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LinkedIn, the popular professional networking website has somewhere around half of its members based outside the US. It already has English, French, German and Spanish versions online and plans to expand its international user base further with translations in other languages. Consequently it carried out a survey recently asking professional translators on its network whether they would like to volunteer for translating the web site into other languages.
Incentives included were an upgraded account, but no financial compensation. This galled many professional translators and they were quick to say no. Many translators were of the opinion that LinkedIn had shown disrespect to them by asking them to work for free. However LinkedIn representatives say that the company’s intentions were misinterpreted. They were simply trying to find out how professional translators in its network would take to the idea of “crowd sourcing” which has been successfully used by Wikipedia. Furthermore, translators who would volunteer to translate LinkedIn would also be including it in their professional experience at LinkedIn, which might lead them to get paid work.
There were professional translation providers who went along with LinkedIn’s view. Some believed that volunteering for LinkedIn would be a great way of marketing oneself. It seems that LinkedIn made a mistake in the way it had put its proposal across. Maybe if it would have been diplomatic more translators would have warmed up to the idea.
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