This post was originally left unfinished some months ago, but is resurrected following a brief Twitter exchange last week.<\/p>\n
There were, back in 2015, three triggers. First, months ago, I did some housekeeping on my list of usernames and passwords, and tried to unsubscribe or delete myself or whatever was required from a number of sites, either because the site itself was moribund or my interest in it was. This included 8 translation-related sites. Nine if you include aquarius.net which I\u2019m sure I joined but have no idea under what username\u2026<\/p>\n
Second, in the autumn of 2015, I was invited to join a new translation discussion forum, unconnected to any existing site or platform.<\/p>\n
Third, a handful of blog posts in recent months that have generated a certain level of lively debate, verging on actual argument, the ripples from which then spread from the original source. Sometimes, that spread was to Facebook. I\u2019m not a member of Facebook, and it was to my mind regrettable that some of the views on Facebook were not expressed on the blogs themselves. (That said, the principle stands wherever the ripples might reach.)<\/p>\n
Other times, the author\/blogger freely scattered their own content to the winds. Assuming the perfectly reasonable desire to reach the largest possible audience, it\u2019s hard to be too churlish about that approach. It is, however, easy to be frustrated at the fragmentation of relevant comments that results, even when one is able to read them. I don\u2019t want to bounce around like a cyber mountain goat to gain the full picture.<\/p>\n
All of which, chums, is indicative of what I\u2019ve been wondering about for a couple of years, probably longer.<\/p>\n
Because the legacy of 12+ years translating, and despite the aforementioned cull, is that I\u2019m a member of the following online venues that offer the opportunity to post, discuss and generally interact:
\n– Proz: despite its faults, which I\u2019ve learned to live with.
\n– Translator\u2019s Caf\u00e9: I rarely visit these days.
\n– LinkedIn: one login, but any number of groups available. I\u2019m in 10 translation-related groups, and LinkedIn suggests more are available. Ten would be too many to monitor properly even if LinkedIn were the only website in the world. At least 2 of those LinkedIn groups, the CIoL and IAPTI, have separate forums of their own on their own websites. (Ditto I think the ITI, of which I am not a member).
\n– Viadeo: a francophone LinkedIn, which I don\u2019t visit often.
\n– CIoL: since I mentioned it, has a brand spanking new forum that no-one uses. It also has a bunch of groups on Yahoo
\n– Yahoo: a rotten user interface, and I\u2019m somehow still a member of 8 different translation-related groups (some admittedly mainly for terminology questions), despite leaving a couple in recent years.
\n– Twitter, obvs.
\n– UK Business forum: if it came in a tin, it would do what it said on it. Serves to illustrate the wider point that this issue reaches beyond there being too many translation forums. There are forums for other subjects too. Including subjects of interest to our target clients.<\/p>\n
Despite my farcical and unmanageable number of memberships, I know I\u2019m still not privy to the full gamut of online translator talk. I am also starting to realise that the only place I get to hear from a vast array of people I \u201cknow\u201d (in the online sense) and whose opinions and comments I appreciate is on their own blogs and the comments they leave on other people\u2019s. Which is a fairly unmethodical and time-consuming way of gleaning useful information or having a meaningful discussion.<\/p>\n
When this issue first started to keep me awake at night, I hankered for the days when Flefo on Compuserve was pretty much the be all and end all (and also kept me awake at night, for in those days I was a programming monkey with an office job…). However, in truth monopolies are rarely ideal, including in online discussion. I\u2019ve seen enough idiosyncratic moderating, clashes with site founders, or simple incompatibility with the prevailing view held by a dominant clique to know that just one forum, even if hypothetically possible, would be a Bad Idea.<\/p>\n
And yet, just as having only one brand of baked beans to buy makes for poor grocery shopping while having two dozen brands to pick from leaves consumers bewildered and wandering off to buy custard instead, the plethora of translation talking shops leaves me thinking I\u2019m probably better off ignoring them and watching the telly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post was originally left unfinished some months ago, but is resurrected following a brief Twitter exchange last week. There were, back in 2015, three triggers. First, months ago, I did some housekeeping on my list of usernames and passwords, … Continue reading