Show HN: Chic Translator – Translations that don't suck | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chic Translator – Translations that don't suck

chictranslator.com

19 pointsmawy13 comments

Just sent you an email guys, because when your motto is "Translations that don't suck." with the Eiffel tour in background, having such an awful French translation on your homepage is really not the best way to sell it imho.

The email, just in case you'd miss it:

Hello,

I'm French and a French teacher and I would like to warn you that the first part of your translation is good, but the end is totally awful, I can't find any other word, sorry.

I mean, if you're willing to charge $1 per translated word, you really cannot put this kind of translation as an example on your homepage...

I'm talking about the end of the sentence: "let's do it again" translated as "il faut recommencer".

If you say "il faut recommencer", it means "we have to do this again because it was bad". In French when you "recommence", it's because you've failed to do something properly, the exact opposite of what you're trying to say here.

A better translation would be "quand est-ce qu'on remet ça ?" or any kind of French idiom to convey the right meaning.

That's it, have a good one,

French Canadian here. I wholeheartedly agree that "il faut recommencer" was a jarring error.

French from France here. Thanks, I was starting to think it was okay for Canadians to translate it like that.

Just to clarify, pricing is as follows:

$10 - 50 words or less

$50 - 200 words or less

$100 - 400 words or less

This is quite a bit more expensive than agencies I've worked with in the past, and those typically involve a translator + proofreader who are at least somewhat knowledgeable about the topic being translated, so the quality is pretty good.

I suppose some people will be happy to pay a premium for a quick turn around, but personally I care about the quality much more than the delivery time.

Thanks for your feedback, we'll take it into consideration.

So if I get 400 words translated together it costs me $100.

But if I split it up in to 50 word blocks I can get 500 words translated for $100.

We've removed the example for now. If you do decide to try us out, and are unsatisfied with your translation, we'll retranslate it.

Your customers need to be able to trust the quality of the translation because almost by definition they are not in a position to judge it themselves.

THIS. So much this.

bit pricey

Interesting. If I wanted to translate my webpage in a bunch of languages, would you do that too?

If you gave us a webpage in one of our supported languages (currently only French and English, more soon) we would.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com