Friday, 24 October 2014

T4J: a new business model for journalists?

This blogger has just unearthed an item that arrived a few weeks ago, only to be buried beneath an avalanche of incoming correspondence.  It relates to T4J, or Translators for Journalists if you want to be formal about it.  T4J's rubric runs like this:
Faced with digitization and a daunting task only they can do, professional journalists in every country must overcome the same problem: reporting the facts despite increasingly limited resources. T4J is a high-quality, low-cost means for journalists to obtain content, credit [corresponding to the author's moral rights -- not easy in jurisdictions like the UK in which works written for the purpose of reporting current events or to works published in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical: see the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, s.79] and income [corresponding to the author's economic right]. Translators for Journalists (T4J) is a multilingual marketplace allowing professional journalists to buy and sell content, translated by expert linguists at local prices.

It is backed by a network of professional translators in 181 countries with long-standing experience in translating press articles in 67 languages.
... 
T4J translators monitor on-line media in their working language for articles of potential interest to foreign journalists. Exclusively with the copyright owners’ permission, T4J linguists translate and publish relevant excerpts, free of charge, allowing foreign journalists to decide whether to purchase and publish the full translation. The translator and copyright owner are paid a commission on each sale, maximizing the credit and income they gain from their work.

What it costs

The price of each article depends on the volume of text and the location of the translator: T4J linguists specify translation prices according to their domestic market, thus optimizing costs for buyers.

On average, it costs 50% less to translate an article than to write it (Sources: Journalist rates, JuriTravail Aug. 2014; Translation rates, Inttranews Aug. 2014).

What you get
- T4J articles written by fellow journalists, for trustworthy content.
- T4J articles written by foreign journalists, for different content.
- T4J articles unindexed by search engines, for new content.
- T4J articles for sale worldwide, for a new source of revenue.
The role of a proactive licensing agent-cum-translator looks like an interesting emerging business model that is ideally suited to the internet era.  Do any readers have experience of this kind of work?

1 comment:

Hugues Mantoux said...

Unfortunately, given the low-price/low quality model of this venture, the odds are against the project.