TechGist05

This is a guest post by Mats Linder on the data privacy and security issues around the use of public MT services in professional translator use scenarios. As I put this post together, I can hear Mark Zuckerberg giving his testimony on Capitol Hill to shockingly ignorant questions from legislators who don't really have a clue. This is not so different from the naive and somewhat ignorant comments I also see in blogs in the translation industry, on the data privacy issue with MT. The looming deadlines of the GDPR legislation have raised the volume of discussion on the privacy issue, but unfortunately not the clarity. GDPR will now result in some companies being fined, and since there is a possibility to calculate what it costs not to do it right, many companies are being much more careful, at least in Europe. But as the Guardian said: " If it’s rigorously enforced (which could be a big “if” unless data protection authorities are properly resourced) it could blow a massive hole i...

This is a guest post by Christine Bruckner, that looks into the Data and Information Security issue with free online MT services from a translators perspective. She was kind enough to do a summary translation of a longer article she recently wrote in German, referenced below.This subject is closely related to my previous post and shows that this issue is gaining in visibility and prominence. Jost Zetzsche has also written about this MT security and data privacy issue, and some of you may have noticed our Twitter banter on the Google Translate security policy. Jost feels that this text from a FAQ suggests that use of the Translator API overrides the "Your Content in our Services" policy, even though the legal language in the Terms of Service very clearly states the following: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create ...