The dogs bark, the caravan goes on

Note. As far as I know, the closest English equivalent of the title is "the moon does not heed the barking of dogs", but I really didn't like it. I think something like "the moon shines while the dogs bark" would be more correct because the idea is that all parts continue doing what they were doing: the dogs continue barking, the caravan continues moving, and they actually have no relation to each other.

The idea to make service providers pay for the services they provide is indeed great. This is something that fascinated everyone in the translation community, and this is probably one of the most lively discussed topics at the moment.

What happened? L10NBridge announced they are going to work with their vendors only through their Translation Workspace. It's provided on software-as-a-service basis, and you have to pay a monthly fee for using it.

What is it for the vendors? Basically this is that you have to pay for the possibility to provide your services to LionBridge - something that Tom Sawyer invented loooooong ago, and I don't know if he was the first to do that.

What is it for LionBridge? Honestly, I don't think they just want to make extra money, though "you never can tell about bees", especially if you're not a bee. I think their main idea is... to streamline, to increase efficiency, to differentiate - and all sorts of those concinnous words which mean doing things better than you normally did.

What is it for onlookers? All the vendors use lots of other software in order to provide their services - and they don't mind paying for all those pieces of software. All the vendors agree to pay for portals like ProZ etc. LionBridge offered a sort of combination, and the problem is that LionBridge is not a third party in this game. Will we one day see vendors force customers to pay for purchasing services exclusively from them? Why not?

What is going to happen? I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world, but neither the most stupid one. And I do believe LionBridge management is at least more or less the same. Doing what they did, they expected the vendors' reaction to be like this. They expected to make vendors unhappy, they expected many vendors to say good-bye to them, they expected "much ado about nothing". And they think they can handle it. They think they will be going on - and what is more important, they will be going on in the direction they chose. On the other hand, their vendors will go on as well, and their directions will be not bad, too. So, no matter how loud the dogs bark, both LionBridge's and vendors' caravans will be going on.