Hi HN,<p>I'm curious what services do you/your companies use for human translations of your app/website/videos, etc? Machine translations from Google Translate are only so-so at best. Do y'all use a third party service for the translations. If so, which one(s)?<p>Considering poking around Fiver and maybe Upwork, but was wondering if there's any startups/companies that offer human translations as a service?<p>Thanks!
Contracted local university CS / Math students from China. Done on an exchange basis where I helped with English and tech issues. They helped proofread machine translations. Made some excellent friends. And now I have an invitation to visit Henan Province as well ;)<p>What I am really interested in investigating is what is the minimal subset of words or concepts that makes a website or service useful. Is it 10,000? Or closer to 500. Because if is the latter, localization by standardizing the interface around these usability 'primitives' common to every culture would make the translation process very fast.<p>Essentially localization becomes a kind of "growth hack" itself. Having English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi / Urdu, etc. Covers a vast swath of humanity. But the marginal addition of say, Polish or Dutch, can result in an unexpected boost!
DeepL (<a href="https://www.deepl.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.deepl.com/</a>) is a pretty good translator. It's not perfect, but it's much better than google translator.
I've used, with plenty of success (ending around 5 years ago), both welocalize.com and lionbridge. We sent them .JS files, XML files, PDFs, and Word Documents.<p>Some things to look for:
Across multiple transactions with these [edit: localization] companies, they end up building a database of phrases, of which some companies might try to claim ownership over. Watch out for that when negotiating.<p>You're also most likely going to pay per word, so if you can figure out a good way to not send them sentences you've already had translated you can save some money.<p>Its also good to spot check some of the translations. These companies will basically post out the requirements and get freelance translators to do the job (in other words, they're managing all the UpWork work for you so you don't have to). We once caught a translator (NOT of the above-mentioned companies) located somewhere in Europe inserting some choice political statements about a specific biotech/GMO company we had as a client.<p>(editted for clarity - below the first Paragraph is general knowledge of the industry, not specific to the two aforementioned vendors)
Depends on what you are translating.<p>At my current big client, for resource keys, we use google translate, and then our resident polyglot will ensure they read over correctly. This works well for simple things like "Phone Number," "Job Title," and "Please enter your full name."<p>When we have documentation or manuals to translate, we have to hire out to a firm who takes the American English documents and translates it to which ever language we need. But that is controlled by the Head Office in Italy, so I have no insight into who they are using.<p>In either way, I wish a better service existed.
I worked as a (very) part-time translator (Japanese to English) for a company called Gengo. It's a "shared economy" structure, with any army of freelancers doing the work. Good at smaller, quick translations. To be clear, I have no experience buying their service, and I haven't done any work with them for several years. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gengo" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gengo</a>
CTO of tolq.com here. We support a variety of formats, including json, yaml, xlsx, and various xml formats, and we have a fully automated api that will ping you when our translators are done. Translation memory support is built-in - we'll only translate the diff.<p>We also have github support. Check in a yaml file in github, and we'll automatically translate the changes in the target languages you choose. When we're done, we create a pull request.
I didn't think that the startup that I work at would be so relevant on Hacker News :)<p>GLOBO is a Philadelpha-based on-demand language services provider, and localization and document translation are some of the services that we offer. What you're looking for is our bread and butter and I'd be happy to put you in touch with our account managers who know more about that side of the business.<p>Full disclosure: I head the analytics team at GLOBO
There is <a href="https://locize.com" rel="nofollow">https://locize.com</a> - bridging the gap between development and translation.<p>Based on customer feedback (<a href="https://locize.com/customers.html" rel="nofollow">https://locize.com/customers.html</a>) for sure worth a try (even more having a 14d free - with zero obligations.
> Fiver and maybe Upwork
If you're going that route of finding a translator for each language yourself, I strongly suggest a translator community like proz.com, translatorscafe.com, or linguaquote.com (founded by HNer luxpir). Or a translator association like the ATA (American Translators Association). They all have translator directories you can search, and the communities have places you can post projects for bidding/quotes.<p>Alternatively, if you want human translation as a service, there are companies like gengo.com or unbabel.com.<p>But I strongly recommend against Upwork or Fiver. You can find some qualified translators on those sites, but you're much more likely to find someone who really doesn't know what they're doing. There are some of the same in the translator communities and associations, but if you're judicious about your search criteria, you're much less likely to end up with such a translator.
Unbabel is one that uses machine translation followed by human verification/corrections. I've never used them to get translations, but I have done a little bit of post-editing for them.<p><a href="https://unbabel.com/" rel="nofollow">https://unbabel.com/</a>
We're using an external company for translation, but through transifex.com as the API.
The translation agency already had a platform for it, but we didn't want to develop something specific to one agency. Perhaps it's something to note.
Berlin based Applanga has helped us use human translations across 35 countries in 6 languages for a big multi-platform (ios, android, Amazon Alexa, web) app. We are based in Philly, but their service could not be any better. A professional team of (funny and cool) folks, excellent sdks, with human translators, and verification protocols. Also, their handholding through both tech onboarding, and the human translating part of the process has been great.<p>www.applanga.com
<a href="https://www.gengo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gengo.com/</a> is my favorite, but I'm biased because I worked there many lifetimes ago. I've used them on some projects since leaving and I haven't seen a large quality dip or anything, so I feel comfortable recommending them. Their API works well for automating a lot of the stuff too.<p>Also, if you ever meet the CEO, ask him about Gengo-Chan. :)
I have used this in the past for rails apps:<p><a href="https://www.localeapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.localeapp.com/</a>
Try out Smartling's self service platform. You get access to professional human translation as well as translation management tools, translation memory, visual context etc. You get a quote and estimate prior to submitting jobs.<p><a href="https://www.smartling.com/pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smartling.com/pricing/</a>
Remember the triad: time, cost, quality - pick two.<p>Selecting the right service/agency for translation is primarily related to what content (and what degree of accuracy) you need. Translating content for a website advertising a medical device is very different than translating social media content.<p>For content that HAS to be correct, I've used www.languagescientific.com
If you manage source codes of your website, try GitLocalize (<a href="https://gitlocalize.com" rel="nofollow">https://gitlocalize.com</a>)
It syncs with your repository and integrates with machine translation and human crowdsourcing translation to keep your translation up-to-date.
One Hour Translation: Translation Services
<a href="https://www.onehourtranslation.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.onehourtranslation.com/</a><p>They have an API for sending text and receiving translations in XLIFF format.
I have used Lingotek (<a href="https://lingotek.com/" rel="nofollow">https://lingotek.com/</a>). They offer human translation, translation memory, custom workflows, and integrate with various platforms.
We use www.poeditor.com with in-house translators, but they have a service to request translations that we expect to use as we add more languages.<p>They handle almost all translation formats and have a decent API.
Gengo works great. Happy user. A bit pricey but they are conservative on their delivery times and translations English to Mandarin have been getting better.