Samuel, this is supposed to be a translation contest | Oct 5, 2009 |
Samuel, While I understand where you coming from, I think what you describe is more fit for a mentoring type of activity, not a contest. I don't think it is prohibited for anybody to try and create a better translation AFTER the contest is over, and let's say post it in his/her profile as a sample translation. After all, he/she would not get anything else out of it anyway. As to getting feedback from colleagues, if that is desired in a public manner, I don't think the rules pre... See more Samuel, While I understand where you coming from, I think what you describe is more fit for a mentoring type of activity, not a contest. I don't think it is prohibited for anybody to try and create a better translation AFTER the contest is over, and let's say post it in his/her profile as a sample translation. After all, he/she would not get anything else out of it anyway. As to getting feedback from colleagues, if that is desired in a public manner, I don't think the rules prevent discussing possible ways of translating the contest texts - again, AFTER the contest is over. It is prohibited during the contest, and IMHO for a good reason. If there are not enough contestants in certain language pairs, that may be a sad fact, but hey, that is fact of life. I don't see why should any artificial stimulants be used - the incentives are plenty already, I think. If somebody wants to use it as a learning experience, he/she can submit anonymously, get all the feedback from colleagues, and if he/she desires more, there is a chance to win as well. I don't think there is a point in introducing a double standard: people submitting translations without seeing others' work and people submitting translations after reading the translations of others - I don't see the point of "unleveling" the field. In your proposal, if the winner is a "late submission", it would not be treated as a winner. At the same time, the winner of the "early submissions" would not be treated as a winner either. Do you think your proposal would really encourage participation in general? Besides, this part of your proposal: * If a submission in the Extended Submission phase is shown or suspected to be close plagiarism or merely an edited version of an existing entry is totally impractical and it would open up a whole new can of worms - if you think about it, I hope you will see how impractical this is. Who decides what is close plagiarism, etc? I don't think any more incentives are necessary to enter the contest, and I don't think it would be fair to have any more just for the extended phase. More time should be enough. If a language pair goes into extended submission that is a signal that there were not enough submissions, so the "shy" candidates would know they have a better chance of winning, if they submit, compared to those pairs that got let's say 75 submissions during the initial phase. What I could imagine is perhaps an editing contest - take the winning translation, and let's see who can improve it the most. But that would be a separate contest, an editing contest. Katalin ▲ Collapse | |