Apparently, they hire unprofessional reviewers I'm a professional freelance translator, and taken their test just to see. They rejected my translation, and they just said that "I made too many errors" citing just one example. This example was not exactly an error, which just showed how illiterate and ignorant the "native" reviewer is about his (my) language. If they think they are hiring qualified translators this way, you can just guess the level of translation you will get. Don't waste money on them. If you think I'm just taking out on them for rejecting me, fine, please go on and waste your money and time.

This is what you need to do to get a high quality translation I have been translating for Gengo for a couple of months now and have had a read through the reviews with many clients complaining about issues with their translation. I basically only ever work on jobs at the Pro level rate of $0.09 because only this rate allows for enough time to produce a quality translation. In regards to the bad reviews: I believe this is a matter of you get what you paid for. If you submit your translation as a standard translation the translator gets paid a measly $0.03 to $0.035 per word which is way below industry standards (at least a third lower than what a professional translator usually charges). Generally speaking, a translator translates around 300 words per hour. This means a translator makes around $9.00 per hour at these rates. In most countries this would be below minimum wage and without any of the perks that come with being employed (annual leave, sick leave, paid public holidays. So, in order to make some money a translator will need to churn out at least 600 words per hour if not more. Hence, the quality of this translation will never be as good as a translation done for the Pro rate of $0.09. Put simply if you want a high quality translation please submit your job as a Pro job and a professional translator will work on your translation. You simply cannot expect a high quality translation at the standard rate. For even higher quality translations, provide as much context as possible and a glossary if needed. Also, if you submit your translation through their system it gets split across different translators. This means that your final translation will be inconsistent in style and terminology. In order to avoid this simply submit your translation in a word document or excel spreadsheet. A professional translator will then ensure style and terminology are consistent across your whole document. I hope this is helpful. Thanks, Your Master educated Professional Gengo Translator

Bad for everyone Imagine that you're translating subtitles to a video, and the person speaking is stuttering, starting and ending a sentence, changing tense, etc. You translate it in line with the tone of the original translation, as well you should. Then the Gengo review comes in and marks your translation as "awkward". "Well, of course, it's awkward, because the original is awkward," you say. The Gengo support team dismisses you with a repetitive statement of, "As a translator, it's your job to make it not awkward." So, when the original is, "I...I mean...I don't know, I wasn't...I couldn't have...I'm not sure I..." according to Gengo, your translation should be: "I don't know." Anything else will be marked as "awkward". This is a terrible experience for a translator AND a bad result for the customer.

Gengo is unreliable and poor quality Gengo is unreliable and poor quality. I submitted a document for translation, and when they had completed this, I compared it to a free translation through google. It cost me over 300$ and when I rejected this, because I am not able to use it, my money was not returned. It has been an awful experience and I will not be returning or recommending this service to others. Save your money, Google translate will provide you with the same quality. Or connect with a freelancing company to help you. When I rejected the work and it went under review, they decided this met quality standards and that I should be more specific as to my requests. Poor customer service and an absolute rip off for your money.

I used Gengo to once translate a letter… I used Gengo to once translate a letter from Eng->Japanese that I wanted to send to my girlfriend's company about their poor COVID work-from-office rules. I received the translation in less than 24 hours and upon showing it to a JP friend they said it was mostly perfect. There are lots of negative reviews on this site, but this is my own experience