Steam Translation Community Slaving Away 214
An anonymous reader writes "Steam has decided to build a community effort to get its Steam platform and game files translated by the community, but here is the catch: Translators do not get paid. Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free. The article describes basic estimates on how much is saved by Steam in translation costs."
Hopefully not prone to abuse (Score:5, Funny)
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I know this doesn't align with the personal view point of the original submitter, but given a popular enough service/game, the people who care about the service generally actually *want* to do those translations for free.
And I'd take it one step further, not only users like to translate a popular service/game into their own language for free, but if given half a chance, and if given proper attribution, many people would actually *pay* for the chance to translate their favorite service/game into their own la
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I'll tell you what's wrong with this phoenix, it's dead.
Don't worry, that shouldn't be a problem for long.
If you are Korean (or whatever) (Score:2, Insightful)
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Whether they want to or not, Valve is legally barred from profiting from volunteer labor. Valve is legally obliged to pay for the work at at least the minimum wage. I'm not up enough on labor law to know whether that means the federal minimum wage or WA state minimum wage, but accepting volunteer labor under these conditions is unlikely to be legal.
And with good reason, I have a hard time believing that Valve couldn't find enough Korean speakers to do the translations for pay, without having to crowd source
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Although that's a good viewpoint, how far should we take it?
Would Amazon reviews also be illegal under the same legal theory?
Come to think of it, if I got a dollar for every dumb post I've made so far on Slashdot, ...
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Facebook has crowdsourced the majority of the work involved in its foreign-language translations, and as far as I know, it's not faced any legal repercussions because of it.
I sense a disterbance is the force (Score:5, Informative)
It's like a hundred million lawyers just cackled with insane glee!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program
And? (Score:3)
For the most part, this isn't that unusual. See, for instance, the "Google in your Language" project.
And it's not like the users are being scammed or anything. They weren't promised money or anything, and they're getting... exactly what they signed up for. I won't be surprised if Valve does, eventually, start giving them a few gifts, but I also don't think it's unethical. This would be like complaining that /. story submitters don't get paid for contributing content - after all, Slashdot makes several bajillion dollars every nanosecond, but it would be NOTHING without such insightful and well-researched articles provided graciously by the readers.
This is also the only way to get some translations done. Sure, finding a translator for Spanish or even two types of Chinese may be easy, but what about Bulgarian? Or Thai? Or "Pirate"? Yes, there's poor, suffering, unpaid people slaving away at "translating" games into a fake dialect.
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GPP already gave one example: Google. Another big company springs to mind: Facebook. Of course, FB did discover the downside of not paying professional translators [theregister.co.uk]. But it's not too surprising that other companies should try to follow in the footsteps of such behemoths.
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Actually, the practice of using one's userbase to crowdsource translations has been practiced specifically in the software business for ages - I've seen campaigns like these back in early 2000s, and participated in some. Normally people do it either because they like the application and want to share it with some people they know who don't speak English; or just because they like seeing their name in credits.
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Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean apart from the fact that this is almost certain to be a violation of the FLSA? http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp [dol.gov] for more information.
The shortened version is that you can't accept volunteer labor unless you're a religious institution, a charitable organization or are public sector or are a similar type of non-profit entity. Valve definitely can't accept volunteer labor if its going to be profiting from it.
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So then how does Slashdot work? The site most certainly profits from the unpaid contributions of its users.
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Not by request?
"Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop."
That look familiar?
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Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
The FLSA says that EMPLOYEES can't volunteer their time. In other words, I work for company X, I can't then "volunteer" an extra few hours to the company. Could someone please point to the point of the FLSA that refers to non-employees of Valve?
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Since the article refers to "working on the premises" it's not at all clear that a volunteer who on his own time in his own house translates some text is an employee. I've also heard about "unpaid intern" positions which do occur in many companies. So pretty clearly the law is not so black & white as people would make it.
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Work doesn't stop being work because you do it off the premises - feel free to research farther, but if being in your own house meant employment law didn't apply to you, telecommuting wouldn't work.
Unpaid internships are supposed to provide some sort of compensation, in the form of directly valuable (and quantifiable) experience, training, etc. They're often abused, and are strictly delimited by law as to hours permitted and allowable types of work. In practice, again, they're often abused, but the law is
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So why aren't unpaid volunteers who do beta testing "employees" covered by FLSA? They are clearly doing work for the company, work that would otherwise need to be done by paid company employees. They may not be generating content, but that doesn't matter at all, an employee doesn't have to generate content to be doing work.
I don't see anyone complaining that software companies don't pay the beta testers, in fact "being in the beta" is considered a privilege. Why isn't it a similar privilege to help get y
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Yes, read the first paragraph indeed, which you did not quote from. I'll help:
In this particular case, Valve's customers have not entered into any agreement for compensation, and individual translators are likely working for their "own advantage," e.g. having available a transla
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So, you accuse me of cherry-picking, but fail to even read my reply closely enough to realize that I mentioned public-service and non-profit agencies as well as religious?
Good job, I guess. Except not.
I never said Valve was evil, or that corporations are bad. I quite agree that corporations are amoral, frankly, and I don't know whether the FLSA applies to this specific case. I'd imagine that it would depend highly on how the translations are bundled with the games in question.
For profit companies are not,
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Look it up in context of the statute, if you want an exact definition as placed. If you find that "translation of foreign language materials" somehow magically doesn't count, I'd be very surprised. One thing to note - since the purpose of FLSA is to mark where accepting volunteer work is acceptable, clearly work can include volunteer activities, if that's what you're getting at.
But regardless of whether the game translations count as work, the first paragraph contradicts what he claims the line that he re
what money saved? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "article" assumes Valve would otherwise pay to have the translations done.
This is a questionable assumption. The alternative assumption is that these translations would be uneconomic to do professionally therefore they have allowed the community to do translations instead of not having it at all. The latter assumption seems more probable given we're talking about the back catalogue.
It's difficult to judge since the "article" has no citations, not even a link for the quote cited "Steam forums". There's no basic information such as the languages being translated.
And... Oh forget it. The "article" isn't even of a standard worthy of criticising.
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I found the article to be acceptable in terms of 'standards' considering what is actually available. It's adequate back of the envelope math. The article doesn't need citations for what it's offering besides the steam transla
"Slaving"? (Score:2)
As to the pernicious lie that Valve has enslaved these translators: really? Are you claiming that Valve has stuck a gun to their collective heads and told them to work or face dire consequences up to and including torture or death?
This is certainly a volunteer effort to begin with, done so that the translators themselves can enjoy the games in their native languages.
Seriously, this article is a troll. Slavery, indeed.
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Oh forget it. The "article" isn't even of a standard worthy of criticising.
Much like your posting.
apparently not.
Double standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
So when open source crowdsources development it's great, but when video game companies do it it's exploitative? And how exactly are volunteers "forced" to do anything?
If the costs of professional translation are as high as the article suggests (nearly $1 million just to translate Steam storefront pages), then this move makes sense to me. How many sales are you going to gain by having 26 different translations of a game? How many people who might use a translation wouldn't have just played the game in English in the absence of one? Even Valve's AAA titles from before this weren't in 26 languages. Half-Life 2 [steampowered.com] is only in 18. And that's for a big budget game. For smaller titles, the benefit from translating is undoubtedly not worth the cost.
Given that, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Rather than fans of a game having to organize a team to translate it and hack up a patch, there is now a way for everyone to contribute as much as they like to a publisher-sponsored effort. You'd have to be pretty damn cynical to see this as a bad thing.
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Open source development is open source-- everyone benefits. In this case the "crowdsourced" product is proprietary and only benefits stream; unlike Google's product, o one else benefits from the CrowdWork.
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The flaw in the core of your logic is that you believe that in every transaction that involves money that there is one winner and one loser. The fact is that in most transactions involving money, both the buyer and the seller win.
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And you're forgetting that the producer is also a consumer: They're translating a game that they can then have access to in their native tongue, along with their friends who might not be able to speak English. By simplifying the relationships as you've done, you're twisting reality.
Or let's look at it another way: Someone likes to do something so much that they offer to do it for free; it just so happens that this thing they enjoy is translating. Perhaps they're a student or simply someone who would like to
Great potential... for both sides... (Score:2)
Open source development is open source-- everyone benefits.
If you don't think translating a game benefits you then don't translate it... I think this is great, that Valve builds a community of people dedicated to improved the gaming experience, just for fun.
Who knows maybe this community could in the long run get other/more responsibilities, build levels and mods, the more involved users are the better, both for the users and the publisher. I mean if the community grows strong, maybe it'll complain about DRM, lack of linux support or unfair user agreements. Who kn
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What about people who want to play that game but can't because of the language barrier? Would you suggest that they're not benefiting from a crowd-sourced translation?
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Apparently, people don't understand the difference between an open source development model, where the money is in support, and that of closed source development, where the money is in... development and support.
In essence, what's happening here is that Valve is getting done work for free because... I don't know. People think that Valve will think they're awesome and hire them? In the case of some rarer languages like Basque or Woloof, I can see that this would be a welcome labor of love. But what about Tag
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Except that there is no misperception. Everybody knows exactly how these translations will work: They will be placed into an app or game, available only to those who have installed that app or game -- which usually means paying for it. Unless you're really claiming that there are translators out there going "if I just finish this tran
Slashdot? (Score:2)
Posted by timothy...
An anonymous reader writes...
Is timothy going to split slashdot's ad revenue with anonymous?
So Steam is holding a gun to their heads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe has their children hostage? No?
So how are they "making" them do this.
Just wait until this moron finds out all the people being "made" to write linux code. Actually he has a minecraft section in his top menu, is he getting paid for that prime advertising spot? Or was he "made" to do that by the evil Mojang folk?
Scarcity, Paradise, King in Hell (Score:4, Interesting)
Images float through my head; the paradise of the end of scarcity, the oligarchs chanting that scarcity is what motivates the free market and so must be protected, then hiring legislators to pass laws to increase artificial scarcity, while capitalizing on the new option of non-scarcity to get free tools for advancing the market penetration of their artificially scarce goods.
It seems apparent that they would rather be kings in hell than peers in heaven.
Slashdot Commenter Community Slaving Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has decided to build a community effort to get its Slashdot news blog proof-read, edited and reviewed by the community, but here is the catch: commenters do not get paid. Millions could be saved by Slashdot by making the community work for free. The article [youtube.com] describes basic estimates on how much is saved by Slashdot in editing costs.
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So? (Score:3)
Languages like spanish have a huge number of variations (it's pretty much different in every country, heck, even inside the same country), and we end up enduring a washed-up version of an international spanish that's usually awful. Crowdsourced translations at least let you correct the translation and add variations that feel better for a speakers of a certain variation of the language.
One good example of this type of crowdsourced effort is subtitles. See "subtitulos.es" [subtitulos.es] for example. You can get a complete movie or series chapter translated in a few hours. From the basic result obtained there, several teams around the world further localize the language (for example to Argentinian spanish).
Someone think of the children! (Score:3)
If we want to translate the pages for free to help spread fun to those who don't speak English, I don't see why third parties should give a damn.
No one is forcing anyone to translate these pages. People not involved shouldn't get their panties in a twist. You're not looking out for us. We care more about helping those who would otherwise miss a good game find them.
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This.
As far as I can see nobody is being "forced" to do this. I don't see anything to back up the claims that they're preventing people in other countries from using their service until they've done some translation work for them, and I seriously doubt they're doing that.
So if people choose to, they can help out. They know what they're getting (nothing, except the satisfaction of sharing the fun), they're presumably individuals with their own minds who are capable of making their own decisions, so why doe
Steam eh ? (Score:2)
Welcome to the nineteenth century ! Next up: electricity.
Oh so it's about some game company never mind.
Why not translate open source applications (Score:2)
I do not see the sense in translating closed source games for free. The translation is usable only by the game company, most likely there is a clause somewhere stating the translator loses all rights to his/her work after submitting the translation to the game company.
Surely there are umpteen open source applications needing translation to any language. There the translation also becomes "free", so it can be used in other similar appliations or in other contexts.
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Worse than that - according to the summary/article it's "slavery" and Valve "make" them do it.
Not like these people volunteer and do it on their own time or anything... no, Steam "knows" they are foreign and won't let them play their games until they've translated enough...
It's like saying that Counterstrike "makes" people set up servers for it, or that Minecraft "makes" you create works of art.
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Open source is Free. You pay nothing for it.
Steam is literally an advertising platform used to shove corporate DRM-ware down your throat. Hell, Steam itself IS DRM.
You may not have to pay anything to get Steam itself - but what you're installing is a DRM and advertising platform.
Compare with something useful like a web browser or a complete operating system. Yeah, I'd say the two are slightly different.
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Red Hat makes money primarily on support and if you don't want to pay them, then you have other options, you can go without support or you can hire somebody else. With Steam, you pay for the product and support or you do without, the other option being piracy.
I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
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I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
Why? If Valve is "exploiting" volunteer translators, then Red Hat is "exploiting" volunteer coders.
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Not directed at parent
All enterprise, employment, volunteerism, etc. is, at their base, exploitation of people's skills and the people themselves. The rewards for doing it vary but somehow each who does is motivated in their own way. Even Open source *exploits* the talents of the developers. Every user is an exploiter.
So, yeah, Red Hat is exploiting. Steam is exploiting. We are all exploiting something and someone every day. (ok, maybe not you isolated desert island dwellers, but you can't see this,
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:4, Insightful)
Red Hat makes money primarily on support and if you don't want to pay them, then you have other options, you can go without support or you can hire somebody else. With Steam, you pay for the product and support or you do without, the other option being piracy.
I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
I know people like Steam and all but it's not the only legal option. If you don't like Steam you don't use it, games can still be purchased through other channels, but if someone does like Steam enough to go above and beyond giving them their money what's wrong with that?
On the other end of the equation, what's wrong with a corporation using volunteers? If they have people lining up to work for free on a project they can make some money off why wouldn't they let them? All they offered was a fuzzy feeling and people still lined up. This seems like a case of everyone getting what they want.
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You're really damn close to arguing the same way union labor does.
I have the right to charge whatever I want for my labor, all the way down to $0/hr. Is it fair to you if I can do the job better and don't need the money? No. Since when is a free market about fairness and not efficiency?
Free, volunteer labor is never wrong for a for-profit company. Its just wrong to those who would rather get paid while others are willing to do it for free.
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I know you intend this as some sort of ultra-libertarian "gotcha," but thank you. Unions did many great things, like ending company stores and putting a stop to the horrors of gilded-age child labor.
And frankly, while perhaps you have the right to charge whatever you want, maybe, employers do not have the right to pay whatever they want for labor. The minimum wage laws exist to prevent abuse of the workforce, and ensure a decent chance at self-sufficiency for all citizens. It's nice for you if you don't
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And frankly, while perhaps you have the right to charge whatever you want, maybe, employers do not have the right to pay whatever they want for labor. The minimum wage laws exist to prevent abuse of the workforce, and ensure a decent chance at self-sufficiency for all citizens. It's nice for you if you don't need the money, but you don't actually have some sort of god-given right to fuck over other people by undercutting the minimum wage.
Yes, yes I do. I'm pretty far to the left when it comes to politics, with regards to social safety nets, employee rights/safety, etc. But I'm also an individual with my own rights, and I have the right to work for free if I want to (and I do, since I can afford to).
The free market is a bitch, but its the only game in town. Don't whine that someone who can do the job better cheaper can and will do so. Its a losing argument, and there is *much* too much momentum behind that train for you to slow it down (i.e.
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The free market isn't magical, and it isn't the sole model of economic interaction in any economy. It's a model; a sometimes useful model, but a limited model which doesn't take into account vast ranges of human social and economic activity. It is also startlingly open to abuses where sensible regulation isn't imposed.
Also, I'd stop claiming that you support employee rights, since you're not even behind the right to a fair wage. Or, if you do keep claiming it, do so in a bar with people who actually HAVE
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The classics never go out of style.
And, to be less tongue-in-cheek, distinguishing between free and paid labor is certainly a far cry from demanding closed shops. And, frankly, free labor is, in a great variety of ways, inimical to the free market - it's the ultimate example of someone failing to price goods and services according to supply/demand. And for the company that leverages it, it is an unfair competitive advantage operating outside the market.
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Will the translators free work be freely available? If so, then this is great. If not, then there are problems.
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Will the translators free work be freely available? If so, then this is great. If not, then there are problems.
Indeed. Because Steam exercises considerable direction and control over their translators, they might be considered employees. AOL ran into minimum wage laws when they had forum moderators. Eventually, they had to pay them back pay.
It looks like they're about 75% done translating. [steampowered.com]
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Under federal law volunteers must be volunteering for a public sector, religious or non-profit institution. For profit entities are barred from profiting from volunteer labor. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp [dol.gov]
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It gets worse (Score:2)
Slashdot is a commercial entity and it profits from user submitted content for which it does not pay, user comments for which it does not pay AND has its moderation done by users, who, you guess it, it doesn't pay.
Pot calling kettle!
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Participating in free software like Linux and this are very different things.
Only by participating in free software do you realize its full potential; by translating text for free for a closed company you get no benefit at all.
Different, sure. "Very" different, no.
Let's assume that Valve isn't willing to fork out the money to translate their platform to those other languages. As the article estimates, it's expensive (and I agree it's expensive... a company I worked for paid about 26k per translation of the software they developed internally, and some languages are much more expensive than others, and those are usually the ones that have fewer users). So that'd make some sense, since their market may not be as large in those areas
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You get the benefit of having a game in your own language.
The benefit is also that otherwise Valve would have had to pay someone to do it , and they would have charged this to the customers.
So this way , a large group of people get translation without extra costs , and a small amount of people have the joy of being able to participate in translating a game.They don't want money, they just want to be recognized for what they did.
Offcourse, that doesn't make it open-source . If valve were to publish the trans
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That's totally bullshit. You can the same satisfaction from helping contribute to something you enjoy and want to promote.
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Oh, horseshit. There's nothing mystical about participating in community projects. And there's no friggin' 'secret information' to be gained.
If by 'realize' you mean 'use', you are axiomatically incorrect.
If by 'realize' you mean 'can modify', you are correct, but in a minuscule pool of users.
I use OpenWriter. I have zero interest modifying it. Not even those little irritations that have been around since 2008 at least.
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You get lots of benefit if you're a Korean who wants to use Steam.
Right. You get the benefit of Valve deciding to accept your money.
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So it's win/win. If things were the other way around, I'd happily translate Spanish or Japanese into English.
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So it's win/win. If things were the other way around, I'd happily translate Spanish or Japanese into English.
Actually, you've hit on probably the best test for fairness -- asking "what if things were the other way around?"
Let's say that I took a Spanish script and translated it into English and then charged, say $20/copy for that English version. Would Valve come along and write a video game around that script and then donate it to me so that I could bundle it with each $20 copy of the translated script?
Of course not.
So yeah, there ain't nobody forcing these people into freely giving their labor to Valve. But th
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It's pretty simple. If you work as a proper, paid translator, you get a salary from Valve. You don't mind them charging for games, because you get your own tiny cut. of the profits
If you work as a volunteer translator for an open source software project, you don't get any money. But you don't mind because you become a credited contributor- a copyright owner- on the programme. The software is given to you for free, and you get the warm fuzzy feeling that you contributed "for the greater good".
If you work as
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nobody is forcing them to do it for fucks sake!
No, but it is an asymmetric relationship which is shifting wealth (in the economic sense; the ability to satisfy wants, not cash) from one group of people to another. Such asymmetry is ever worthy of consideration, at least for anyone who loves the free market. The free market would be most efficient if all transactions were perfectly symmetric. Any who believe that there is value in maximizing GDP would do well to always contemplate asymmetric transactions, an
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Any who believes asymmetry is a good thing is an enemy of the free market; a thief and a brigand.
How efficient is a market where people want to play a game but can't for lack of a translation? Voluntary, self-interested transactions are the foundation of a free market; it has fuck all to do with "symmetry."
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The people who are able to do the translation could just play the game in it's native language, since they speak it anyway. They gain nothing. What this free translation does is allow Valve to profit by selling to customers it could not previously serve.
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I was quoting the parent, but goofed my HTML. Should've previewed.
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Some companies make money using open-source projects. Since the vast majority of people who contribute to open-source projects are unpaid volunteers you have basically made the argument that they should not volunteer at all. I thought it was solidly demonstrated through collaborative projects like open-source software that people will ply their skills for the sake of plying their skills regardless of personal gain, or lack thereof. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. [youtube.com]
Besides, who's to say Valve won't compensate t
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you have basically made the argument that they should not volunteer at all.
I have not.
In the context of open source, what I said implies that it would increase the GDP growth rate if companies which garner economic advantage from open source were to transfer some portion of their upside to those contributing developers who were otherwise sub-optimally compensated.
it was solidly demonstrated through collaborative projects like open-source software that people will ply their skills for the sake of plying thei
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Let me put it differently.
Say Valve didn't put any effort in translating the game , but they would just be text files , easily translatable by the people themselves.
What do you think will happen ?
That's right , some people will take the liberty to translate the files themselves , and post them on the internet. A lot of people would join in , basically becoming on open source project.
So are you expecting Valve to pay those translators ?
The only difference here is that Valve is the one proposing it , and prob
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It isn't a straw man because the parent said "his objection is to doing work for free", as if somehow they were being coerced into doing it.
Again, you are misunderstanding the objection. Do you care that there may be more to the argument than you realize or are you only interested in declaring how stupid anyone with a different opinion must be?
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And do you care to explain what more there is?
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And do you care to explain what more there is?
I already did in another post in this same thread.
It was written in response to someone who didn't seem so absolutely dead-set on framing the debate as being stupid vs obvious.
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End of empirical part. Although linguistically incorrect, I assume you meant "isn't anybody". "Ain't nobody" actually means someone is.
"But that doesn't make Valve any less scummy for encouraging it, much less simply taking it when, if the tables were reversed, they would never do such a thing themselves."
"Scummy" is such an evidentiary term, isn't it? Someone accepting donations is scummy how? This assumes,
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You might want to read the summary: "Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free." Notice the word "making".
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his objection is to doing work for free for an entity you're giving your money to.
I take it you never volunteer for any public programs, either, since you have already paid your taxes?
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That's what I was hoping they meant by translation... oh well. Can't be too terribly much work to port it over from the OS X build can there?
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They're not being paid in cash. They just enjoy it! Unbelievable!
Someone should stop Valve before it's too late.
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The difference is that it's OK to volunteer for a non-profit or charitable organization, but illegal when it's a for profit entity that's profiting from the labor. The reason being that it makes it harder for companies to pressure employees to work off the clock so that they don't get laid off in the future.
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp [dol.gov]
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Are community translations that awful when the process consists of receiving multiple distinct translations for each entry, with the community voting on them, causing many of those that should be deleted not even being considered?
If each line requires a sufficient number of up-votes before getting preliminary approval (and even being looked at by the one person the company hired who is a fluent reader of the language) most of the crap should hopefully be filtered out.
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Free fan translation that doesn't directly benefit (and isn't directly at the behest of) the corporation in question is pretty different than a company actively seeking and encouraging free translations and profiting from them.
Also, not everyone benefits (in a legal sense), and, given the much, much weaker quality control of most (not all, but most) free translations by amateurs, it's not a clear win in non-financial terms 100% of the time.
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We expect for-profit companies to pay for work. That's been a constant since, well, at least the 19th century, and it's not a bad thing.
And, for fuck's sake, I'm tired of this "they'll have to distribute costs to the consumers" bullshit. Costs can also come out of other parts of the operating budget, out of the initial profits from expanded sales - a company expanding its market into new areas doesn't necessarily have to be funded by a price-hike, and in many cases, shouldn't - like when a retailer largel
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Which is a perfect reason Google Translate should be refined to automate the translation process.