ProZ.com is acquiring TM-Town

Is there any Blue Board or something of the sort with feedback about outsources from previous service providers in TM-Town?

CafeTran Training wrote:

Last year we had a discussion about the quality of the message editor (smartphone-compatibility, integration of images etc.).

Will the acquisition of TM-Town bring the discussed improvements any closer?

Henry Dotterer wrote:

Maybe I will open a new thread on that, as we would like feedback.

Kevin Dias wrote:

Hi Sandra,



Great question!

No, not currently. However, this is one area where I think being part of ProZ.com will be a great benefit. We plan to explore ways that we can make use of the ProZ.com Blue Board on TM-Town to help TM-Town members evaluate potential outsourcers.

Eva Giner wrote:

Para los traductores como yo que trabajamos con idiomas diferentes del inglés es un problema porque yo, por ejemplo, leo y escribo en italiano y español. No puedo acceder a herramientas nuevas sin entender bien lo que están proponiendo. Lo siento!

Michael J.W. Beijer wrote:
The TM-Town acquisition has just been covered on Slator...

Have a look: https://slator.com/ma-and-funding/ma-wave-reaches-platforms-proz-com-buys-tm-town/

- What is the prime motivation behind ProZ.com’s acquisition of TM-Town?

TM-Town has developed a proprietary approach to "matching" -- and by that I mean facilitating connections between those who require translation services and those who offer them -- that is superior to traditional approaches, both in its efficiency and in its ability to identify the best translators for a given type of material. So TM-Town will help ProZ.com's translator members to more readily obtain work in their ideal fields, while helping ProZ.com's translation company users to find translators more quickly and effectively.

- In your news release, you say you will offer joint membership “in the short term.” Will that happen in the next 6 months? 12 months?

That may have been poorly worded. We plan to offer joint membership, which will be made available soon.

- Will this future joint membership come with any changes in TM-Town’s UI? Will the Basic membership plan still be free? If so, will anything change in the (Basic) offer?

The TM-Town membership options will not change as a result of the acquisition.

- Will the TM-Town team help design the ProZ.com UI? Or vice versa? Or are the two teams already working on a single portal design?

We do not have plans to merge the UI's. API-based feature integrations are likely. We will be taking ideas and feedback from our customers into account as we plan such integrations.

- How was the acquisition justified in numbers? Did the TM-Town acquisition give ProZ.com any new revenue stream apart from subscriptions? Any new projects apart from what exists today (two separate websites), say, new tools?

ProZ.com serves translators and translation companies, providing them with tools and opportunities to expand their businesses and work more effectively. In acquiring TM-Town, ProZ.com obtains an additional option to add to its suite of member services. We expect the return on investment to come in the form of a more valuable membership offering, and in turn, an increased number of translator and translation company members.

- What is the new group’s combined headcount?

21 people.

- Will any office close or move location?

No.

- Is ProZ.com still on the lookout for other possible acquisitions? If so, how would you describe the likely candidate?

We would consider acquiring other companies that offer products or services of value to translators and translation companies. Companies that have unique and useful technologies, including those that would benefit from an enhanced ability to reach larger audiences of translation professionals, could be suitable candidates.

- One user feedback on the TM-Town blog said the acquisition may be ProZ.com’s way of eliminating the competition, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the user goes on to say that, “TM-Town (even with its paid membership) looked like a sensible alternative to PROZ, and now I'm not so sure about that.” Would you like to react to that?

The TM-Town approach is essentially to use natural language processing to match translation providers and translation buyers on the basis of actual texts. The ProZ.com approach relies heavily on review of profiles. Both approaches will continue to be needed, and offered. A blended approach can also be imagined.

- What was the ethos behind the ProZ.com UI? Because another comment on the TM-Town blog said, “am curious to see what effect this will have on Proz.com's ancient website design. Don't get me wrong, I love most of the functionality of the site, the active KudoZ area and the forums, but the design looks like it probably did when the site was first launched back in the 90s.” What was behind the decision to keep the UI that way?

We have always tried to be the "Walmart" of translation job matching, which is to say that it is our goal to deliver tremendous value at a very low cost, without necessarily a lot of fanfare or polish. Using this approach, we have been able to offer over forty custom-developed services to our members while charging no commission whatsoever on jobs passed -- this value proposition is almost unheard of among freelancer websites.

In short, we developed a minimalist interface at the outset, and to the extent that it hasn't "broken" over the years, we have directed our development attention to creating new services.

That said, this approach has its limits, and the criticism about the UI being outdated is valid. We do intend to update certain aspects of the interface to conform more closely with modern expectations.

- What’s your take on the future of the translation industry over the next 2-3 years?

Thanks to the maturing and convergence of translation memory, machine translation and project management technologies, we are well into a productivity boom that notably has not sacrificed quality. While that convergence continues, an additional boost will be obtained when translation buyers start seeing to it that the best possible translators are assigned to every job, given the content particular to each. It is my impression that up to now, buyers have underestimated, or perhaps have not really considered, how much faster and better translators can work when they are assigned to jobs that require little or no research because what they need to know is already in their brains, translation memories, and even their own personally trained MT engines. To put it differently, "the last mile" will be reached in the translation supply chain; translators will no longer be faceless.

Tom in London wrote:

Simple question:

What does TM Town do that Proz doesn't already do? Proz already brings me lots of direct clients who find me through my profile.

Tom in London wrote:

Simple question:

What does TM Town do that Proz doesn't already do? Proz already brings me lots of direct clients who find me through my profile.


[Edited at 2016-04-18 14:09 GMT]