| Pages in topic: [1 2 3] > | Selling Glossaries? Thread poster: Camille Abou Jamra
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Hello all,
I would like to know how many of you would be willing to sell some of their glossaries to colleagues or buy them from colleagues.
I personally consider our own built glossaries as "Hidden Treasures". A lot of us would love to acquire specific glossaries from others for certain projects, especially the technical ones.
I wonder how many share my view and how many don't.
Looking forward your comments.
[Edited at 2009-0... See more Hello all,
I would like to know how many of you would be willing to sell some of their glossaries to colleagues or buy them from colleagues.
I personally consider our own built glossaries as "Hidden Treasures". A lot of us would love to acquire specific glossaries from others for certain projects, especially the technical ones.
I wonder how many share my view and how many don't.
Looking forward your comments.
[Edited at 2009-03-02 12:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Would not sell mine | Mar 2, 2009 |
Honestly, my plan is to sell my glossary when I retire. More than a glossary, it is a multilingual termbase with description, pictures in many cases, usage information, region of use, etc. etc. Making each entry takes time, and I prefer not to sell the result of this effort.
May I add that a glossary only made of source and target words, with no explanation of the terms, no dependencies, no usage information, no image, etc. is not very interesting in professional translation. The pr... See more Honestly, my plan is to sell my glossary when I retire. More than a glossary, it is a multilingual termbase with description, pictures in many cases, usage information, region of use, etc. etc. Making each entry takes time, and I prefer not to sell the result of this effort.
May I add that a glossary only made of source and target words, with no explanation of the terms, no dependencies, no usage information, no image, etc. is not very interesting in professional translation. The problem with such lists is that no intelligence about the term is conveyed, thus making it easy to choose the wrong term. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I wouldn´t sell unless everything would be 100% transparent... | Mar 2, 2009 |
...and I don´t think posing a question on this forum referring to an otherwise unknown website created only a month ago (feb 07, 2009) which happens to receive a link from your profile is very transparent. I think it's called spamming and I think there are rules against that.
Registrant:
Top Lebanese
[personal information erased]
[personal information erased]
Beirut, Beirut 0000
Lebanon
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, In... See more ...and I don´t think posing a question on this forum referring to an otherwise unknown website created only a month ago (feb 07, 2009) which happens to receive a link from your profile is very transparent. I think it's called spamming and I think there are rules against that.
Registrant:
Top Lebanese
[personal information erased]
[personal information erased]
Beirut, Beirut 0000
Lebanon
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GLOSSARYBASE.COM
Created on: 07-Feb-09
Expires on: 07-Feb-10
Last Updated on: 07-Feb-09
Administrative Contact:
Abou Jamra, Camille [email protected]
source: http://www.whois.net/whois_newdg.cgi?d=glossarybase&tld=com
But that's only my opinion, you see...
[Edited at 2009-03-02 13:15 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Completely agree | Mar 2, 2009 |
Riens Middelhof wrote:
...and I don´t think posing a question on this forum referring to an otherwise unknown website which happens to receive a link from your profile is very transparent. I think it's called spamming and I think there's some rules against that.
Yes, an explanation about the possible business relation with that website is necessary here. Is this publicity, Camille? Please let us know.
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DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
| IMO: if you asked me | Mar 2, 2009 |
Hello Camille.
Do you really consider it to be some "Hidden Treasures"?
1) First, who do you hide it from?
Customers? Other translators? But there a lot pros who have already done the same or similar topics and also have their own 'hidden treasures'
2) And how about ('my precious') treasure?1) First, who do you hide it from?
Customers? Other translators? But there a lot pros who have already done the same or similar topics and also have their own 'hidden treasures'
2) And how about ('my precious') treasure?
They are just interpreted words, a groundwork, originating from the very your point of view and regarding your own skills, experience, individual peculiarities and even a mood.
So, you can set a price for it considering your rates, time, and field of activity and...
Consider selling it. For it is also a project work though (mostly) not a direct order and not finished. In short - a reference draft of terms.
Cheers. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Who would buy glossaries? | Mar 4, 2009 |
A better question is "who would be willing to pay money to buy glossaries of unknown origin and quality?".
| | | | | for DZiW and Riccardo | Mar 4, 2009 |
I do respect your points of view and indeed this is why I posted this thread. To gather views on this issue. I can assure I have received several praising emails regarding this new issue as well. So, considering glossaries as a hidden treasure is subjective.
If glossaries were not that important, as you noted, how come the main feature of Trados, its translation memory which is a set of glossaries, made it that world famous? If there was no need for such a backend linguistic sup... See more I do respect your points of view and indeed this is why I posted this thread. To gather views on this issue. I can assure I have received several praising emails regarding this new issue as well. So, considering glossaries as a hidden treasure is subjective.
If glossaries were not that important, as you noted, how come the main feature of Trados, its translation memory which is a set of glossaries, made it that world famous? If there was no need for such a backend linguistic support, Trados would have not taken off the ground. So what you describe as "drafts of terms" are indeed a valuable asset to their owners. Now, describing personal glossaries as "drafts of terms" is an insult to a lot of professionals who spend days and years building up their backend database of terms. Would they wish to sell them? You never know.... This is the issue I am raising here after all!!!
Who needs them? Simply, those who need them. And they are a full population...
Finally, both your answers are appreciated and look forward your future contributions. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | TMs, glossaries, termbases, etc. - are you clear about the distinction | Mar 4, 2009 |
Camille Abou Jamra wrote:
... how come the main feature of Trados, its translation memory which is a set of glossaries,
A translation memory is not a set of glossaries. It is not even a termbase. Those are all different things.
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| All serve the same purpose... | Mar 4, 2009 |
Thank you Katalin for your response.
Do you consider your cleaned and specialized glossaries as "drafts of terms" of no value as stated by a colleague?
| | | | | A translation memory is not "a set of glossaries" | Mar 4, 2009 |
Camille Abou Jamra wrote:
how come the main feature of Trados, its translation memory which is a set of glossaries,
A translation memory (either from Trados or from other CAT tools) is not a set of glossary. It is a bilingual database of source segments and their translation: a completely different thing.
Most CAT tools also offer terminolgy tools, which can be used to manage glossaries and search in them (MultiTerm is such a tool, in fact). However, both translation memory tools and terminolgy managemet tools are tools, glossaries (and translation memories) are data.
In order to purchase a tool, I need to see that it works properly. In order to purchase data, I need to know its reliability and usefulness (among other things).
Getting back to glossaries, I don't care how precious they are to the people who compiled them: if I don't know how good a terminologist the compiler is, whether the definitions included (if any) are authoritative, where the source data comes from, where the proposed translation comes from, and quite a bit more, I'm afraid I would consider such glossaries as unproven and unreliable, of unknown quality and usefulness.
| | | | | Dear Riccardo... | Mar 4, 2009 |
Thank you for serving the purpose of this post.
| | | | | A stone also allows you to open nuts | Mar 4, 2009 |
Camille Abou Jamra wrote:
Do you consider your cleaned and specialized glossaries as "drafts of terms" of no value as stated by a colleague?
Glossaries in the form of bilingual lists may serve the purpose of putting some translated word there, but they don't help you understand what the matter is all about (which of the twelve translations of "screen" is correct in my case????). They don't provide the intelligence to understand what word is best in a context. They don't provide the intelligence of an actual termbase, with detailed term and word information, a detailed description of a term, a picture where necessary.
So bilingual lists of words (or "glossaries" if you like) are like a stone compared to a nutcracker: The stone will let you open the nut but will smash the kernel to pieces most of the times (if you don't get your fingers smashed too); a termbase is the nutcracker that will keep your nut in shape and you in shape not to go nuts!
So let's not confuse a bilingual list of words with serious terminology work.
[Edited at 2009-03-04 06:57 GMT]
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 22:29
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| It's all about clout | Mar 4, 2009 |
Camille Abou Jamra wrote:
I would like to know how many of you would be willing to sell some of their glossaries to colleagues or buy them from colleagues.
I'll gladly share my glossaries with anyone but then, I don't have that many glossaries. I do do term research for specific jobs but I typically don't compile these into long lists that I then reuse. Perhaps it's just the type of work that I get that doesn't make lists of words worthwhile.
I would not mind buying a glossary if (a) I'm convinced that the glossary will be useful and/or (b) the author of the glossary can show where he got his words from.
| | | | RobinB
United States
Local time: 15:29
German to English
| Some historical terminology pricing | Mar 4, 2009 |
FYI,
When we were working on the EU POINTER terminology project (Google it) back in the mid-1990s, one of the findings was that fully validated, structured bilingual terminology records in machine-readable format (containing at least keywords, subject area codes, explanations, examples and/or context, and some gramcat information) were being sold commercially (on a non-exclusive basis) for around 4 ECU a record. Some very large termbases were being bought on sold at this sort of pri... See more FYI,
When we were working on the EU POINTER terminology project (Google it) back in the mid-1990s, one of the findings was that fully validated, structured bilingual terminology records in machine-readable format (containing at least keywords, subject area codes, explanations, examples and/or context, and some gramcat information) were being sold commercially (on a non-exclusive basis) for around 4 ECU a record. Some very large termbases were being bought on sold at this sort of pricing level. Add 25% for inflation, swap euros for ecus, and you arrive at a market price of EUR 5 per record. Somehow, I don't think that this sort of pricing would be attractive to freelance translators.
OTOH, another finding of the POINTER project was that it cost at least 60 to 70 ECU to create this sort of validated, structured terminology record.
We do quite a lot of contract terminology work for customers, billed by the hour. Although our customers rarely want more than "bare bones" terminology entries (e.g. term pair with context and examples, no gramcats), the *average* productivity is probably no more than 4 to 5 terms per hour.
It's always astonishing to me how few translators (and clients!) appreciate that terminology, as intellectual property, is a vital, valuable asset for translators and clients alike. ▲ Collapse
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Thank you Robin for this historic brief...
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