Should Translators Be on Clubhouse?

译员应该使用 Clubhouse社交平台吗?

2021-02-18 19:00 multilingual

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, translation is in the house – the Clubhouse, that is. Billed as the cool new social media app all the rich kids are using, Clubhouse is an online chat forum created less than a year ago by repeat startup founders Rohan Seth and Paul Davison. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other forums, you must have an invite to join. Each new member is allowed to invite one other person and on it goes. At the time of writing, more than 2 million people were on the app globally — including well-known names in the translation community like Lingua Greca’s Catherine Christaki, Verbaccino president Kathrin Bussmann, and MutliLingual‘s own Renato Beninatto. Question is, should they be? After raising its venture capital series B on a $1 billion valuation, the app has certainly gotten its share of buzz. “Pretty much every marketing thought leader is on [Clubhouse],” Bussmann said. “There’s a good size crowd from the loc[alization] industry, lots and lots of marketers and LinkedIn people. And big names of course,” Christaki said. For example, celebrity marketer Guy Kawasaki recently hosted a chat in the app on entrepreneurship with MultiLingual board member Tucker Johnson. “It’s great to learn from,” she added. That said, the platform isn’t helpful in gaining clients, Christaki explaining, “The translation chats I’ve seen are mostly about ‘educating’ non loc people and explaining the terms and how global business works.” Bussmann echoed this sentiment, messaging that she uses the app to “try to educate folks about what [localization] is.” While this sort of effort may be helpful to industry trade associations — like the American Translators Association (ATA) — the majority of translators and language services providers (LSPs) don’t have the resources bare-bones client education requires. Clubhouse also has considerable data security issues: it not only uploads your contacts’ information without their consent, it also records all conversations. If client information is stored in a translator’s phone, sharing may breach customer confidentiality agreements. In Europe especially, many are concerned Clubhouse’s lack of transparency over data handling violates General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On January 27, Germany’s largest privacy watch group, the Federation of German Consumer Organisations, filed a cease and desist order against the app, adding a lack of German language user agreements to GDPR concerns. And on February 9, China banned Clubhouse, citing data security. This doesn’t mean the translation community is wrong to use the app. As Christaki mentioned, it does offer continued education benefits and — for an organization large enough to take it on — an interesting challenge regarding client education. As with any club, just know what you’re signing up for before you join.
女士们,先生们,男生们、女生们,翻译就在这里——Clubhouse。这是一个被称为所有富家子弟都在使用的酷炫新社交媒体应用,一个在线聊天论坛,由重复创业者罗汉•塞斯和保罗•戴维森在不到一年前创建。和脸书,推特及其他论坛不同,你必须受到邀请才能加入。每个新成员都可以邀请一个人,以此类推。在本文撰写之时,全球已有200多万人使用这款应用,包括Lingua Greca公司的凯瑟琳·克里斯塔基,Verbaccino公司总裁凯瑟琳·巴斯曼,以及Mutilinguals公司的雷纳多·贝尼纳多等翻译界知名人物。 问题是,他们应该使用这个平台吗?在以10亿美元的估值筹集了第二轮风险投资后,这款应用软件就拥有了大量用户。巴斯曼说:“几乎每一位具有营销思想的领导都在使用(Clubhouse)这款应用。” “这里有一大群本地化行业人士,很多营销人员和来自领英的人士,当然还有名人,“克里斯塔基说。例如,最近,著名营销人员盖伊·川崎与MultiLingual公司董事塔克·约翰逊在该应用上举办了一场关于创业的聊天。她又补充说:“能从中学习真是太好了。” 尽管如此,该平台在获得客户方面并没有什么帮助,克里斯塔基解释说,“我看到的翻译聊天大多是关于‘教育’非本地化人士的,解释术语和全球商业运作方式。” 巴斯曼附和了这一观点,她说她使用这款应用是为了“试图让人们了解什么是本地化”。 虽然这类努力可能对美国翻译协会(ATA)等行业协会有帮助,但大多数翻译和语言服务供应商并不具备客户教育所需的基本资源。Clubhouse也有相当多的数据安全问题:不仅在未经你的联系人同意的情况下上传他们的信息,还记录所有的对话。如果客户信息存储在译员的电话中,那么共享可能会违反客户保密协议。尤其是在欧洲,许多人担心该平台在数据处理方面缺乏透明度,会违反通用数据保护条例(GDPR)。1月27日,德国最大的隐私监督组织德国消费者组织联合会(Federation of Germany Consumer Organizations)发布了一项终止该应用程序的命令,这在对该平台违反通用数据保护条例的担忧之外,又使该平台缺少了德语用户。2月9日,中国以数据安全为由禁止了该应用。 这并不意味着翻译界使用该应用软件是错误的。正如克里斯塔基提到的,该平台对于持续教育的确是有益处的,而且对于一个足够大的机构来说,该平台在客户教育方面也提供了一个有趣的挑战。和任何俱乐部一样,在你加入之前,你只需知道你注册的是什么就可以了。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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