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Very, very obvious term queries
Thread poster: Karin Walker (X)
Julia Gal
Julia Gal  Identity Verified
Local time: 00:34
French to English
+ ...
Jul 7, 2001

I have to agree with DFourcot, that what is ridiculously easy to one person, may not be so obvious to someone else.



People ridicule questions such has \'hello\' or \'welcome\', but while most people know the French/German/Spanish translations of these terms, \'Hello\' in Bulgarian or Indonesian is not quite so simple. Nevertheless, it can make such a difference to certain people in welcoming guests to a foreign country, for example.



And even though these
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I have to agree with DFourcot, that what is ridiculously easy to one person, may not be so obvious to someone else.



People ridicule questions such has \'hello\' or \'welcome\', but while most people know the French/German/Spanish translations of these terms, \'Hello\' in Bulgarian or Indonesian is not quite so simple. Nevertheless, it can make such a difference to certain people in welcoming guests to a foreign country, for example.



And even though these words can be found in any dictionary, not everyone has a translator\'s knowledge of how to use a dictionary (understanding of gender, usage indications etc.) or a native speakers knowledge of conjugation, levels of familarity...



Awarding fewer points for easy questions might be a good solution to keep people happy, but please don\'t stop them altogether as I am sure there are many people who find the service extremely useful!
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Blanca Rodriguez
Blanca Rodriguez
Local time: 00:34
English to Spanish
+ ...
Jul 22, 2001

Hello everybody



I have been using the Kudoz system since I joined Proz something like one year ago. Of course sometimes system \"abusers\" bug me as well, but there are several things to be considered about the Easy questions.



1) The Kudoz boxes at many websites. Most of people accessing those websites don\'t even know what Proz is and therefore, it is not surprising they accidentally misuse the system. My solution for this kind of \"I love you so much\
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Hello everybody



I have been using the Kudoz system since I joined Proz something like one year ago. Of course sometimes system \"abusers\" bug me as well, but there are several things to be considered about the Easy questions.



1) The Kudoz boxes at many websites. Most of people accessing those websites don\'t even know what Proz is and therefore, it is not surprising they accidentally misuse the system. My solution for this kind of \"I love you so much\" questions is simply ignoring them.



2) Questions about languages you don\'t know. I have posted a couple of those, actually. Sometimes, in the middle of a translation, you find a sentence or a word in a language you don\'t know and sometimes you don\'t even know what language is! It happened to me once: I thought it was Swedish and it was actually Norwegian. What should you do then? I don\'t think anyone would feel offended if I ask a question that would take no longer than 1 minute to answer and would save me hours of research.



But there is something else I really would like to comment, something that really bugs me. I believe the Kudoz system and Proz as a whole was created as a venue for sharing and helping each other(Henry, please, correct me if I\'m wrong) or at least that is how I see it. Of course we all want to get the jobs and all that stuff, but still we should \"compete\" politely and even friendly.



The thing is that many translators see the Kudoz system as some kind of competition and fight their colleagues to get the awarding points. This takes them to do things like answering questions involving languages that are not even in their pairs! But the worst thing is that they mostly answer them wrong. I have seen misspelled words, false friends and all kind of stuff and some translators do it as a general practice. Wasn\'t this thing supposed to help others? What takes a supposed profesional to answer something s/he is not sure of? And in many occasions, the asker just cannot see the diference and takes a WRONG answer.



Please, people, stop doing that. Stop harming others just to earn a few points.



Just a short note before I finish this. I would also express here my gratitude to all the rest of translators who DO take the system seriously. I have seen many very good professionals here and I wnat to thank them for their help and attitude, which I think is basic to keep our profession in the place it deserves.
[addsig]
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Silvio Picinini
Silvio Picinini  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 16:34
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Jul 26, 2001

Henry, where is the ~~~ where we should express our opinions?

 
BarbaraW (X)
BarbaraW (X)
German to English
+ ...
Aug 2, 2001



[ This Message was edited by: on 2001-08-14 07:04 ]


 
Hans-Bertil Karlsson (X)
Hans-Bertil Karlsson (X)
Sweden
Local time: 00:34
Norwegian to Swedish
+ ...
In memoriam
Aug 16, 2001

About answering to easy questions, please read my posting \"easy junk\" in the \"root\" of the \"suggestions\" forum - Sorry I posted it in the wrong thread..



Hans


 
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Very, very obvious term queries






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