Jianjun's Blog

Recently I found Google behaves strangely. It seems that there have been some inside changes going on.

First there were strange statistics in Analytics – I had three or four days’ visitor count fixed at 40!! That’s impossible. Later I realized that they’d changed the tracking code. Although you could still use the legacy one, you are advised to adopt the new code to experience some new features (if any).

I found Google started dropping my pages from its index. What a cool thing for a new blog! That explains the sharp drop of new visitors coming to my blog. Of course I’m not punished. If they punish me out of no reason, I’ll sue them in the Federal Court! Haha. A guy copied at least 4 web sites’ content and created dozens of satellite sites (on those free blog sites) linking to his main site got high rankings in every Chinese translation-related search. But such a spammer is not punished by Google.

Google webmaster tools tells me both my sites are not verified. That’s odd. They were verified a long time ago. So I uploaded again the verification files and added mega tags as Google required, but the webmaster tools returned:

Verification status: NOT VERIFIED
We were unable to verify your file due to a server timeout.

Er… This is not true. My site is running fine. I searched on the Internet and found similar problems by other guys during March. Considering all of the above strange things, I guess it’s Google’s problem, some technical glitch.

Thanks to Google, I wrote one more entry for my blog.

Some people told me if you search certain keywords using Google toolbar, Google will show up some funny results. I just tried a few, nothing happened. But my last try ‘Microsoft’ did give me the following:

This is an ad for Microsoft Forefront on the top of the result page. The funny thing is it attracted my attention not because it was in that salient position, but because it looked like a hoax! (Of course, I was expecting something funny to appear.)

Both the language used and the formatting of the tag line looked unprofessional. What is 官网? Is it something from the Mars or Microsoft-invented rubbish? To me, if there does exist such a 官网 (literally, a web site for officials), it must be another privileged (virtue) venue for those corrupt public officials. But the stupid thing hasn’t started yet.

Clicking on that link took me to an orange-colored flash web site with a PC-game-style music playing in the background. The line at the bottom says this:

‘Building this web site won’t hurt assassins, aliens or secret agents.’

What a stupid idea to put such a line here! This is totally irrelevant.

Then a few seconds later, a guy in shirt and tie appeared , constantly shivering, waiting for you to choose an opponent to fight with…

I chose an assassin and this guy conquered him by tickling him to death!

Localization is not supposed to be like this, especially when two cultures are inherently different. What in one culture produces eye-popping or jaw-dropping effects may in another culture make people feel disgusted. Besides this, irresponsible localization not only wastes a lot of efforts and money, but also turns a promotional campaign into a total failure, thus resulting in more revenue loss.

Further resources:

The ad’s English version is much better: Succinct and to the point.

English version displays this line at the bottom of the page:

The Chinese translation changed it to ‘Building this web site won’t hurt assassins, aliens or secret agents.’ If the original meaning were accurately conveyed, Chinese readers may understand it better.

To compare:

English site
Chinese site

A colleague asked me about ProZ Translation Contest some time ago. I think my reply to him may also help other people who are interested in it. So, after some editing, I put it here in my blog.

ProZ translation contest, or Proz.com Translation Contest, was first launched by ProZ.com on Feb 01, 2007. Now, after a year, there have been six such contests. From professional point of view, however, due to its business oriented nature, ProZ translation contest is not comparable to other professional translation contests. And it has many unique characteristics that are not commonly shared by such competitions:

• To participate in ProZ.com Translation Contest, you have to be a ProZ member (in ProZ terms, the sacred title ‘member’ is only reserved for a paying guy, otherwise you are a free user). And, as far as I know, this is the only ‘qualification’ you need to take part in it. In other words, ProZ.com Translation Contest is something for ProZ members – a closed-door contest.
• There is no fixed and qualified judging panel! Potentially anyone, even if a layman with no knowledge of translation, can vote. This time you don’t need to be a member!! And the translator who got the most votes wins! Certainly, this leaves open an option for a guy to call his friends from around the world to give him a vote! (You just need to take a few minutes to register a free ‘ghost’ account.) I remember in the xxxxth ProZ Contest, a guy posted in the ProZ Chinese forum publicly calling on friends to vote for him. And later he was indeed the winner. Maybe this is only a coincidence, but here is the loophole.
• The ProZ translation contest is running like crazy, one after another in a row. Within a year, there have been six such contests! The winner is issued an electronic certificate with signatures from the contest organizer – a ProZ staff – and the founder of the site. So you have something to ‘prove’ your ability. I can’t remember any well-known professional level contests are running like this, with such a ‘commercially signed’ certificate.

I personally believe ProZ.com Translation Contest is too profit-oriented to produce a fair, balanced and professionally qualified result. Of course, in which direction the contest is going to develop totally depends on ProZ itself. If they want the contest to become professionally recognized world-wide, they should change that ‘pay-before-you-can-participate’ attitude as the first step.