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| User | Thread poster: Violeta Farrell Client confidentiality and google translate |
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Violeta Farrell
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:36
English to Serbian
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JL01
United States
Local time: 16:36
English to French
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This has been discussed ad nauseam on multiple fora and mailing lists.
Using GT is a breach of confidentiality agreement, unless of course the other party to the agreement (the "customer") has agreed.
No need to ask a lawyer.
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 22:36
 Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| | It depends on your arguments | Feb 13 |
That specific blog uses scare tactics to tell a half truth. The blog quotes from the general terms of service but makes no mention of the privacy issues in the additional terms of service, which is very relevant to the issue. At Google, the additional terms always supersede the general terms, and it is in the additional terms that the issue of confidentiality is explained more clearly. The fact that the blog writer does not quote from the additional terms nor even mention them, tells me that he has done only half his homework and is guilty of jumping to conclusions.
JL01 wrote:
This has been discussed ad nauseam on multiple fora and mailing lists. |
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Yes, and there are two (ore more) camps or schools of thought on this, and you won't convince either side that the other side is right. Arguments on both sides range from intelligent to downright silly.
Let me attempt to breathe some life into this dead horse, and ask you (Violeta) this:
What would you regard as the point at which posting portions of a client's confidential information on a public site becomes a breach of confidentiality? In other words, what would a translator do during KudoZ participation to be in breach? And... on the flipside, what would a translator using Google Translate have to do to not be in breach? What do you think?
[Edited at 2012-02-13 23:11 GMT]
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Ambrose Li
Canada
Local time: 16:36
Member (2011)
Chinese to English
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| | beating the dead horse | Feb 13 |
The point of contention seems to be whether submitting text to be translated constitutes “posting” them to a public site. I kept being told that Google will use the submitted source text in some way or keep it for some reason.
The thing is that from an engineering viewpoint, keeping the source text is absolutely useless. The target is statistically generated, and having the source text does not “teach” GT anything new. Unless you edit your target text inside GT to tell them how they are wrong, they have absolutely no use of the source text.
Unless we are talking about eavesdropping or MITM attacks (which are indeed distinct possibilities, especially if you use wifi to access the Internet), I remain unconvinced how the mere use of GT can constitute posting to a public site.
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Silvia83
United States
Local time: 16:36
Member (2011)
English to Italian
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| | Not sure if this is relevant | Feb 13 |
I don't use Google Translate, but am looking into MyMemory plug-ins for SDL Studio 2011. Would using MyMemory be a breach of confidentiality as well?
I was told that even if the source/target texts are uploaded, they are also "digested" and cut in very small units, sometimes smaller than the TUs and it would be impossible to put the original text back together. Is this true also with GT?
Also, have you ever heard of translators being charged and convicted because they used GT?
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TranslatorJames
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:36
Member (2011)
Italian to English
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| | Why are professional translators using Google Translate? | Feb 13 |
I do not understand why professional translators would ever need to use Google Translate?
Confidentiality issues with GT should not be a problem for service providers in this industry because they should be able to translate their text WITHOUT Google Translate.
Inputting large amounts of text in Google Translate and then 'brushing up' the results is NOT what I would call translating!
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:36
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
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Ambrose Li wrote:
The point of contention seems to be whether submitting text to be translated constitutes “posting” them to a public site. |
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If I understand correctly, the issue is not posting to a *public* site but posting it to a third party, even if the third party is non-public, and even if the third party promises to delete the text immediately.
What I find heartening is that most translators here on the ProZ.com forum seem to be at least partially strict about their interpretation of "confidentiality" (as am I).
On other forums I see translators (who sign the same NDAs as I do and swear by the same or simar codes of ethics as I do) who regard the whole concept of confidentiality as something that only applies to trade secrets and military stuff, or as something that only relates to insider-trading or using the client knowledge to gain an unfair advantage over the client in some or other way.
[Edited at 2012-02-13 23:05 GMT]
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Ambrose Li
Canada
Local time: 16:36
Member (2011)
Chinese to English
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Samuel Murray wrote:
If I understand correctly, the issue is not posting to a *public* site but posting it to a third party, even if the third party is non-public, and even if the third party promises to delete the text immediately.
What I find heartening is that most translators here on the ProZ.com forum seem to be at least partially strict about their interpretation of "confidentiality" (as am I).
On other forums I see translators (who sign the same NDAs as I do and swear by the same or simar codes of ethics as I do) who regard the whole concept of confidentiality as something that only applies to trade secrets and military stuff, or as something that only relates to insider-trading or using the client knowledge to gain an unfair advantage over the client in some or other way.
[Edited at 2012-02-13 23:05 GMT] |
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Yes, I think you are right (that the point of contention is placing the source at the hands of a “third party”) and I was wrong. But what constitutes a “third party”?
Unless you update the target on GT (in which case I don’t know what happens), GT basically runs on its own, like any other autonomous server. In fact the way the Internet works is that traffic will go through an indeterminate number of autonomous systems before reaching its target, so any traffic, if it goes through the Internet at all will necessarily go through “third parties”.
So even if you encrypt everything, anything you send and/or receive on the Internet (or on the phone, since we use packet switching nowadays) will go through an indeterminate number of third parties. So how is communications to happen if we cannot use our modern communications infrastructure? (Actually, if the autonomous servers at GT count as a “third party”, then we cannot even use the postal system.)
We cannot even avoid the problem if we abandoned our electronic communications systems and the postal system and resorted to using only courier services. I personally knew of a case where the courier stole the item being delivered.
PS: Just to clarify, I don’t use GT myself either. In fact in my language pair GT is 100% useless.
[Edited at 2012-02-13 23:29 GMT]
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Alex Lago
Spain
Local time: 22:36
Member (2009)
English to Spanish
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| | No such thing as confidentiality | Feb 14 |
Let me start off by saying none of my clients send me encrypted emails or ask me to send them encrypted emails and I don't know any translators who do (though I'm sure there must be some) so any documents agencies send me can be intercepted and read by a third party.
If you believe Google may use the info posted in Google translate then you don't believe their privacy policy, if you don't believe their privacy policy there is no reason to believe any Internet privacy policy and that is actually probably a good thing, because even if they don't use your info you need to realize there is no such thing as privacy on the Internet and all communications can be and actually are (by governments and companies, but that's another story) intercepted.
These are some of the arguments used by the side that says it doesn't break your agreement with your client if you use GT to translate their documents.
The thing is a agree with these arguments but I don't believe they allow us to ignore the client's wishes, if your client (the agency) says you can't disclose the info they send you to third parties then you have an obligation to follow their instructions and not divulge that information directly, if someone intercepts your communications you are not at fault, but if you post it directly you are.
Having said that I have nothing against Google Translate and I use it often when the client has no confidentiality terms and I also use it quite often to look up the translation for loose terms using GT4T as I don't believe that looking for the odd term in anyway violates the privacy agreement, but translating sentences or paragraphs does.
[Edited at 2012-02-14 01:12 GMT]
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Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:36
Member (2009)
French to English
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| | Why would they keep it...? | Feb 14 |
Ambrose Li wrote:
The thing is that from an engineering viewpoint, keeping the source text is absolutely useless. |
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But don't assume that your lack of imagination gives you any guarantee that *Google* can't think of a use for that data...!
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT
Spain
Local time: 22:36
 Member (2005)
English to Spanish
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| | This is not the point | Feb 14 |
Silvia83 wrote:
Also, have you ever heard of translators being charged and convicted because they used GT? |
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I think that the point is not whether you can get caught in the act and sued by your customers. The point is whether you are sharing information with third people (be it GT, other translators via MyMemory, or other people) and whether that is prohibited by your agreement with your customer.
All customer agreements contain a confidentiality/privacy clause prohibiting us from sharing the information in any shape or form with anyone, so any use of any tool, system or method based upon sending the information out of your own computer is in clear breach of such agreement.
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT
Spain
Local time: 22:36
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
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Alex Lago wrote:
The thing is a agree with these arguments but I don't believe they allow us to ignore the client's wishes, if your client (the agency) says you can't disclose the info they send you to third parties then you have an obligation to follow their instructions and not divulge that information directly, if someone intercepts your communications you are not at fault, but if you post it directly you are. |
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Exactly. It would be sad to see that we agree with an agreement just to get the translation job(s) and immediately decide that the contents of the agreement does not apply to our case just because our pretty face as we say in Spain.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:36
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| | How free a freelancer is | Feb 14 |
Alex Lago wrote:
...if your client (the agency) says you can't disclose the info they send you to third parties then you have an obligation to follow their instructions... |
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There was a time when I would have agreed with that statement outright, but I have recently learnt that the degree to which a client can specify *how* a translator should run his business impacts on the odds that one's country's tax department will regard you not as a freelancer (contract of work) but as a contractor (contract of service)... which is relevant to which taxes you have to pay and which deductions you qualify for.
At some stage, the client has to trust the translator's judgement (well, he already does, by asking him to do the translation).
An ethical translator must be able to show (e.g. to an arbitrator or representative from his translator association) that he has acted in good faith and without negligence, i.e. that his conduct was deliberate and had the client's interests at heart. This is why reading the privacy policies of services like Google Translate is a good thing.
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NR_Stedman
France
Local time: 22:36
Member
French to English
| | google confidentiality | Feb 14 |
Google has recently changed its confidentiality policy for GT and the terms mentioned in the blogspot article no longer apply.
[Edited at 2012-02-14 08:26 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:36
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| | Google's new terms of service | Feb 14 |
NR_Stedman wrote:
Google has recently changed its confidentiality policy for GT and the terms mentioned in the blogspot article no longer apply. |
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For the record (not to initiate another discussion about it):
The blog article (which is a repost of this) mentions these two items from Google's terms of service:
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
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You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
Google's new terms of service (which will apply from 1 March) says this:
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
There are other terms in the terms of service which limit the above paragraph, but I don't quote it here because it does not relate to the two terms posted on the original blog article.
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