should be scrapped.
Even if it can be assured that voting is balanced out (see my previous comment), there is still a risk of tactical voting. If a participant considers other entries better than their own, they could avoid voting for them to benefit themselves, instead voting for the worst entries. I'm not accusing anyone in particular, only saying that it's a risk that could skew the results.
In the Eurovision Song Contest, there are regular accusations of tactical voting, but it's obviously very difficult to prove.
Participants rating other entries in the first step can also result in too much nitpicking, since it's in every participant's interest to find flaws in the other entries. It can end up as a jungle.
Rating and voting should only be done by disinterested people in my opinion, so as to ensure fairness. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | How do you tell if an entry is AI-generated? | Oct 20, 2023 |
In my language pair, some entries on the list have (supposedly people's) names, while others are just anonymous. Really curious to find out which pairs even made it possible to have Chatty as a finalist. I could guess what kind of pairs those could be, but my proficiency in languages is not sufficient to give my guesswork any real weight.
Looking through the submissions, I can't say I like any of them enough to award them the first place. The winning translation reads like on... See more In my language pair, some entries on the list have (supposedly people's) names, while others are just anonymous. Really curious to find out which pairs even made it possible to have Chatty as a finalist. I could guess what kind of pairs those could be, but my proficiency in languages is not sufficient to give my guesswork any real weight.
Looking through the submissions, I can't say I like any of them enough to award them the first place. The winning translation reads like one of the blandest to me (others tried harder to spice it up, but that would also make the translation go haywire in certain spots), but it is definitely among the smoothest. It's also one of the very few that handled the "core" vs "nucleus" thing properly. But, imho, none of the submissions accomplished the basic task of coming together: they don't read like something someone would write in a book with no translation being involved. Okay, the source text doesn't quite read like a book either, but come together it does, and none of the translators were able to produce texts that ticked this box.
I got interested in the contest too late, so I didn't participate and I'm not even sure I'd be allowed to (look at the countries those translators come from), but I'd do the job quite differently. And I probably wouldn't win, because while my version of the first paragraph (which I came up with last night) did make me happy in terms of coming together while conveying all relevant meanings, reviewers would surely take it apart and destroy, piece by piece. ▲ Collapse
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Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 23:30
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
| Uhm... what's the logic? | Oct 20, 2023 |
For the combinations without winners it reads "Not enough votes were submitted by peers for a winning entry to be determined."
Now, one of the 2 ex aequo winners of EN>DE got rated by only 5 people (the other winner by 6).
Well, what is the logic here when in combinations "without winners" someone also got votes from 5 people?
I can't find a rule that specifies a minimum number of points.
There's just this obscure passage in the FAQ: "During this (qualificat... See more For the combinations without winners it reads "Not enough votes were submitted by peers for a winning entry to be determined."
Now, one of the 2 ex aequo winners of EN>DE got rated by only 5 people (the other winner by 6).
Well, what is the logic here when in combinations "without winners" someone also got votes from 5 people?
I can't find a rule that specifies a minimum number of points.
There's just this obscure passage in the FAQ: "During this (qualification) phase, entries are removed from contention when it becomes clear that they have no reasonable chance of winning. Such assessment is made based on the average rating received from peers (relative to that assigned to other entries), after some minimum number of votes."
This is not a transparent and comprehensible criteria, you'd have to explain what the concrete "minimum number of votes" must be.
[Edited at 2023-10-20 17:01 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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