Privacy Policy
Translation Commons was created specifically with ‘commons’ as a founding principle. A commons is a shared resource that supports its community on an equal basis. The Language Services community is comprised of individuals, business entities, cultural groups and (most recently) digital presences. Just as those who venture onto common land and who are still bound to observe the laws of that land, those who participate in Translation Commons must remain law abiding members.
This Privacy Policy explains what your privacy means in the context of a shared resource based on the principles of openness. Translation Commons needs users to submit certain items of information that are required to create your unique, personal profile that will allow you access to the resources that we consider beneficial to the work of the language community. We are a nonprofit organization, and we offer tools to translators, interpreters, engineers and others who wish to communicate in multilingual affairs. We are not Language Service Providers who charge clients fees for the work done with the resources on our site. We exist uniquely to facilitate users to work to their own ends in their own relationship with clients. We do not share any information you provide to us with any other individual, organization or business entity. Should we be required to, we would comply with that requirement only with your explicit permission unless legally bound or compelled to in a need to obey the law.
Should you have questions or feel that your privacy is being or has been compromised at any time and in any manner by your use of the Translation Commons website, we ask you to contact us giving full details of your concerns.
Information you submit
- If you wish to register to become a member of Translation Commons, you are required to provide certain personal information like your name and email address, and we ask that you also provide a username and password. Your personal information is used only to create and validate your account with Translation Commons and allow you access to the tools we provide.You may be required to submit personal information on sites to which our links direct you and we strongly recommend you separately read any thirdparty’s own Privacy Policy.
- If you wish to use the tools Translation Commons offers to assist in translation, localization, internationalization or other such tasks, you may need to upload data like translation memories, glossaries or other reference materials to make use of them. These still remain your intellectual property, for which you are fully responsible, unless you agree to share their content for community use. Translation Commons is a working space not a market place. Its sole intended use is to facilitate translation work and to allow language professionals to conduct their activities either on an individual or group basis based on mutually agreed terms of acting in good faith. Our policy of dealing with violations of trust are addressed in our Terms and Agreements.
Cookies
A “cookie” is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer and stored on your hard drive when you visit a website and is a standard feature of most websites. We set and access cookies on your computer upon your first visit to Translation Commons and that cookie is sent to your computer to uniquely identify your browser. Most browsers are set up to accept cookies by default, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Please note that if you reject or delete cookies, you will not be able to sign in to your Translation Commons account or take full advantage of our tools.
We use cookies for our own general purposes as follows:
- to track your preferences, such as the address or local zip code you enter
- to access your information when you sign in so we can provide you with your personalized content to help us improve Translation Commons by analyzing and estimating usages. We do not have advertisements on our website and do not use tracking cookies or targeted advertisements of third party entities.
Other information we collect
There are instances when we need to log your presence when you visit the Translation Commons website:
- each visit is logged according to the network’s protocols. Any information collected in this
process is used only for administrative purposes such as troubleshooting problems or for user
validation and so on - any information gathered may be collated for the purposes of capacity planning or other
resources management tasks - data can be stored in the form of backups required in the event that server restoration, renewal or expansion is required.
Changing Information
You have the ability to modify or delete from our database any user information you have submitted to us. You may do this by accessing and updating your profile. As mentioned above, information that we have copied may remain in backup storage for some period of time after your request, and that if you delete certain information you may not be able to order services in the future without resubmitting such information. Also, please note that we will store information in our database whenever we are required to do so by law.
Email Privacy
Translation Commons offers community members the opportunity to have their personal community email address (e.g. [email protected] ). This is intended to facilitate individual and group communication within the community. This service is kindly provided by Google to nonprofit organizations like Translation Commons.
Any member of Translation Commons who takes advantage of this service is urged to read and understand Google’s own Privacy Policy.
In general terms, it is worth stating that email privacy, without some security precautions, can be
compromised because:
- email messages are generally not encrypted
- email messages are routed through intermediate computers before reaching their destination,
which means that others can intercept messages and compromise privacy - it should be noted that intermediate service providers can store copies of email messages on
their mail servers before they are delivered and may be backedup
with backups remaining there for an indeterminate period of time, despite deletion from your or an addressee’s mailbox - the “Received:”fields and other information in the email can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication
Any breaches of privacy should be reported to Translation Commons immediately giving full details of your concerns.
Links to other websites or resources
Translation Commons contains links to other websites and webbased
resources. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any such other website and strongly suggest you review their user agreements and privacy policies and assess how they may differ from Translation Commons prior to submitting any information and agreeing to any terms and conditions of those websites.
Age Restriction
In common with many sites, Translation Commons is not intended for and may not be used by children under the age of 13. We are committed to protecting the privacy needs of children and we encourage parents and guardians and other responsible members of the community to take an active role in monitoring children’s online activities and interests. We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13. Any community member who knows of any user violating this restriction is asked to report this to us immediately. In this unlikely event, while respecting the privacy of any children involved, we would pass full details on to relevant authorities to deal with as required.
Security
Translation Commons takes all reasonable measures to ensure the safe storage and maintenance of data. Unfortunately it seems that total security cannot be achieved as current
computer technology exists. This situation does not deter us from doing whatever we can to implement measures that will make security breaches more difficult if not impossible. Any suggestions any members of the community may have in this respect will be welcome. We also would welcome open debate on security in the community. Laws differ from country to country and our particular function of catering to a multilingual, multicultural and global community may in fact yield ideas that other communities can learn from. Finally, please note that any breaches of security that may occur will be dealt with to the full letter of law and intruders expelled from further participation in the community.
Updates to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy at any time. If under any such update we make any material change to the way in which we treat your User Information, we will inform you. Any updated version of this Privacy Policy will be effective in all specified respects as declared at the time of its publication.
