Online Collaborative Translation Platform

Definitions

Collaborative translation techniques are frequently confused with crowdsourcing techniques, even by managers who work in translation industry.

Collaborative translation

refers to the technique of having multiple translation participants with varying tasks participate simultaneously in a collaborative workspace with shared resources. It is a new technique made possible by cloud computing. The purpose of collaborative translation is to reduce the total time of the translation lifecycle, improve communications, particularly between translator and non-translator participants, and eliminate many management tasks.

Crowdsourcing

(in the translation industry) refers to the practice of assigning translation tasks to a group of individuals via a "flexible open call". The purpose of crowdsourcing in the translation industry is to simplify the translation assignment phase of the lifecycle, reduce translation rates, and in some implementations, get translation for free.

For example, a crowdsourced document translation could be accepted by ten individuals in a crowd, each of whom has been assigned a piece of the larger document. Parsing a document, in itself, is not collaborative translation, because there is no real collaboration happening. However, when those ten individuals use collaborative translation technology to work and communicate simultaneously amongst themselves and with other collaborators like subject matter experts, managers, proofreaders, etc., it becomes collaborative translation (that included a crowdsourcing phase).