Jianjun's Blog

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.