History: Freelance Translator

Could massively collaborative technologies save freelance translators from extinction by allowing them to bid on parts of large contracts without giving up their autonomy and by allowing them to share expertise within the context of a world-wide community of practice?

Please tell us what you think about that below.

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Many tools like translation memories, custom terminology database and workflow management systems are somewhat geared to provide a competitive advantage to large organizations that can pool human and language resources.

This is sometimes perceived as threatening to the survival freelance translators.

However, could it be that same technologies, employed in a completely wiki-like open, collaborative fashion might provide freelancers with similar advantages?

For exemple:

• A free, open terminology database (see: Open wiki-like translation resources ).
• A large, free, open translation memory (see: Open wiki-like translation resources )
• Systems that allow organizations to have documents translated through a loosely coordinated community of paid professional translators. (see Organisations leveraging amateur volunteer translators )

Is this alternate future possible? Is it desirable?