I started by creating an account and taking my first shot at the test to qualify for jobs at the “standard” level, which pays the translator a whopping $0.03 per word. Much to my surprise, I was actually rejected after this first attempt. OK, I had to translate a brief (about 300 words) weather report, which isn’t my area of specialization, but I still find it hard to believe that my translation didn’t sound “natural” in “several” places, as the reviewer claimed. Anyway, whether it did or not, this initial rejection actually, on the whole, reflects well on the service since it means that they have a screening system that should keep out most of the “hacks”. I do think there may be room for improvement in the process, but I’m sure it’s better to err on the side of caution.

In any event, myGengo allows you to try again three days after a rejection, so I did. I got a different text the second time around and passed without any problem. I then went on to pass the tests for pro-level texts and for proofreading on my first try. And by the way, I wrote to myGengo after my initial rejection to share some of my thoughts on the process, and they did get back to me quickly with some explanation of their views on testing. So there are real people behind the service who appear to be knowledgeable and helpful.

On the Saturday morning after passing the pro-level test, the first two jobs showed up in my queue. As it happens, I was home and not doing anything in particular, so I thought I’d go ahead and take the jobs on. They were two different texts, each about 220 words in length and neither particularly difficult. One was a pro-level job, and the other an “ultra” job (which includes a pass with a proofreader in addition to the translator). Once I started a job, I was given a time limit of one hour to complete it (I don’t know if this time limit varies with text length), which was plenty of time given that I completed each in about half that time. Both jobs were then approved by the customer. It should be noted here that the customer has the right to reject a job and receive a full refund, in which case the translator is not paid for their work either. I don’t know how that process might work, though, and if there’s a verification or dispute procedure or what.

My “reward” (their terminology) for these jobs totaled about $35, which is paid via PayPal usually within 24 hours of requesting a “payout”. I just requested my payout today, so I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work, but there’s apparently a 3% charge applied by PayPal(*), which is another thing to keep in mind when thinking about the rates myGengo pays. On the other hand, payment by myGengo is essentially immediate, which is a lot better than the 30, 60 or even 90 day payment terms most clients apply.

Also, one of the customers for these jobs that I did requested specific experience in the field, but the myGengo staff was quick to point out to the customer that myGengo doesn’t assign jobs by area of specialization and that the customer could withdraw the job if that was an absolute necessity for them. I was also contacted by a real person, who pointed out the customer’s request and explained myGengo’s position on specialist jobs, saying that I was free to take the job on if I felt I could do a good job. So again, there are knowledgeable people behind the service who are there to help you out when you need it.

So… the rates. Yes, they’re low. The “standard” rate is especially low. At current exchange rates, it’s even less than what agencies pay me for proofreading. Actually, it’s less than what myGengo themselves pay for proofreading! But it’s important to keep in mind that myGengo is designed for short, simple (i.e. non-specialist) texts, and they are very clear as to what the customer should expect at each of their three service levels. And also, as a translator, you’re perfectly free to do or ignore translations whenever you want. So if you’ve got nothing better to do and there’s a short text you can bang out in a few minutes “for fun” (my words, not myGengo’s as far as I know), why not get paid a few bucks at the same time?

Is myGengo a threat? Will it drag rates down in the translation market as a whole? I suppose time will tell, but the way the people at myGengo are currently positioning and presenting their service, I don’t think so. In one of their e-mails to me, they said that myGengo is targeting people who want short texts translated quickly — the kinds of things some today are trying to use Google Translate for (“emails, blog posts, tweets, articles, anything non-specialist” were their exact words to me). Somewhere else (in the comments to a blog post, I think) I read someone from myGengo who wrote that these are the kinds of texts most professional translators hate to take on. And I think that’s pretty much true. But why do we hate these short texts? For me, it’s not so much for the length of the text, but for all the time you waste with the client before (and after) the job and the fact that most of the time you have to interrupt other work to do them. With myGengo, though, you don’t have that problem. You do the jobs only when you want, and you don’t have to be bothered by phone calls and e-mails from the customer to figure out if and when you can take them on.

I did my first two jobs, for example, in half-hour chucks of time in which I wasn’t doing anything else, and at the end of the day I got paid about €23-24 for an hour of work. Not a huge amount, but not all that bad either, considering that the alternative for that hour of my time was €0. In fact, another thing they’ve told me is that they aren’t looking for professional translators to work full time for them, but rather for translators willing to do the odd translation now and then in our “spare time [to] earn a little extra money”. (By the way, they also have an “affiliate” program that pays you 10% commission on referrals, so that may be something you’ll want to figure into the equation, as well.)

So all in all, given the way myGengo is currently designed and is being marketed (their slogan is “Simple human translation”), I don’t see the service as a threat, and I will probably do translations for them in the future.

Finally, I was asked by a Twitter follower whether you work online when working with myGengo. So to answer that question, no, not really. Not in the sense of having a web-based CAT tool to use. Job management is all online, but for the actual translation phase, you’re given the entire source text in one field along side an empty field into which you enter the translation. So you could type the translation directly into this web form if you wanted (and for very short texts I imagine I would), but I copied the source text into Word and translated it there using Wordfast. Then I copied the translated text back into the field for the translation on the web page. But I see that Wordfast is working on their web-based Wordfast Anywhere, and I think it would be interesting to see something like that implemented by myGengo in the future.

But there are some questions I still have about the service that I’ll want to look into, such as:

• How does the job queue work exactly? Do multiple translators see the same jobs at the same time?
• What happens when a customer rejects a job? Does myGengo make sure the complaint is valid?
• What happens if an “ultra” job is rejected because of a mistake the proofreader makes? Does the translator lose the credits, too, even though it wasn’t their fault? (This may not be all that likely, but I suppose you never know….)

And if and when I find the answers to these questions, I’ll let you all know.

~G

ANSWERS: I’ve just received an e-mail from the myGengo people in response to this blog post, so here are the answers to those questions:

• The job queue is on a first-come-first-served basis, and the reason my jobs were in the queue for so long is likely because Italian<>English has only been available on the site for a couple of weeks. Also, e-mail reminders are sent out every hour when there are jobs in the queue, and there is an RSS feed you can follow.
• Yes, myGengo has a low (about 1%) rejection rate and so is able to manually review rejections to make sure they are valid. And in their experience, they generally are. Not a lot of cheating the system apparently.
• For the ultra jobs, the default is to not pay either the translator or the proofreader in the event of a rejection by the customer, but here, too, they are willing and available to manually review such cases in order to determine fault and make adjustments, and they do keep a record of the text at both the pre- and post-proofing stages.

They also mentioned that they may eventually add some CAT functionality to the site in the future, but their intention for now is to keep things simple, rather than “reinventing the wheel”.

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(*) UPDATE: I’ve received my payout in my PayPal account, and the fees were actually closer to 5% because, as I’ve now seen on PayPal, the actual rate is 3.4% (for transactions up to €2,500.00) plus €0.35 per transaction, so next time I’ll wait to have a larger balance before paying out. Anyway, that means that I actually received just under €23 for the two jobs, rather than between €23 and €24. Not a huge difference, but still something to keep in mind.