I have been wondering for a while about the loose word groups of jobs in the JA-EN pair. A while back many 1 word jobs were posted separately and at least now they are grouped together in groups, but I am wondering what gengo's stance on these kinds of jobs is.
I took a couple (both about 500 jobs) but they were tiring jobs, with no context whatsoever, and through the process I honestly thought about whether it would not be better for the customer to just google the words or look them up in a dictionary (?!) Needless to say I ended up exhausted. I saw some jobs disappearing in the beginning so I guess other translators took them as well, but now there have been groups of jobs there for days, all around 500 or 1000 jobs, that nobody is taking (probably because the experience was as bad as mine.) Occasionally I find that one group has gone from 500 to 498 and back on the dashboard again.
I guess this is not really a question haha... but it's really hard to browse through the dashboard for "real" jobs sometimes.
16 comments
Good job getting through it all, Lara!
I would like to know more about this type of job as well.
I am currently working on a group of 500 jobs from what I assume is the same client. It is of course extremely time-consuming, as every other entry requires some amount of googling. What I am concerned about, however, is that a couple of them are impossible to translate, whether it be because of lack of context or spelling errors. The client's instructions state that there is no need to try to translate the cryptic ones. I am basically finished working on this job group, but I have a few words that are quite impossible to translate, and trying to do so anyway would simply be unethical. So, my question is: what do I do? I have about 14 hours left on the clock. Do I cancel the job, leaving only those I cannot translate, or do I wait until the allocated time runs out? If I cancel the job group, what will happen to the remaining jobs within it? Will they re-appear as a new group of only those 15 jobs?
Thanks Kristoffer!
I believe you can cancel the job if you really cannot translate those 15 jobs and it will reappear in the dashboard as a group of 15 jobs. All the others you have submitted won't be taken away from you, if that is what you are worried about ;)
This is exactly why I think I'm seeing other jobs in the dashboard decrease in number. First they were all 500 words, now they are quite random: 498, or numbers like that. Most likely because a translator translated 2 words and cancelled, etc. You do not need to wait until the time runs out.
I completely understand what you mean about the impossible to translate words. Some others have so many different meanings it is quite crazy. The customer requests for words with different meanings that all possible meanings be included separated by a comma... but I doubt how helpful this really can be without a context. (Some words have a determined meaning only in one context, that does not make that meaning "inherent" to the word... if that makes sense)
Well that's a relief! And yes, that is precisely what I was worried about ;)
That makes sense. Now that you say it, they were all groups of 500 jobs when they were first posted...
I completely agree about the ambiguity in a lot of the jobs. I wonder how the translations will be applied when finished, especially those with multiple options. Doesn't seem like a very practical way of doing things.
I have to say I'm rather curious as to the origin of these jobs. In my group, there really was no overall, connecting theme. Botanical terminology, Finnish cathedrals, mountaineering, Japanese cuisine, Portuguese felt - you name it!
I am curious as to how they will be applied, too. And I sincerely hope that they will make sense to the customer, even though I agree with you in that it doesn't seem a very practical way of doing things :)
The two jobs I did (both 500 words) did not have any connecting theme, either. Or rather, they had a few connecting themes that were most random (I got the Botanical terminology too)
I wonder whether it wouldn't work better if all the actually connected terminology was grouped together, so then the job groups would be divided in themes :)
I did a few of these jobs as well but as per previous comments, they are SO exhausting. At first it doesnt seem so bad but they just take forever as practically every word is either a place name, a flower, an insect, a fish....all very obscure ones too! Even names of festivals etc. Some of them take a huge amount of research to get to the bottom of, just for one word. I did 3 lots of 500 but I really cant bring myself to do anymore.
I also wonder where these have come from, and for what purpose.
Wow Derrick... good job! 3 of those jobs is A LOT :) You are right... in the beginning it doesn't seem so hard, since at first you seem to see all the words that you do know for sure... and then it starts getting more and more difficult. I agree, I had to do massive research for some words. I feel sorry every time I open the dashboard and see all these jobs still up there (some since September 4th) but, like you, I can't bring myself to do anymore, because given how much time it's going to take me and the stress level, it's just not worth it. Regular jobs with around the same word count make so much more sense and are easier, to say the less, to deal with.
I have contacted support about these jobs and they told me they would have someone look into it.
Big thanks to both of you for your help with these and thanks also to Lara for following up with support! We plan to contact the customer about this and working with them to find a better solution. For future reference, we recommend contacting support (support@gengo.com) about jobs like these as a first point of call — they are best placed to deal with these kinds of issues. Thanks again!
Hello again, we're really interested in hearing from both of you about what would make this translation task easier and/or more attractive. For example, would it help to have a picture alongside the text? Would it be better if there were fewer jobs per group? Is a more efficient translator UI the answer? (And if so, what features in particular would you need?) Anything else? Please let me know your thoughts and if possible rank your needs in order of priority. Thanks!
Currently, words within jobs have no common points as we have said and they belong to completely different and random fields.
That said, I don't believe a picture may help that much... It may make the job a little more entertaining and provide a little context (but I think the amount if research to be done may still be quite too big for the actual content) but it seems to me that it is the whole concept of "single word translation" that fails here. It's just too ambiguous to be done with confidence that one is getting it right and effectively :(
Sorry I can't be of much help with this...
If all these words come from a. Website maybe providing the address for it we can look at how they are actually being used in the original work, so we can make sense out of this.
Thanks for your suggestions, Lara! These are really helpful. We are working with the customer now to find a better way to handle these. Someone from Gengo will be in touch again soon. Again, many thanks to you and Derrick for your work on these.
I have done similar work for other agencies where at least the words are in an excel file in one batch. The 500 jobs grouped together yet still in individual job format is prohibiting. It takes longer to open,save, edit, close each term than it takes to actually translate the term. No more for me - Thank you!
Natalia I would like to thank you for all the support and help dealing with this jobs! I received an e-mail this morning with the instructions to try the new beta for job groups, which I'm doing right now, and it works great. I love it!!! The jobs are still way too big, and the complete disconnection between words is confusing... but at least browsing through it, submitting the translations and work overall has become much easier!! I also appreciate the information provided by the customer about the ultimate use of the translated words ;)
@Lara, I'm so happy to hear that! I've passed your feedback on to the Projects team. Thanks again for your work on these :)
@Harvey, thanks for the feedback. The new job group interface has significantly reduced the amount of work you need to do, but I understand if you're still not interested.
Finally, while I have you all here is anyone able to help answer janalisa's question?
@Natalia, Sorry to bother you about this again!
I've just seen that the customer has uploaded new jobs in an excel file... but now I have another doubt. Again, the customer states that if we do not know a word just let it be... but I find that the Excel is not very useful in this type of jobs. When it is presented as a "group of jobs" (I am still loving the beta) a translator can take it and translate as many words as they can, then cancel and it will be back on the dashboard for other translators to contribute to the best of their abilities.
However, when the job is an Excel file, I personally hesitate to work on it if I know I won't be able to do the whole job - because I would have to upload it incomplete for the customer.
Now I know that is not the ideal premise to accept a job (knowing that I will not do it all) but I believe this type of jobs really call for this "contribution from different translators" style, and the "job group" format is easier to work with if we approach it like that.
It's interesting to bump into this thread, as seven years after the posting of the discussion, I'm now seeing loads of such one-word collections -- and imagine these are all pro jobs.
Because there is no context, it's really hard to determine how to translate, for example the sources are words like "Location" or ones more difficult to understand, although the client has provided the comment below:
"This is a description for a retail product and the field being translated is a(n) label called name - note: please do not capitalize adidas."
Although these are higher-paying jobs, usually I don't take them since I can't judge what the appropriate translation should be (I can also see that these jobs are frequently declined by fellow translators). But because of the large volume, when I saw them again today I sent a comment to the client, requesting a clarification if these are lables of product names. However, I'm not sure if the client will reply.
What I've seen funny today is there were jobs from the very same client that were categorised as En>Zh, but the source was actually Zh. One translator just copied the source to the translation and then declined the job, lol. So I'm curious what the best solution is in this situation. Also I'm curious after a colletion is flagged by a translator, is it available again to other translators immediately? If so, does this mean they won't be available until they are actully done and submitted?