What is a Language Specialist and how does Gengo manage the LS team?

Our Language Specialists are the experts of their language pair. They review translations, create resources, and assist with project-related tasks as well as assess our pool of translators, ensuring high translation quality. Here are some frequently asked questions about the LS team and how Gengo manages them.

Who are the LSs?

Many LSs have a full-time job or are full-time freelance translators that work with several clients besides Gengo. Most of these LSes weren’t Gengo translators before joining us, and don’t have the habit of picking up and working on Gengo’s translation jobs as much as our translators do. However, they sometimes help translate long-pending collections that aren’t attractive for our translators when specifically requested by Gengo staff.

A number of our LSs had already been working with Gengo for a while as translators and got promoted to an LS position by the Gengo team because of their excellent track record and professional attitude. These types of LSs are usually hired for language pairs that already have at least one LS.

You can read more about some of our LSs in their interviews: Meryem (EN>FR/FR-CA), Anna (EN>UK), Gabriela (EN>ES-LA), Sara (EN>PT), Regina (EN>BG)

Gengo has high expectations for LS performance, and we carry out regular quality checks for both their Review and Translation work. Depending on the number of LSs in a language pair, we either assign them peer review sessions or outsource the evaluation to a third party.

What will happen if an LS delivers a poor-quality review or translation?

In the contract LSs sign with Gengo, they agree to “be objective and fair in their reviews, and demonstrate high-quality translation skills.” If there are any issues with the reviews, the LSs undergo a retraining session to make sure they are following Gengo’s reviewing guidelines. Additionally, Gengo has a one-strike policy for submitting poor quality translations: LSs are first given a severe warning and then the LS agreement is terminated in the event of a second offense, depending on the severity of the issue.

LSs undergo performance reviews just like all Gengo employees do. They receive their first performance review after their first few weeks working as a reviewer. After we've provided them with feedback, we continue to monitor their improvement in the following weeks. We communicate with our LSes frequently and give them advice on how to improve when we notice any issues.

How does the Gengo team know that an LS is not claiming most jobs in their pair?

We manage and treat the LSs just like we do our translators when it comes to translation jobs. There are several ways in which the Gengo team monitors the activity of both our translators and LSs, such as how quickly they pick up jobs, and how much volume they claim. If our system detects any user, regardless of whether they are an LS or reviewer, who is picking up an unusually high percentage of the total volume, we immediately look into the case to check whether there's an issue. However, when it comes to LSs picking up jobs, it is usually Gengo staff who asks for their help to translate specific pending collections when there aren’t enough translators willing to work on them.

Can an LS request a GoCheck on my translation?

No, LSs don’t have the ability to do so. Our system generates most of the GoChecks at random, and the LSs review whatever the system sends to them. They can’t choose what they want or don’t want to review.

You might ask: but why do I receive several GoChecks in a row sometimes? The GoCheck system is designed to check a certain amount of volume per translator based on different factors, so there are times when the number of GoChecks you receive may increase. Besides regular quality checks selected at random, the system also requests checks for jobs based on other additional factors, such as low customer rating, prior low GoCheck scores, and rejected jobs, among others.

How does Gengo know if an LS is performing unfair reviews?

Our GoCheck review system automatically calculates the GoCheck score based on our proprietary formula, and the LSs have no control over this score. (Read more) Additionally, there are several ways in which we monitor reviews to ensure that they comply with our reviewing guidelines.

One of the ways in which we monitor reviews is by tracking translator requests for re-reviews to make sure that the LSs carry out GoChecks fairly and accurately. If we find that an LS receives many re-review requests from different translators and the results of the second reviews often turn out to be very different from the original one, we further investigate to see if any retraining is necessary.

(This is a sample of our monitoring dashboard)

We also check the amount and the percentage of each error severity (critical, medium, low) marked by individual LSs in their reviews, along with the percentage of GoChecks that result in a low score (<7). Looking at this data, we know whether there are inconsistencies in reviewing and can identify any existing patterns.