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Comment by enjo | Hacker News Reader

For me, the thing that makes most nervous about translations is that I can't read them. They're a black box. They could say almost anything... 'all your base are belong to us' springs to mind (and it can be much worse).

So when I see:

'First available freelancer works on your order'

I leave. Tell me it's quick. Tell me it's easy. For whatever reason, that phrase just makes me lose all confidence in your site.

On another note. Are these translations audited? For an additional fee can I have another translator (maybe a 'senior' or 'trusted' translator) proofread them?

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I would probably just have another from the same service translate it back to English. Paying double but it would help add some type of feedback for judging accuracy.

If it comes back good enough then I would accept it. If not I would ask for my money back. I wouldn't tolerate too many screw ups though before I went somewhere else.

Perhaps include some translation samples

The problem is that even if the meaning is clear, it can still be very poor language. In fact, you could possibly end in a situation where a certain idiom is translated directly which might give a bad result but look fine when translated the other way.

If you translate "I won't take no for an answer" directly into Danish, you would get something like "jeg vil ikke tage nej for et svar", which isn't very good Danish though the meaning is quite clear. Translated back, it would give you the impression that the translation is excellent.

EDIT: I've updated the front page as suggested, thanks!

That's a good point. I've had some translations done through the site and needed to ask my native speaking friends if it was good quality.

For now, translators are untested as I don't have the resources to do it. There's the option of retrying the order with another translator or getting a refund.

It's the best I can do for now, and I'm keeping a close eye on any abusers/poor quality translators. There will be certainly something set up for trusted translations once the site is further on its way.

i would suggest letting translators judge other translations. even suggest improvements with some type of trusted translators as moderators. this way you dont waste too much of the trusted translators time.

best of luck to you

It is beneficial for a translator to rate similar translators negatively, especially with languages for which very few translators exist (for example, my native language Dutch has 5 translators at the moment), which creates a new problem.

You'll probably get the best quality by letting N translators translate a certain text, and let another translator select the best match, all anonymously of course.

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