Poll: Do you retain projects you have completed and, if yes, for how long? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you retain projects you have completed and, if yes, for how long?".
This poll was originally submitted by Norman Buhagiar. View the poll results »
| | | | | Indefinitely | Oct 10, 2021 |
That’s one of the reasons it took me so long to prepare my move from Brussels to Lisbon in 2015: I had accumulated lots and lots of translation projects on paper, floppy disks, CDs, memory pens and external drives. I made a good selection of the old stuff and kept everything since the turn of the century. In over 30 years and if my memory doesn’t fail me I believe I’ve only been asked once to delete the original and the translation after completion.
| | | | Mario Freitas 
Brazil
Local time: 18:21
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| I keep them all forever | Oct 11, 2021 |
They are in my TMs! Even if the client asks me to erase all files and confirm, I'll still have them all in my TM"s. If I receive a revised version of the same document in two years, for example, it will all be there.
Ah, but you've signed an NDA with this and that...
It's never too much to repeat that (1) no NDA is above any intellectual property law, so you better know your rights well; (2) No clause in any NDA is able to force you to erase YOUR intellectual property.
[Edited... See more They are in my TMs! Even if the client asks me to erase all files and confirm, I'll still have them all in my TM"s. If I receive a revised version of the same document in two years, for example, it will all be there.
Ah, but you've signed an NDA with this and that...
It's never too much to repeat that (1) no NDA is above any intellectual property law, so you better know your rights well; (2) No clause in any NDA is able to force you to erase YOUR intellectual property.
[Edited at 2021-10-11 01:09 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Michael Harris
Germany
Local time: 23:21
Member (2006)
German to English
I keep the projects for no longer than 10 years then I delete them unless specified otherwise.
If the content is in my TM then it is there, but if the TM is from the customer, then I do not use it because they are usually project specific.
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I keep most of my projects indefinitely, which in practice means until I have changed computers a couple of times.
I used to save each month's completed work onto a diskette or two, then delete the files from the computer to save memory. Later I started using CDs for a year's work. Then I went over to an external hard drive, but I would probably have difficulty finding anything from more than five or six years back. I have never needed to so so.
Many projects, but not a... See more I keep most of my projects indefinitely, which in practice means until I have changed computers a couple of times.
I used to save each month's completed work onto a diskette or two, then delete the files from the computer to save memory. Later I started using CDs for a year's work. Then I went over to an external hard drive, but I would probably have difficulty finding anything from more than five or six years back. I have never needed to so so.
Many projects, but not all of them, are in my TMs, and if a client asks me to delete particularly sensitive files, I do so.
Where they are personal documents, I may not use the CAT tool at all - they are not always electronically readable. If I use the CAT, I can set the TM not to update as I work, i.e. as read-only. I may lock names, addresses and immediately identifiable details, so they are not stored, or sometimes I delete them from the TM afterwards.
The identifiable names and addresses etc. are really no use in a TM, and increase the volume unnecessarily, but it takes too much time to remove all of them consistently. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
| 1 month at most | Oct 11, 2021 |
I mostly work with subtitling projects, which of course always deal with video files. If I keep them forever, I'd be running out of space quickly and would need to buy new SSDs every 3 months. That's not the most cost efficient practice in my book.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 23:21
French to English
I keep everything indefinitely. You never know when it might come in handy. I have sometimes unearthed a term I translated over a decade ago.
| | | | Liena Vijupe
Latvia
Local time: 00:21
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
+ ...
Every project I finish is moved to the recycle bin after delivery, if it even exists on my computer at all (some clients use their own online or remote systems). From there it can still be recovered for some time in case there is a problem.
Some projects can also be found in e-mails and I keep a TM for a few clients who don't provide it if I expect similar work in future.
I have never needed a project which had already been deleted and couldn't be found anywhere.
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