Although Gengo has announced that it had been improving its job notification system, it's still a big problem that it's really hard to get a job with some other translators who obviously use a fradulent method to get notified about newly posted jobs because it's literally impossible to get one! I mean, I get notified by e-mail about a new job and only minutes, sometimes seconds after I get notified, I click on the link to go to the job and it says it's been taken! This is so frustrating! IF GENGO WANTS TO EXPAND AND BE BETTER COMPANY, IT IS HIGH TIME IT STARTED CONSIDERING THE TRANSLATORS' SATISFACTION FIRST! Thank you!
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Try RSS, it's certainly faster than e-mail notifications (which are only sent with longer intervals, afaik).
The RSS is not working currently, what you see is 503 Service Temporarly Unavailable. Dr,English is quite right about that, I was on my mail box when a notification arrived eventhough i tought i was the first one to see, it is was already taken in a metter of seconds.
Ne olcak bu is bole anlamadik yani!
Totally, at least someone understands! Apparently, they're in the process of "hunting down the bugs". Hope it pays off.
That's weird guys, since RSS seems to be working ok for me... Or at least, it does show some notifications every now and then.
Maybe that is something regional, but then again, the only notification i get is via e mail or if i refresh the page by chance. It seems i have to submit one more request.
@Mirko Dr.English and tuncertnci are in part right. RSS feeds don't work properly. The last time I received one was on 22 November 2013. Yet, I think the reason is because in some language pairs there are so many translators and so few jobs that translations are picked up before even being sent via RSS feeds.
In addition, I think the reason why jobs are no more available when e-mails arrive is because of all the issues about the caching system, which make the dashboard show jobs that actually aren't available. So one gets the impression that jobs "are stolen" in a way.
Erika
That may be it, Erika, however RSS should theoretically be faster than e-mails in notifying translators about available jobs. I feel tuncertnci is right in reporting this as a further issue the devs should look into, even though I fear that at this point they may already have a backlog of stuff that will take them ages to wade through... (also seeing how several issues took/are taking a loooooooong time to be addressed and how they also seem to tend to resurface)
I agree with you Mirko...and it has been a bit frustrating working recently...
I completely agree that a lot can be done to improve Gengo's job allocation system. All at Gengo share this view and plans for a fairer system definitely are on our product roadmap. However, as Mirko says, our number one priority is fixing site stability and scalability issues. Right now, these are the main impediment to translator satisfaction, which is always a top consideration for us. These issues are not easy to fix, but we've made good progress in the past week and we're confident we can find a long-term solution. Once we do, we'll be able to turn our attention to other features and improvements, including job allocation. Thanks again for your patience—we really appreciate it.
I am interested how Gengo allocate the jobs that seem not sufficient. Also this problem appears to relate in any way to number of orders in my humble opinion.
After all, understanding customer and market needs, providing constant satisfaction is crucial in the long run, and I think we will be able to achieve that if we all are dedicated at our own jobs.
I tested RSS, it does not seem to work properly. I have email notifications, but as far as they are sent once in 5 minutes, it means that the translation mentioned in the email can be already taken.
So I do not get excited when I receive a notification, I simply follow the link. Any way it is pure chance to get a job now. If there is 1 job and 100 translators, it is 1% probable that it will be me. Sometimes I am lucky.
So, the best ways to get a job are
- follow email notifications (but don't get heyecanli about it)
- occasionally refresh the page
- log in at weird hours (at night, for example, or early morning)
I share the same frustration. The RSS feed has never worked for me, no matter what machine/system/software I was using, and email notifications lag waaay behind the actual job posting. As I said before in another post, I am not going to stay up till the wee hours or get up at 5a.m. to grab a small job, or even a fairly big one (not that there are many), not for these rates. I really wonder if some translators are helped by their location or by something else.
So, it might be time to say goodbye soon, Gengo.
Take care everybody.
RSS is not working properly. The e-mail notifications arrive too late to get a job. I do not know how many translators in my language group we have but it seems that more than enough. I have emptied my March schedule after receiving the 1 Million Words e-mail but I am still fighting to get a job. Also my speed calculations are displaying wrong results.
@F.Can özsöyler I agree, it is as if some people has multiple accounts and they use them simultaneusly, today. we got almost 20 jobs startting from 00,00 till now, 8 of them were after 9 oclock and they were gone just when they arrived . So far I have seen 4 Turkish translators including me, here on the forum. But it is as if there are tens of us hunting down jobs every minute every day. Some thing should be done about notification system.
You know what I mean you see the job on the mail as soon as it arrives, you click on it but it is too late, some one has already started about it:
It would be great if we had some interface or an application via which we could see other translators like who got which job and when did it how long it took
Arkadaslar, I believe, it's a pure chance to get a job here in any language pair.
Notifications are sent once in 5 minutes min. So within these 5 minutes someone else can take it. + consider the time needed for your browser or email agent to check for new mail...
If someone had multiple accounts, they would not be efficient for large jobs. I normally finish large translations in 2/3 of provided time or later, depending on complexity. So, if I had grabbed 2 different translation jobs at a time, I wouldn't have a chance to finish one of them...
Yes you are right @svetlana. I was just describing the feelling one had when you saw a job disappear.
Tuncer, I assure you there are tens of us abi. I believe just at my university there are at least 10 guys translating on Gengo. :)
I recently joined Gengo, and I share the same frustration. There aren't enough jobs apparently. I had hoped that setting up Rumpelstiltskin RSS to refresh every 31 seconds would help me claim a job since e-mail was too slow, but I haven't had any luck. Last two times I received RSS notification for a job, I clicked the link to job dashboard within couple of seconds only to receive a message that read "job no longer available".
Does anyone know a faster way to claim a job?
Gengo caches the RSS feed per translator for 1 minute. Therefore it makes no difference if you set RumpelstiltskinRSS to refresh every 31 or every 62 seconds. Neither can any other RSS reader be faster in notifying you.
The core problem is that in many pairs there are far more translators than jobs. If 10 translators in the same pair have optimized their chances and there is just 1 job, each has 10% chance to take it and 90% chance to see "job no longer available".
Also, it seems to me that during March-June and in August the volume of jobs is smaller than in the rest of the year. However, I can only judge that from 1 year experience.
The best you can do is be patient and keep trying. Just wait and see for a month to get a sense of what Gengo can mean for you. Don't expect Gengo will ever be your basic source of income, though.
Totally agree with Alexander.
There simply aren't enough jobs for everyone at the moment.
@Sungha Jou: The volume of work fluctuates every month depending on the need of our customers. I think there is some seasonability of demand, but it is something we can't really predict. We open up testing when we are expecting a big order from a client or when translators haven't been very active in that pair.
As Alexander said, Gengo won't be your main source of income as that was never our intention. We aren't a traditional translation agency. Some translators in some language pairs do have consistent work throughout the year, and also do more work for our Projects team due to good scores and consistent quality. In addition, customers can choose you as a preferred translator, which allows a small group of translators to get access to their jobs. I would recommend translating with Gengo as much as you can as well as doing other work.
It's true.
It's true. It's almost impossible to get a job. Sometimes I keep on clicking to refresh the dashboard page to see if there is any new job, and if a new one appears, as long as I click to view the job, it says ALREADY TAKEN. What is more, If you take your time to see what the project is about, when you want to start translating, once more ALREADY TAKEN !!!!!
If one translator is already seeing a job, the system should prevent another translator to access to the job. If not, we have the risk of translators accepting jobs without knowing what the job is about. And we really do not want that to happen.
I translated a lot of projects for gengo, but unfortunately it was a time when there was a lot of projects to chose from in my pair. Nowadays, every time an isolated project appears, I am afraid it was already taken. ;(
Being new to Gengo, just a week after becoming part of the community, I'm still hunting for my first job. It's rather frustrating because I was expecting something different. I got my first email notification, hurriedly signed in, but just to be told that another translator had taken the job... just about 20 seconds after the notification! I think Gengo should improve on its job allocation system if it also really cares about translators' satisfaction. One great way of doing so is direct job allocations. I happen to work for another US based translation company after passing their test, and what they do is to assign jobs directly to translators. I get up, check my mail, accept projects, and start working. If I'm not available, project is unassigned and reassigned to another translator. I really thought Gengo would be laden with projects so I don't face downtime, and it's really frustrating if translators have to go through some sorts of rituals to get jobs on a platform where getting on its board is not given to anyone. Direct job allocations to translators is my proposal, or Gengo should be turned into a marketplace where translators should bid for jobs.
Hi Hilarious,
Welcome to the club! In most pairs, there are far more translators than jobs. The rat race to grab a job is a general frustration among the translators. I agree direct allocation would be much better, but Gengo insists on short pick up times and believes the current approach is better than direct allocation because of the "risk" the selected translator is unavailable.
The second best approach, in my eyes, would be to make any job available to only a small subset of the translators, picked at random, such that on average the pick up time will still be short but also the number of disappointed translators will be low. I am convinced a skilled statistician could find a happy medium along these lines between the conflicting interests of Gengo and the translators.
Meanwhile, we have no choice but to play the game according to Gengo's rules. The best way to optimize your chances is to use an RSS feed reader like RumpelstiltskinRSS.
Really tough, more than a rat race. Close to a month after joining Gengo, no job! My RSS and email notification set ups are perfectly okay. My RSS even showed me a job once, 55 seconds after it was published, and I hurriedly rushed to my dashboard just to find out that it had been grabbed by another translator! Is this how difficult it is to pick up a job in the Fre>Eng language pair? Can anyone with Gengo's experience in this language pair leak out some tips on how to grab a job here. Are there periods that jobs are unavailable to this extent? What is the way forward?
One thing, however, keeps bothering my mind: I took the Fre>Eng pre and standard tests as a result of an email sent to me by Gengo, informing me that new translators were needed in this language pair. Why would Gengo want to recruit new translators when it doesn't have enough jobs to satisfy existing translators? The email sent to me by Mike Staffa was so enticing. It read that once I passed the pre-test and a written test, I could start translating and earning cash right away. And here we are close to a month! I spend long hours sitting in front of my computer in vain, refreshing and refreshing my dashboard!
A huge contrast to what I had thought of Gengo. A really huge contrast.
The same in the Eng>Rus, so don't worry, you're not the only one with such problems. But the worst is that a bunch of translators use special software to grab the jobs instantly for them. And it seems the administration doesn't care about that at all.
I clicked on "unsubscribe" by mistake, so it shouldn't be considered.
Thanks flash-ost. Your accusation is really serious. Are there some sorts of software to grab jobs from Gengo? If true, the administration shouldn't underlook this issue.
In order to grab a job, you need to know that it is available in the first place. The only way to find that out is to interpret the information on the dashboard or in the RSS feed. Both are cached by Gengo, meaning the information is updated only once a minute. Each translator has his/her own cache, so the exact time when a specific job becomes visible for a specific translator is more or less random. If there are 60 translators in your language per, it takes on average 1 second before one of them sees the job, and you will on average be the 30th in the row who gets to see it. This is a disadvantage for every translator.
If you and the software of some unscrupulous other translator get to see a job around the same instant, the software will no doubt be quicker than your fingers to grab the job. Let's say a human needs 5 seconds to react, and software needs 0 seconds. Then the software has chances that are comparable to a human who is the 25th rather than 30th in the row.
So yes, such software is conceivable, but the advantage would be small.
I noticed some strange behaviour with the RSS feed notification
I am a preferred translator for the new TM project on Gengo for a well known customer, but I can only grab jobs which are less than a specific amount of money.
That is, when the RSS feed push a notification for a job, I am able to grab it only if the job is less than $6.00. Every time a job is $6.00 or $7.00 or $8.00, there is no way I manage to grab it. I can see a scheme behind this, as if someone had been using a tool to pick up jobs with specific characteristics...
How can it be possible?
@flash-oat Thank youI I thought I was going nuts! :)