Dear Mrs Tan,

I hate to say I have found myself lately in the very awkward position of having to use your "report abuse" feature for mentioning an issue my fellow translator Mr Carlbahnson seem to be at the root of.

Had I known that "reporting abuse" is but a mere click devoid of any explanation-dedicated field, I would probably have refrained from resorting to such a harsh tool. I am sorry it turned out this way and kindly ask for Mr Carlbahnson understanding, yet the harm is done by now and there's no turning back, unless you can cancel the reporting at administrator's level.

My concern is the following : Much as I subscribe to the notion of qualified translators wishing to edit my work on jobs I am currently performing for you - which is the spirit of crowd sourcing, after all - I nevertheless disapprove of systematic pettifogging as Mr Carlbahnson all to often seems to fall prey to.

What's the good of forcefully turning "We are" into "We're" or "Are not" into "Aren't", adding unnecessary comas and quotation marks ?
I want to believe points cumulation is not the driving force at play.

But more disturbing is the following : How can someone with seemingly impressive records as a professional translator, pretending to be in a corrector's position, make such gross grammatical and lexical mistakes as :

- "besides" as a conjunction mistaken for "beside" as a determinative ?
- "recommend you to do something" instead of "recommend you do something" ?
- "entrust someone something" instead of "entrust someone with something" ?
- ignoring the widespread contemporary expression "cool feature" when referring to software tools ?

(All above examples needing but one flash Google search or online dictionary browsing to jump to the eye)

Far for considering me perfect, I gladly welcome all truly correcting input whenever I slip (for instance when I remissly write "they" instead of "their", what most experienced proofreaders perfectly identify as a "bug")

That being said, why not have the elementary courtesy to be willing to regard some of my wording choices as meaningful, partaking from a bigger picture of stylish understandability ? A truly seasoned professional can't but acknowledge that, for example, I precisely chose to write "are not" instead of less formal "aren't" in a certain occasion because I felt stressing the "not" conveyed the idea of "impossibility" or "forbiddance" in a better way.

Be it what it may, I am confident my message will come across to the benefit of all seriously committed translators wishing to give their best to the Translia community.

Perhaps a further "cool feature" you could successfully implement would be the ability to directly comment on one's own and others' editing work at segment level (via a field), thus helping some runaway overeager translator to excuse him/herself when blatantly unneeded.

Looking forward to keeping high standards in every respect at Translia,

Yours sincerely,

Panglosse

Owing by his records, this estimated colleague of mine