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Poll: How often do you spend +30 min. researching a single obscure term or phrase?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Aug 17

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How often do you spend +30 min. researching a single obscure term or phrase?".

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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 02:32
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
N/A Aug 17

It hasn’t been very often of late. First of all, because work has been scarce. Secondly, after more than 40 years in the profession, I don’t very often come across terms that are completely unfamiliar to me, apart from neologisms which occasionally require some research. I must say that I like to spend as much time as necessary until I’m convinced I’ve found the correct term…

Josephine Cassar
Christine Andersen
Maria Laura Curzi
Angie Garbarino
 
Zea_Mays
Zea_Mays  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 03:32
English to German
+ ...
often for KudoZ Aug 18

I've been very active in trying to answer KudoZ questions in the past, and it could happen that I had to do very thorough research in order to prove my contributions. This has not changed but I'm no longer that active in this site section - and questions have been decreasing too.

Géraldine Fourrier
Maria Laura Curzi
 
The Shredder
The Shredder
The correct answer is… Aug 18

… as often as is necessary. Which shouldn’t be very often.

With AI, it’s easier to get some initial suggestions that you then corroborate, making this a less frequent occurrence.

(See, I’m not a total dinosaur.)

But you get to a stage as a translator when the only terms that really trouble you are the ones that have been used incorrectly by the author…

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Christine Andersen
Maria Laura Curzi
Daryo
 
Daryo
Daryo
Local time: 02:32
Serbian to English
+ ...
Not recently Aug 18

at least not because I would need it myself for a translation.

As for 'obscure' ... once one single word very commonly used in Serbian send me into an hours long wading through paper dictionaries (yes it was that long ago).

OK that one was an extreme case, but a good illustration that a term does not need to be 'obscure' - even some very 'common' term can unexpectedly turn into a very tough nut to crack.

Some past Kudoz questions happened to be real... See more
at least not because I would need it myself for a translation.

As for 'obscure' ... once one single word very commonly used in Serbian send me into an hours long wading through paper dictionaries (yes it was that long ago).

OK that one was an extreme case, but a good illustration that a term does not need to be 'obscure' - even some very 'common' term can unexpectedly turn into a very tough nut to crack.

Some past Kudoz questions happened to be really interesting - a proper puzzle hard to solve. Lately there is only a trickle of Kudoz questions, and not much interesting - too easy to decipher so no '+30 min. researching' there. ▲ Collapse
 
Karletto666
Karletto666
Slovenia
Local time: 03:32
English to Slovenian
+ ...
Holly molly Aug 21

It works! I bet that it is a hacker attack, not bugs.
 
Michael Newton
Michael Newton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 21:32
Japanese to English
+ ...
single obscure phrase Aug 22

A hacker attack? Who in their right mind would ever want to hack proz.com? As if there were something to be gained.

Maria Laura Curzi
 
Kaspars Melkis
Kaspars Melkis  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 02:32
English to Latvian
+ ...
sometimes Aug 22

I recently spent more than 30 minutes trying to understand the difference between two grammatical variants of a single word.

Both forms were correct but with slight difference in nuance. The exact difference was not entirely clear to me. ChatGPT explanations became circular showing that it does not reason but only extracts the summary from all possible discussions about this issue. I gave up. I would need to do a bigger study to make sure I choose the form that works best in the giv... See more
I recently spent more than 30 minutes trying to understand the difference between two grammatical variants of a single word.

Both forms were correct but with slight difference in nuance. The exact difference was not entirely clear to me. ChatGPT explanations became circular showing that it does not reason but only extracts the summary from all possible discussions about this issue. I gave up. I would need to do a bigger study to make sure I choose the form that works best in the given text. ▲ Collapse


The Shredder
 
Karletto666
Karletto666
Slovenia
Local time: 03:32
English to Slovenian
+ ...
Well... Aug 22

Michael Newton wrote:

A hacker attack? Who in their right mind would ever want to hack proz.com? As if there were something to be gained.


I am not an expert but i believe the goal is also to disrupt...
 


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Poll: How often do you spend +30 min. researching a single obscure term or phrase?






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