Good translation is great, but it’s not enough for us. If our translation less than excellent, we’d like to know about it and fix it.
Would you like to let your site’s visitors leave feedback about the translation? We can put this feedback to good use.
- If they say that translation is excellent, we’re happy.
- If they say that it’s OK, we’ll check if there’s anything to improve and improve it.
- If something is plain broken, we’ll take it up with the translator.
In any case, we’ll make sure that your translation improves rapidly. We’ll work with the translators you’ve selected until you only get excellent translations. When we hear about inaccurate translation, we’ll fix it immediately.
As we see it, it’s an all-win situation. You will get the best translation possible, our translators get objective and honest feedback and your visitors see beautifully written contents.
How Translation Feedback will Work
When you use WPML (For WordPress) or Translation Management (for Drupal), you’ll see a new option to allow visitors to leave feedback about translation.
Your visitors will see something like:
Translated from German, leave feedback
When they click on the leave feedback link, a form opens asking about the quality of the translation.
We’ll make it easy to leave feedback. If it’s all good, no questions to ask. If there’s something wrong, we’ll ask what.
The feedback message can display always, limited by time or by number of feedbacks received. When you (and us) get enough feedback about the translation, there’s no point in displaying the feedback forms anymore.
* We’re planning to start with translation feedback for sites. Then, we’ll also add feedback for software localization.
What do You Think?
We’re proud of our translators and of their work. We’re asking for feedback so that we can go from good to great.
Translation is a creative process. Translators need feedback in order to deliver the best results and nobody can give better feedback than your actual visitors. They know what they like and they’ll be happy to tell it.
Would you enable translation feedback in your site?
yes.
I think it is a very good idea that will need to be developed by close coordination of all intervening parties (clients, Icanlocalize and translators).
I will be very happy to collaborate in any aspect possible.
You should obviously aim at 100% positive feedback – every client should be happy. I think before you bring this online however, you should maybe allow for the fact that in some cases, the client is not in a position to ASSESS THE QUALITY themselves, as they don’t have a good command of English. This is the main reason some client briefs are – shall we say – vague – and they don’t get what they want from the translators.
Maybe your web forms should specifically ask the clients to leave instructions in their native language as well as in English – likewise their feedback too?
We’re not asking site visitors to become linguistic experts here.
I’ll give you some examples for cases in which this feedback can be very useful for us:
1. A funny typo. This happens to all of us, but only the translator can fix it. The client will usually not be able to even understand the visitor’s remark, let alone fix the typo.
2. Writing style that doesn’t match the spirit of the site. Visitors are best to comment about this.
3. Incorrect terminology for niche subjects.
I’m not a translator, but I love getting feedback from people who use my work. They cannot replace me in doing it, but they have the most objective and unbiased feedback.
I think is a great idea. I’m a English-Portuguese translator and anything that would help improve my work is good.
Using this we can learn what people are comfortable reading, and with that information we can improve the translations. Like you said, it’s a win-win situation.
Amir,
You have my full support.
Tomasz
Hello Amir,
I am a newly incorporated ICanLocalize translator and my opinion is that not only should we ask “what” is wrong, but also “how” the visitor suggests improvements may be implemented. There is a lot of spontaneous creativity sparked when one sees something “wrong”, and we should try to leverage fully on it for ongoing service optimization.
The idea is to ask more information when visitors report sever problems.
If visitors indicate that it’s good, we don’t need to ask anything. We’ll ask what’s wrong, when they indicate that there’s any problem.
Hi Amir,
I think giving your customers a chance to provide feedback on the quality of the translation they have received is a great idea. Sorry if you explained it somewhere already, but it’s not clear to me when the feedack will be given (during/after the translation work). Who will be able to see the feedback? Who will be working with the customer/translator to improve the work?
I also like the idea of encouraging your translators to engage in ‘back and forth’ communication with the customer while working on the translation. I find that the customer is usually willing and able to answer questions about the ‘style’ of translation they would like (strick/formal/creative/hip) or explain the meaning of a word. I think this also goes a long way in helping to produce perfect work. It manages the expectations of the customer, and allows the translator to give them what they want in a translation. Is there a way of asking for feedback at the start of, and during a translation, as well as at the end?
Another idea; would it be possible to create a stonger ‘community feeling’ within icanlocalize? Something that would give translators a chance to communicate with one another, maybe even ask for their advice/opinion/help while they’re working on a translation? This might tie in nicely with the point of quality feedback, to produce better work, and who better to ask than another translator!
Carolyn
We always ask clients for feedback about the translation. In many cases, clients themselves cannot give feedback about the completed work, because they don’t speak the language.
In most cases, clients indicate their expected writing style, which is very helpful.
I’m not sure where and when we’ll display this feedback. I think that we can display something like ‘star rating’, which averages feedback that we got so far.
The most important thing is that translators get this feedback immediately. In case visitors indicate that there’s something inherently wrong with the translation, ICanLocalize will be notified as well.
Dear Amir,
The all concept of feedback and interaction is good but I wonder whether, beside interested parties, some of us will really find the time to “proofread” just for the sake of so doing. However, whenever an assignment is split among translators, it sound a good idea for the latter to consult one another on a word, a concept, an expression or the like.
We do that already. Many projects run with two translators per language. One translating and the other reviewing.
However, even for these projects, getting objective feedback from readers can only help.
From my experience at ICanLocalize I guess we need a different
approach to that problem, mainly because we -translators and
proofreaders- cannot “fight” one another for the reason. This
is very bad for everyone’s image.
As far as I understand the problem, the main interest in excellence
is on ICanLocalize’s side. So let’s work for that.
I suggest you consider the creation of a new role: the “mediator reviewer”
(just for the sake of the argument).
This is one o more persons that are trained in deciding when
the style of the translation is right or may be improved and also
trained in addressing the client.
This person should not be designated by any part but trained and
approved by ICanLocalize itself to act as such and called upon when needed.
He/she should be part of ICanLocalize staff.
Nowadays nobody -translator, proofreaders, client, etc.- seem to
have enough authority to settle the dispute. That is what ICanLocalize
need: some voice with authority that help in solving things in a
unbiased and knowlegable manner.
I fully agree with this being a win-win situation. Count on me!
yes,
if there’s no feedback, there’s no improvement.
best
I’m all for improving quality, after it’s a matter of how.
I collaborate to other translation sites where the feedback given consists of stars only, no comment. And you never see anyone almost giving 5 stars rating, only 4, whatever the translation is. I think we all tend to do that when asked to rate, we always think there is room for improvement, or we think if we give full stars, then the quality will deteriorate after that. As someone said, most clients can’t assess the quality of the translation, so rating should be maybe more about the quality of service than about the content itself in most cases. So feedback should be detailed, maybe create different criteria to assess (like speed, courtesy, etc).
Same for visitors feedback, good feedback can only be given by people who know what they are talking about.
Cheers,
Jean-marc
We’re planning to do something similar to what Skype does. If there’s no actual problem to report, we don’t ask for textual feedback. If the visitor reports an issue, we ask to indicate what it is.
The idea is not to ask visitors to be expert translators, but report back any issue that they find. This report goes straight to the translator who can fix quickly and update the page.
I agree that feedback is important and I am all in favour of anything that will help me progress.