Whenever I've done a job where it involves downloading a word doc and translating it, I've always done the translation underneath each phrase/sentence/paragraph. This is because the source text isn't side-by-side with the block for the target.
I had a 'compliance error' that took 3 points off my score because, "There is no reason to include the source text along with the translated text in files unless the customer specifically requests it."
Can someone point out where that rule is? As I've said, I've been doing word doc translations this way for a long, long time and never saw this.
Should/can I dispute that score? (if no, can someone show me where it says this and I'll be happy to take my lumps.) :-)
Link to the review- https://review.gengo.com/check/544a1638927f11ebbd810a7547e9b98f?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email
Thanks for any help anyone can give me!
Happy Easter!
support
9 comments
Hi Cheryl - the "Target" field of the workbench is designed for only the translation to be entered, in the Target language, as all examples demonstrate in the Translator Workbench support article. Copying & pasting the source to the target field in order to avoid having to scroll is acceptable only as long as you remove the source and leave only the target when you submit, or, as the feedback you received states, the client specifically requests so. This is because when the job gets sent back to the customer, they should receive only the translation, and having the source and translation alternate within the same text is disrupting, and means that they will now have to go through the additional manual work of removing everything bit of the source that you left in.
I am not quite sure why or how this has flown under the radar if you do this as regularly as you claim, or whether it's more of an occasional thing and none of these jobs happened to get picked up for a GoCheck.
As for the score deducted, this is calculated automatically based on the severity of the error against the length of the text.
In the future, if you continue to copy&paste the source for easy visibility, please be sure to remove it before you submit the completed job. Please also do keep in mind that you can change the view of the workbench anytime to suit your needs, as per the below:
Hope this helps!
Lara
I always delete the source from text files. But what does everyone do with excel files?
Often, with excel files, customers will specify that they want the source left in one column with the translation in the column next to it.
Sometimes however there is no such comment, just the source text in one column and another blank column next to it that has been expanded to match the width of the source text column.
What would you do in such a situation if the customer does not respond to any queries regarding this in the comments? Based on the formatting in these cases, it seems likely that they are looking to have the translation placed in the second column, but as there is the chance that it could get you docked points on a review, do you think it would be better just the send the file with only the translated text until otherwise told to do so?
@collinmradford -- At the moment, the Gengo platform can only conduct GoChecks on workbench jobs (not file jobs). We're working on a better implementation so we'll be able to conduct GoChecks on file jobs, though :)
The case you describe, however, is different from Cheryl's above. In her case, since we're speaking specifically about a workbench job, the flow is usually this:
Customer orders entire job - job gets parsed and broken down into segments - translators translate the segments on the workbench - upon submission, the job gets "reassembled" so to speak into one, and this is what the customer will receive. Because of this, leaving the source text here and there affects the process and results in the disruption I mentioned above to Cheryl.
This is quite different than translating on the blank column next to the source text of an excel file for the sake of clarity, since nothing will be moved around or reassembled upon delivery :)
For a .doc (text-based file), however, I would still definitely recommend removing the source in its entirety unless otherwise specified. For an .excel sheet, you can use your best judgement (and, of course, you can also always ask the customer what they prefer).
Hi Lara,
Thanks for your explanation. Unfortunately, this job wasn't a workbench job. It was a download to word, translate and re-upload as a word doc. Can you speak to that (like, is that somewhere in the guidelines)? Can I appeal it? This particular job had a ton of HTML markup within it that the client wanted me to leave in the translation (I asked). Thanks again for your help and patience.
Hi Cheryl -- Thanks for clarifying! That's super helpful as I was under the impression that we hadn't implemented yet the feature to conduct GoChecks on file jobs, but I guess I was wrong on that one. We definitely don't encourage the practice of leaving the source text in the translation (except, as I mentioned before, if the customer specifically requests it, or in cases like excel files as mentioned by @colinmradford), but I can definitely see how that's not clearly stated anywhere and perhaps we assumed that it'd be common understanding without realizing it might not be the case. Let me double check with the team and see what can be done :)
Praise God and Hallelujah! :-)
My takeaway: for next time, I'll use excel for the heavy lifting and past the original in column A with my translation in column B and then copy/paste column B into word for upload. :-)
Thanks again for your help and patience.
Hi Cheryl -- I can't promise the score will be overturned, though :) I'm checking with the team to see if perhaps we have it written somewhere and I'm not aware of it. If it's not anywhere, then I'll see what can be done in terms of the score, and coordinate so the information is clearly out there going forward.
However, please note that the solution is not to change .doc files into .excel and submit in that format, which may not be accepted (a customer can set which formats they wish to receive.) The best thing for you to do in such a case would be to still work on a .doc, and simply remove the source before you upload.
Got it- thanks!
Hi Cheryl -- thank you for your patience while I looked into this :)
After looking at our Support articles, etc, I can confirm that we didn't have it in writing anywhere that you're not supposed to leave the source text in unless otherwise instructed. This is certainly our bad -- I guess we assumed this wouldn't happen so, in a way, I would like to thank you for bringing this up so we can actually improve our communications in this regard. With that said, here's what's going to happen next:
Additionally, I have a request from our Quality Team. If you still have the file for this job, could you please remove the source text from it and send it to our Support team so they can deliver that to the customer, as a courtesy for their trouble? We'd appreciate your cooperation with this, and you can mention to them that I requested this.
Thank you, Cheryl, for highlighting this issue so we could take appropriate action :)
Lara