Bialystock (reading adaptation
of Kafka’s
Metamorphosis while looking
for worst play ever written):
"Gregor Samsa
awoke one morning
to discover that he had
been transformed
into a giant
cockroach..." (Pauses.) Nah, it's too good.
—The Producers (1968)
Do you want
a measure of The Great Stagnation in Localization Land? The mosquito-infested
backwater of language technology now
has its very own patent troll! Yes! Transperfect’s purchase of WorldLingo has
nothing to do with the acquiree’s technology (which is probably commoditized
anyway). According to David Grunwald,
the bold merger is a tactic by Transperfect to seize WorldLingo’s patents and
then use them in ongoing litigation against a competitor in the field of localizing websites for large corporates. In other
words, Transperfect is becoming a patent troll.
What is a
patent troll, you ask? To phrase it in the style of Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, it is the bloodcurling sound of the
technology industry eating its young. The issue was brought to mainstream
attention by a recent podcast from the teams of This American Life and Planet
Money (When
Patents Attack). (By the way, have I recommended This American Life? Did I mention it’s free?) To
put it succinctly, a patent troll is a company that buys up reams of patents from
other companies and then uses them to sue innovative start-ups. The objective is simply to
extort money. There are entire companies in Silicon Valley that do
not create anything but simply snap up legacy patents and use them as part of a
tech version of racketeering (“that’s a really nice technology company you have
there; it’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”). And guess who is
the largest patent troll in the Valley? None other than Nathan Myhrvold. And
who is Nathan Myhrvold? None other than one of the co-founders of
Microsoft. Great Stagnation, Exhibit A: “Thy name is Myhrvold.”
What is
wrong with that, you ask? Patents, after all, were invented to protect the work
of the inventors who make our lives better. Well, the problem is that in the IT
sphere the idea of a patent is problematic. One example is the idea of using
the Internet to distribute a piece of software via downloading. The software
itself, of course, should have a
copyright. That is not the issue. The idea
of downloading software via the Web in
general, well… not so much. And American judges and the U.S. Patent Office
until twenty years ago were inclined to this common-sense view of technology:
The hurdles to get an IT patent were many and difficult to leap over. That is,
until the tide started shifting in the 1990s. And now you basically can’t move a
single inch in Silicon Valley without stepping on a the tails of companies holding reams of useless patents, whether for offensive or preemptive
purposes. Indeed, one of the causes for Tyler Cowen’s innovation slowdown may
well be the peculiarities of patent-trolling and the U.S. legal system.
What does
that mean for the translation industry? This means that Transperfect is
probably planning to use a patent that describes in vague terms a system that
employs, say, machine translation, translation memory and terminology
management over the Web. None of these ideas by themselves is original. You
didn’t need a genius to come along and “invent” the idea of using computers to
translate text. Or of recycling previous translations. Or of using the Web to
harness the power of the hamster mob. But (wham!) Transperfect is going to
leverage those dead patents to hit a competitor.
Just more
proof of the vibrancy of the
translation technology niche.
Miguel Llorens is a freelance financial translator based in Madrid who works from Spanish into English. He is specialized in equity research, economics, accounting, and investment strategy. He has worked as a translator for Goldman Sachs, the US Government's Open Source Center, and H.B.O. International. To contact him, visit his website and write to the address listed there. You can also join his LinkedIn network by visiting the profile or follow him on Twitter.
4 comments:
Dear Miguel, thanks for citing my blog post. Dave Grunwald
No need to thank me. Your blog is always interesting.
This is all news to me .. stuck behind my keyboard fretting over where the next euro is coming from.
From a legal point of view however it is sort of inevitable. If we create the concept of 'a patent' then we must accept the consequences, good or otherwise. It's a bit like creating 'financial instruments' which seemed a good idea at the time before they got sliced up, re-packaged and sold on as toxic waste.
Let's get down to Brass Tacks: Transperfect is a company strewn (with few notable exceptions) with nasty, cheap veneered, low caliber, hyped up mediocres who would lie in a minute and laugh and/or smirk at you while doing so. TPT management allows for its staff to attempt to unacceptably / inappropriately bully other employees who provide a satisfactory work product This MO affects TPT's work product. Its QA/QC is questionable at best and TPT is considered a low quality agency (its erstwhile 'Director' is a graduate of a school that has been rated 4th Tier (although there may be autodidact, intelligent spawns from that institution, it is apparently well known for its Women's Bowling Team). TPT QA/QC operates in a vindictive manner seeking 'actionable' errors in an attempt to discipline employees they don't like while dismissing as venial similar otherwise 'actionable' errors committed by employees TPT Managers/Directors favor [read: those who get drunk with supervisors]); TPT QA/QC conducts kangaroo court-like disciplinary sessions, thrusting warnings that must be signed at employees regardless of whether the employee committed an 'actionable' error. TPT QA/QC's infantile and thinly veiled vagaries may be likened to Wayne's World/Beverly Hillbillies meets The Lord of the Flies. This is coupled with the fact that TPT Directors and Team Lead/Managers ask their employees to lie relative to 'certifying' TPT's work product, impeaching the credibility of TPT's already dubious QA/QC protocols; TPT Project Managers inappropriately discriminate, vetting at home employees based on how 'ugly' they consider members of the freelance stable to be [based on photographs posted on freelancer's professional websites], laughing and smirking while doing so; TPT's Computer Help Desk Employees are also unintelligent mediocres who unacceptably and inappropriately attempt (in a manner unchecked by TPT HR, in variance with verbal and written complaints) to bully others; TPT has a substance abuse problem fostered by its management; TPT's management is outrageously unprofessional (e.g. web postings stating that they have likely 'boned' a client's daughter); TPT's HR Department is headed by an employee who squirms to cover up the mess that TPT and concomitantly TPT's work product is; 'Me and my boys are gonna' teach him a lesson' (paraphrasing a cartoon of a lush/street urchin wannabe at TPT) and now (2/7/11) TPT announces that one of its teams has provided a software product used relative to IRBs (institutional review boards). Would you trust TPT, a company who 'self certifies' with the above mentioned bizarre idiosyncracies to now have anything to do with oversight of IRB management? This all adds up to one obvious conclusion: STAY AWAY FROM TRANSPERFECT.
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