TL; DR J>E Standard level is kinda messed up right now IMO
Posting this may not accomplish anything, and this could possibly belong in a different part of the forum. Anyway,
Am I the only one who is seeing lots of problems with the non-AC jobs that are in standard right now? For example, in the last week I've seen jobs with totally incorrect word counts, file jobs with mysterious files that can't be downloaded (and apparently the people who can download it say the text is in French??), and more than a few jobs that were not in Japanese. Things like that used to be pretty rare when I first started here, but for the past week these issues seem to be popping up at least once a day. That leads me to believe that some kind of quality control that was in place before is slipping. If a customer's job gets onto the site as-is without anybody looking at it first, then I suppose it can't be helped, and I hope the customers stop trolling us soon.
BUT, when the flags go up on those jobs somebody from Gengo needs to check those out, because they stay up there forever. Jobs with bad files need to get re-uploaded, jobs with wrong word counts need to get re-calculated, jobs in the wrong language need to get moved. If that doesn't happen, what's the point of flagging the job at all? Guys...DO BETTER :D
Sorry if this sounds angry, because I'm not angry nor am I trying to rant. Just a little disappointed, that's all!
9 comments
I have been noticing the same thing, especially over the past 24 hours. Perhaps the monitor responsible for overseeing JA > EN is vacationing during the fine weather of golden week.
My concern is that customers may be submitting legitimate jobs that are being corrupted on the Gengo side. When a translator flags a job because the text is in French, yet nothing appears in the preview window, programmers should be wondering what is going on. With a spate of flags in JA > EN, it is uncharacteristic of the Gengo staff not to at least say, "We're working on it." I wonder if other language pairs are having the same sort of problem.
Well spotted, guys. There are five jobs on the queue right now that seem to be corrupted somehow, with the text undownloadable for many and a strange French document for those who can download it. I've seen at least two reports of other bugs, unrelated to the French jobs, with jobs disappearing from the dashboard or appearing available on the queue but in fact having already been completed, although that seems to have righted itself.
It's not clear what's going on with the jobs in French, but Support has been notified in some detail. And it's true, Japan-side Gengo staff does get a vacation during Golden Week, although Support staff are based globally and should be aware of the issue before the holiday is over. It's really unfortunate that this error, whatever it is, appeared during a holiday, since that will delay response, but please be assured that it's been brought to Support's attention and will be passed on to programming side to see if the bug is in the Gengo system or whether customers are uploading unsupported documents.
I'm sorry for the frustration. There's no QA in place that's just failing recently; this is a weird anomaly (or bug). That's why flagging is so important and helpful: volume is too high to check jobs before they enter the queue, but flagging lets Gengo know there's a problem and communicate with the customer if need be. It is particularly irking that whatever is happening happened during a major holiday (figures!), but everyone needs vacations. If it turns out to be a system bug and not a confused or ornery customer, I'm sure there'll be a notification once it's figured out.
よろしくご了承下さい！m(_ _)m
Bailey
Hi all,
This is my first time posting. I am the one who reported that the file was in French, and just wanted to say how I got to see the French text, just in case that assists in solving the problem.
After I downloaded the file and couldn't open it, I tried changing the file extension to a few different things (.txt, .doc, .docx, etc.) to see if there was something that would open it. Word is the only thing that I found would open it something intelligible (using the .doc extension, NOT .docx), and when I did it was in French (the text I posted as a comment on the job). It was especially odd because the preview text that shows up in the job queue was nowhere to be seen within the file itself.
I hope this helps
screenshot.jpg
This issue doesn't seem to have been resolved. A few days ago there were a few jobs with the exact same problem and either the issue was resolved specifically to them or they were removed. But there is currently a Pro job with the exact same thing happening. It appears to be a legitimate job (someone needs a resume translated by tomorrow, 5/10). If I were the client and this is a technical issue on the Gengo side, I'd be severely annoyed.
Quick update - no sooner did I post the above comment and return to the dashboard than the job I mentioned had been re-posted, this time with the Word file intact.
There is another job in the JA>EN standard with the same issue. Judging from the short snippets that are visible in the job queue, these seem like they are a wide range of topics from different customers, so it seems more likely to be a Gengo issue than a customer issue.
On the other side of things, I just had a customer ask me which of the three files I uploaded was the final version. This was confusing as I had only uploaded one file (and only can upload one file). Since I can't see what the customer is seeing, I just asked him/her to contact support and have not heard back since. The reason I bring this up is because I would hate for the issues we are seeing on the translator side to also prevent customers from getting translations we are uploading.
Incidentally, the job I am referring to was the first MS Word job that I did after getting a new computer with Windows 8.1 and MS Office 365. Could this be some kind of compatibility issue? When I save a document in MS Word 365, it asks me if I want to save it in a format that is back-compatible with previous versions of MS Word, even if I choose the docx extension.
It's not a problem with your operating system. I use Windows 7 and get the same thing.
The multiple-file problem is a non-issue. Gengo gives the customer different names by which to download the translated file. If the customer does not read the instructions carefully and sees a bunch of icons (or whatever the reason is, because I haven't been a customer, either), he or she downloads the whole bunch and wonders which is the "right" file, or which is the most recent file. If the customer carefully compares the contents of the files, they should all be identical. Of course, the customer should not be required to do such a tedious comparison, so all you have to really do is assure the customer that all the files are the same, but let you know if such is clearly not the case. Once the customer sees that the files all look the same, your problem is solved.
Unfortunately this problem is ongoing. Are we any closer to figuring it out?
Hey all!
Not sure if you all have seen our news update on the 9th, so just to make sure I'm copy&pasting it here.
Important Notification: Corrupted file jobs
- May 9 2014▲Due to a system bug, customers uploaded files may fail, and the resulting file that you download will be an unrelated file with no file extension. This happens to approximately 5-10% of customers jobs. The fix is incoming, but until we can safely test and deploy it, it would assist us greatly if you could please ask customers to cancel the job and reorder if you see this happening.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. As always, we are here for you at support@gengo.com if you need assistance.