From time to time, I see translators complaining about the decrease in jobs, and I always see the same response that Gengo is based on who picks up the job first, or something related to Internet connections or having better equipment, and so on. But I've been here since 2016, and for the past year, I feel in my pocket that job projects have been decreasing. I used to have Gengo as my main source of income, and because of Gengo I invested in better internet connection and in a powerful notebook, so it wasn't a problem for me to get jobs. Another thing I've noticed is that the time at which jobs are or were posted is not suitable for the Brazilian time zone. The last weekly update I received (last year!) showed that jobs were released very early in the morning (Japanese or European time zone maybe?), which is not fair to Brazilian translators. I'm sorry to vent all these things, but I'm very discouraged with Gengo these days... we can no longer count on Gengo as a source of income. Fortunately, I have other clients to work with, but I'd like to see more opportunities here...
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11件のコメント
Hi @Luciana!
Thank you for sharing your concern here in the forum. :)
The team is aware of the concerns of translators regarding the low volume issue. We will work on how we can improve this on our end.
However, regarding the time when the jobs are posted, it's out of our control. It's the customer's discretion when they order the jobs. I understand your sentiment, but we can't really do anything about this aspect. We appreciate your understanding on this matter. Thank you. 💗
Hi Luciana,
Probably much more translators agree with you than the 10 shown here because there is a technical bug: I voted by clicking on the upper arrow but if I click to go to the previous page and see other posts, then it shows only 9 and it remains on 9 even if I come back to this page. Then, I need to vote again...but I guess that many didn't notice this. For me, the huge decrease in the volume of jobs began last summer (summer 2022). I've already reported it thrice and I know that I am not alone. Luckily, I have other clients but my Gengo income has been divided by 4. Some individuals or agencies have most probably found a way to hack the system and siphon jobs. I hope that the Gengo team is checking if an agency or an individual suddenly took a much bigger volume of jobs than before.
I don't think Gengo cares at all if someone is siphoning jobs as long as they keep getting paid. I also think that's what's happening, because I'm getting jobs "rejected" by other translators that didn't even appear in the feed. Something fishy is going on and it's affecting all of us. For quite some time now, only jobs for a few cents have been showing up, and the higher priced ones are the ones that those mysterious translators have accepted and rejected in a matter of seconds.
Perfectly explained! Except that Gengo (or rather LionBridge) should be concerned about these unethical practices as they also affect customer satisfaction. After reading your article, I checked the jobs I was able to accept recently: except for one particular client who chose me as his preferred translator, all other jobs were rejected or marked as "translator exceeded the allotted time limit". They use several fake accounts (it's very easy for dishonest people...but no need to explain it here unless I have to...), and that's the explanation for overrunning the time limit even for very easy and short jobs. They hold them...and then the clients get their translations delivered later, by people who are only there to make more money. These unethical practices therefore have an impact on the quality of the Gengo service and the quality of the translations. And you are right: these vultures only leave jobs worth a few cents!
Hi @Mae and @logos! 😊
We understand your sentiment about this concern. Gengo cares about this issue. We've already raised this with the tech team, who are looking into it. Whenever you encounter something similar, please report this to the support team along with their translator ID so they can pass it to the tech team to investigate. We are grateful for your support and understanding on this matter.
Rica, you're saying this line again : "the team are looking into it", whatever the problem is, and that must be lies at some point (isn't community management basically being polite and lying to people?). Even sending reports about fraudulous activities with circumstances leads to no action on the matter and some more "we'll look into it" from your colleagues. Been there, done that.
Listen to Mae RP and logos_sarada's complaints : the job siphoning issue is coming back every month now. The RSS gate was just a smoke screen. Is Lionbridge really agreeing to let beefy translations get stolen from their workers' mouths by unethical practices?
See you on the next bi-annual survey.
Hi Claudius.
I understand this situation is frustrating for translators. However, we in the community management team raised this concern specifically to the dev team, who assured us they would look into it. For now, it is the resolution we can give on our end, as they are the only ones who can tackle and resolve this matter.
We are doing our best to address the concerns or issues raised in the forum. We are always grateful for everyone's support and understanding.
Looking forward to your input in the bi-annual survey, and thank you in advance for participating in it. 😊😊
Thanks for your answer, Rica. I know I can sound agressive, and I know the job-siphoning bots problem (or similar unethical practice) is something that has been in the air for a decade (translators that have been working for a longer time with Gengo can testify about your efforts to eradicate it). Personally, I can still make a decent side-income, although I feel like I have to fight for every cent and stick around the computer for much longer than before, but it makes me sad/irritated to read more and more people complaining about how their income had been literally divided, these months.
Working with Gengo is not just a question of money, also, as you can get your hands on materials from industries you would never work on otherwise. And I miss those, as the flux of big jobs gets slower. But let's keep on fightin'.
Any news on this problem? Is the tech team really working on it or is it just an excuse? It would be great if you could keep us up to date on the progress, just as you did with the RSS problem. We would be more reassured if we knew that you are really trying to solve the hack because, honestly, many of us make a living out of this and this problem affects us deeply.
It's sad that although the weekly stats show some volume of work last week, almost none of it reached our dashboards or the feeder. I'm only getting cents worth of work. My last payment barely reached $100. It's very frustrating. Something is definitely wrong.
That's right. This afternoon, only 3 assignments showed up in my language pair, all of them for only a few cents, and none of the 3 showed up on the feeder, only on the dashboard. And of those 3, one of them appeared, once again, rejected twice in less than a minute by the usual translators. As suggested by Rica, I sent a message to support yesterday but I've not received a reply yet. Am I surprised? No. I am more and more convinced that Gengo is not affected by this situation at all and therefore they are not bothering to fix it.
A situation which, from what I've seen in the community, affects ALL languages, so I doubt this is the work of just a few people.