I'm on English-Indonesian pair and since February 28 I've been getting these horrible scores for my works by this particular LS who's been reviewing my works in way-too-severe and unfair manner, consistently marking what should be more appropriate as a mere suggestion as an error (often in medium or even critical level), just because the wording or phrasing wasn't to their liking or simply a lack of a comma following an adverbia ("Pada 2003" instead of "Pada 2003,").
To give some perspective, this hasn't happened to me since I worked here back in 2012. All these started only after this LS started reviewing my works.
This goes on with the LS (I know it's the same person because he/she keep saying the same phrase at the end of his/her comments.) keep marking the wordings/phrasing that is not suited to their taste as "error". These kind of reviews made my score plummeted from 8.9 to 6.8 at the moment.
A perfect example is a translation for a tag on an article of a website, he/she marked the translation as an error, marking my translation (pencegahan dan kontrol penyakit) as an error, and "pencegahan dan pengendalian penyakit" is more commonly used. But the thing is, the actual website DOES use that exact term I'm using on their articles. This clearly shows that this LS is not without their own flaws. Not to mention, should they decided to be impartial in their review, they could've easily marked it as a mere suggestion and not an error in the first place.
On March 1 I received an email from the Quality Team (Maria) warning me about my recent low scores and said that they'd like to see improvement for my scoring in the next 2 months. I explained that while I'm not saying my translations are perfect or free of errors, but the LS who's been reviewed my works has being unfair in doing their jobs, unfortunately they don't seem interested to hear my side of story.
While I think the recent happening is largely due because of the unfair treatment I got for my works, I do reflect and recently relearn the correct writing style according to Gengo Style Guide and PUEBI. And that is reflected on the most recent scores I got, all my reviews have been consistently getting higher than 8 marks since March 2.
Fast forward today, March 8, I just got informed that my Pro qualification got revoked. You said earlier that you want to see me improving in the next 2 months, which I'm in process of and showed you proofs for that, but a week later you decide to revoke my qualification just like that. It's pretty frustrating and disappointing that Gengo, as a platform, failed to act impartial in this case and punished me way too soon and basically ignoring explanations that I give regarding the recent reviews I got and this one LS.
According to this article, LS is someone who had already been working with Gengo for a while as translator and got promoted because of their excellent track record and professional attitude.
So there is a conflict interest because they are basically our fellow translator who works here or, in other words, our competitor. There WILL be someone who'd abuse their authority as LS to take down fellow translator in order to secure more opportunity to grab the jobs.
I genuinely believe that there is serious flaw on this system and that Gengo should review it, and hire only non-Gengo translator as an LS. Otherwise, us regular translators will always be prone to any kind of abuse should an LS decides to use his/her power to get rid of others.
I already wrote my complaint to the Quality Team and while I wait for their reply, here are some things I want to address:
1. The decision of removing my Pro qualifications is simply an unfair act on Gengo's part. As I mentioned above that I've been consistently nothing but above 8 marks since the 2nd, and you did said that you're giving me 2 months since March 1 to show improvement, then why all of sudden you revoke my qualification just like that?
2. I already said this numerous times on my emails, but Gengo should keep an eye on the LS. The way things are, they are being completely unaccountable because nobody watches them and should they feel the need to abuse their authority, they could do so as easily as *that*.
24 comments
The same thing happened to me. I was a pro translator for about 3 years, always maintaining a 8.9 go check score. Suddenly I receive a barrage of bad reviews, I even got two 0 scoresand they revoked my qualifications. I'm very disappointed
The same has happened to me, in the German to English language pair. I have had a score ranging from 8-10 for YEARS, working on standard, pro and preferred jobs. In the last 2 months or so I have received a barrage of bad reviews - one was given a 0.91/10!! I thought it was 9.1 at first, which is a typical score for my work. But no, it was .91. Less than 1. Absolutely absurd. To make things even more absurd, for some of these jobs I have received a 5/5 from the customer. If this level of petty reviewing continues, they are going to lose good translators and the company will implode.
Hi everyone,
Raymond, thanks for writing this post and sharing your concerns. I've asked the Quality team to look into your situation again, and I'll write back to you by email once I have any updates. For the benefit of others following the post, I'd like to emphasise a couple of things, the first surrounding LS recruitment, and the second surrounding how the LS team is monitored.
On the first point, it's true that some members of the LS team are or were translators for Gengo, but we also advertise externally for LS team members on occasion, and as the article that you link to mentions, a lot of the LS team members aren't really active on the Gengo platform in the same way that translators are. A lot of translators raise this concern - that LSs are deliberately marking translators down so as to have more access to jobs available on the platform - and I can understand why translators might think that, but in reality a lot of LSs have day jobs or are otherwise occupied in areas other than translation, and in addition to this, even if LSs were deliberately giving out low scores, in theory we should be able to pick up on this, keeping in mind of course that no system is perfect.
This leads me to my second point on how we monitor the LS team. We train each LS before they are able to start their duties, and we also normally ask another LS to take a look at the first few reviews that an LS completes, to make sure that they're on track. We also keep an eye out for unusual activity such as a large degree of variation between reviews in language pairs where there is more than one LS, or LSs giving out a lot of very high or very low scores. We also try to take translator feedback into consideration, which means that if LSs in a particular language pair receive a lot of translator complaints, or re-review requests, then we will investigate further too. I am not saying that the LSs, or our investigations into them, are always perfect, which I suppose is evident from the fact that a lot of people write on the forum with LS-related complaints. All I can really say is that if any of you have concerns, it's worth either submitting re-reviews for individual jobs (using this form here), or raising your general concerns with the Quality team or with me (through the forum or to katrina.paterson@lionbridge.com).
As I say, Raymond, we're looking into your case now. Petra and pesther, if you want me to follow up with your cases too, please drop me an email and I'll do what I can.
@Petra Sorry to hear that, have you take the retest? Or still in 30-days waiting period?
@pesther That is also what I imagine what this platform will become if they keep turning a blind eye to the flaws in this whole reviewing system.
@Katrina Thanks for your reply. Regarding your first point that a lot of LSs have other jobs other than Gengo, it still does not negate the fact that there still a possibility that one day someone decides to earn more because their day jobs are currently slowing down and they see more opportunity here, thus becoming our competitor. That is why I still believe that Gengo should hire LS from outside and forbid them to work as regular translator on the platform.
As for your second point, while the things that you mention do sound good, even reassuring, in practice are they really viable to do? As an example, for rereview request I wrote my complaint in Indonesian to ensure I got all my points accross. Is the Quality team really understand the points I mentioned, considering that none of your staff speaks one? Which leads to them, again, relying on the LS as a single source for consideration to take any action from.
Update: I just got a reply from the Quality Team, that basically saying that they "can still take some actions even before two months pass if necessary. My overall score is still below 7 and the LS's review states that currently the quality is not up to Pro level."
I find the "can still take some actions even before two months pass if necessary." part baffling, why mention the two months period to begin with if they just decide to cut me off way before that? And the fact that they expecting a considerable improvement in just one week period is highly unrealistic and borderline impossible.
Not to mention another concern that whether my retest is going to be reviewed by the same LS who's been giving me bad scores, preventing me from getting my qualification back.
Just popped into this thread to say: keep fighting for your scores. Submit the re-reviews, and keep speaking out about the problems with the review process. It is starting to work - a bit. In three jobs for which I submitted re-reviews, the LS changed the severity of errors in a few instances. Previously they refused to budge on any re-review. And a newer (albeit small) job received a 10/10 today. So something is happening - perhaps the LS have been told to rein it in a bit. I know the re-reviews are time-consuming (I highly resent having to submit them) but I think they are somewhat effective, especially when the LS is having to deal with a large number of them.
I'm afraid that what we are seeing are the limitations of a system which is genius in some ways, but unfortunately has its limitations due to size and anonymity and also unconscious bias.
Hi Katrina, you say many of the LS have day jobs or are occupied in areas other than translation - what areas would that be? How does Gengo know the LS are qualified to judge if a translator made a mistake, what are the requirements for being an LS for Gengo?
I'm asking because I recently also handed in a re-review request, which then got rejected. I had received a 5.14 score because I missed a requirement from the customer to keep the currency format as is. The customer didn't ask me to correct the mistake, but gave me a bad rating just like that. In the very short collection, the LS found 2 other mistakes, which I think were not really mistakes. I'm convinced the LS was biased: A translator that misses a requirement by the customer must be a translator that makes many mistakes ... A weird thing happened: in the review, the first two jobs were in one row, so it looked as if I had used no punctiation. I was shocked myself. However, in the workbench these had appeared to me as two different jobs (boxes) with phrases that were not full sentences, so no punctuation would be required. All the other phrases had no punctuation in the source language (English), except the first one. In the target text I used no punctuation for the first, stand-alone phrase either. It's common sense, really, but I don't seem to be able to make myself understood to Quality Team, they keep asking for "sources", so I finally sent them a link, perhaps that's source enough to them for a common sense formatting decision.
Update: my re-review request got refused with no substantial reason given. I'm tending to conclude that we translators are only safe if we mirror the punctuation from the source text. I actually noticed in my editing jobs that many translators do just that, and obviously for good reasons.
I got a link to a support article stating that we are supposed to always ask the customer. It goes without saying that I do ask the customer if there is any chance of getting a useful answer without annoying them too much, and if the payment is good enough to justify a lot of back and forth. Otherwise I think it is a better idea to reject the job.
Anyway, I don't know about you lot, but I'm beginning to care less. I'm not doing a lot of Gengo work right now, but if I start stepping it up again I might just continue to use my best judgement, and when they revoke my qualifications: Good riddance! As I said, the idea of Gengo is sort of genius but is has its limitations.
That is not really surprising to see this happening lol
I've made a lot of re-review request, but the results were very disappointing and not-really-understandable. I've been proving lots of reliable and perfect proof from google and the Korean official language association etc. But some of them are really blind and arrogant to see this and not accept the truth that they were giving the wrong review. There are only their rules to apply not ours. so they don't think they are wrong. the worst thing about them is, I've personally request a review about my translation that I've done to the Korean official association called the National Institute of the Korean Language, and they said there is not any problem to translate in my way. but the language specialist who reviewed my job kept saying it's wrong lol
You can see more of my stories in this community, I've posted some. but nothing changed though.
I'm cleary saying that not all of them will be doing this, BUT there are really people who do this in the LS team.
Today, I received a review where the LS gave me a "critical" error because I translated the name of an app into Indonesian (TuppSocial Companion App -> Aplikasi Pendamping TuppSocial), citing that the official Google Play Store page still listed it in its original English name, so it shouldn't be translated. Okay, then I downloaded the said app, and what do you know--the icon name is in Indonesian, and the very starting page when you open the app specifically using the Indonesian translation of the app. See the screenshot here.
I submitted the re-review request, which got approved and currently still waiting for the result, but this is another example of what makes me frustrated with LS. They clearly needs another briefing on what should be labeled as critical error, and that they need to do a deeper research when it comes to things like this.
Update: They removed the error! This changed my score from 7.8 to a perfect 10. But strangely this seemingly doesn't affect my overall score at all. But then again, I gotta admit I still don't get how the gocheck is calculated, and that is a whole rabbithole in its own, and I just don't have enough energy to dig into it atm.
One thing I want to say to fellow translators is, don't hesitate to submit a re-review request if you think a review is not as objective or fair as you expect it would be, but make sure you provide a convincing argument and reference link to support it, in my case above I provided a screenshot that shows that I am not in the wrong for translating the app name.
Dear Katrina, I have even worse situation then described which is total nonsense and UNJUST. I have HIGH mostly top gocheck scores. Than I have a series of gocheck with !10! mark and then my qualification was removed. reason: LS - reason - LS checked recent jobs and they were of low quality DESPITE EXCELLENT GO CHECK SCORES. As a proof there were several screenshots from 2 gocheck AND just screens of CORECT projects pages (not gocheck) with claims that they are wrong. As you know, gocheck can be appealed and rereviewed. What shall I do with false "screenshot" claims without error classification, concrete issues and so on? The exactment statement from LS " I would recommend revoking the translator's Pro qualification due to constant submission of poor quality." Lets see "poor quality" in go check scores in last TWO month: 10, 10, 9,6, 7, 10 ,10, 10, 10, 7, 10, 8,8, 10, 9,8, 10, 10, 9,6, 10, 8,3, 9,7, 9,8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 9,7, 10. Dear Katrina, basically 1 LS claims that all other your go check specialists are unprofessional and cannot evaluate quality. It s really outrageous. What the purpose of go check if some LS can cross out all the go check history by a CLAERLY false claim? Could you investigate this LS and return my qualification?
Hi Andrei, this is so strange. We are always told the reviews are random, except in case a customer has complained. What is your language combination?
It is not strange - basically, LS does what he/she wants to eliminate the competition and the support follows recommendation without thinking. I already remember similar cases and there were additional gocheck reviews triggered in such case. In this situation they have brought 10 in both cases but nobody cares. 10 are constant poor quality - no doubts
So there was no customer complaint?
there was, it was reviewed and received 7.
Hi Andrei. So, what is happening to you now is perhaps what is stated in the regular "Job feedback" emails from Gengo.
"A quality rating [from a customer] of 2 or less will trigger a review by a Language Specialist in your pair as part of our regular job review process. Furthermore, the results of this review may trigger a more thorough offline investigation if the job fails to meet our quality expectations. Please note that in the event of an offline investigation, several of your jobs that have never undergone a review before will be checked, and you will not receive scores for them. In this case, you will receive comprehensive feedback, along with the final result of our investigation, in one single email once the investigation is completed."
All the best.
7 meets quality expectations for Standard level
@Andrei - Make sure you contact support, explaining what happened and maybe attach the screenshot of your scores history. And if you want to reach out to Katrina on this matter, besides commenting here maybe it's better to email her directly (you can find the email address above).
I tried. She is not longer working here.
What a shame! I was wondering why the community chats were no longer commented by anybody from Gengo/Lionbridge anymore!
So no community manager anymore, and more problems from the reviewer side...
We will miss Katrina...
Very interesting situation. My go check scores were high so the language SPECIALIST attached screenshots of consistent poor quality of not go checked projects. They were used as the reason for removing qualification. "poor quality" was not True to put it mildly. I asked the support to go check "poor quality" and received 10 go check score. I doubt that the justice prevail but lets see