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Ask HN: What service do you use for human translations of your website?

57 points by weston ↗ HN
Hi HN,

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)?

Considering poking around Fiver and maybe Upwork, but was wondering if there's any startups/companies that offer human translations as a service?

Thanks!

50 comments

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jermaustin1
Depends on what you are translating.

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."

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.

In either way, I wish a better service existed.

mholmes680
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.

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.

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.

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.

(editted for clarity - below the first Paragraph is general knowledge of the industry, not specific to the two aforementioned vendors)

ai_ja_nai
>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.

That's why they build those databases of phrases you were referring to, since they apply discounts on matches against those DBs and on repetitions in your document.

Instead, ask explicitly for a Translation Memory file at the end of the job, so that you can retain your personal piece of database of phrases that was produced during the localization of your file (it's your right to have it and serious companies will hand it without fuss).

mholmes680
"Translation Memory". Thank you I could not for the life of me remember that. 5 years was so long ago !
eric_bullington
> 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

The typical process would be to send them the translated sentences in Trados or tmx format (translation memory) and ask for a discount for 100% matches (you may even be able to discounts for "fuzzy", or <100%, matches). These discounts are often referred to as "Trados" discounts. That said, not all agencies/translators offer such discounts.

> 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.

What happened then? This stunt would be a grave offense for a professional translator. A certified/sworn translator would probably lose their certification for it. I'm guessing your translator was a cut-rate freelancer doing this work on the side with little connection to the professional translator community, which generally prides itself on its professionalism.

Also, no reputable translation agency that I know of gets their translators for UpWork. They either find them through word of mouth, translator associations, or sometimes translator communities like proz.com. They don't typically "post" jobs, rather they have a list of vetted translators who have signed their confidentiality and other contracts, and whom they then email individually to ask if they're interested in job X (usually attaching the job). And the more reputable ones have their own certification process or else only work with translators certified by a reputable body (ATA, ITI, etc.). Most reputable translation agencies will also have a second translator edit or proofread the document once it's been translated.

jcasman
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gengo
futhey
Have used Gengo extensively, it's most likely your best option.
whitingx
https://gengo.com/

https://localizejs.com/

^ both useful translation services ツ

pbreit
If you have budget, I can enthusiastically recommend both of these services. Localize is a miracle. Drop-in JavaScript and entire site machine translated. 2 clicks to order Gengo translationas in a per word basis.
chmike
DeepL (https://www.deepl.com/) is a pretty good translator. It's not perfect, but it's much better than google translator.
mgamache
I don't see pricing or an API from DeepL that could be classified as a 'service'. Am I missing it?
futhey
No monetization from the team on this particular product (yet). But, there are unofficial API frameworks (Search NPM for example) & they haven't really implemented any aggressive rate-limiting. Normal usage should be fine.
philippz
I can also recommend it. It beats most of the existing translation services and we're happy with it at STOMT
rawrmaan
Just played with this for my app's description and it's pretty amazing. Definitely recommend.
swimfar
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.

https://unbabel.com/

indescions_2017
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 ;)

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.

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!

Zyst
I've heard the most common 2000 words in languages tend to make up the bulk of written, and spoken communication. Don't quote me on it though, since I don't have any real sources on this.

It reminds me of an editor that was submitted once in Show HN, that only lets you type the most common 1000 words[1].

[1] https://github.com/mortenjust/cleartext-mac

Jun8
This is an excellent idea. It’s definitely not 10k, my estimate would be <500. This could be a great open source project, if one does not exist already.
bula
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.

www.applanga.com

slig
If you're considering fiverr, check out /r/slavelabour and /r/jobbit .
futhey
Fiverr folks are just copy pasting Google translate and doing slight edits. Except some rare exceptions (Mandarin). Quality control is a hard problem to solve (worked on a startup in this space), and the only really good solution is to pay a reputable translator / agency > 12¢ per word.
jamuhl
There is https://locize.com - bridging the gap between development and translation.

Based on customer feedback (https://locize.com/customers.html) for sure worth a try (even more having a 14d free - with zero obligations.

louisswiss
Have used locize before and was impressed by the speed and ease of use. The most difficult part of translation is getting the context right - this is where upwork etc didn't cut it for us.
psmartling
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.

https://www.smartling.com/pricing/

FLGMwt
We also use smartling. Does pretty well for us and has a simple API that we have gulp and webpack plugins for.
foxhound6
Remember the triad: time, cost, quality - pick two.

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.

For content that HAS to be correct, I've used www.languagescientific.com

jacobr
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.

They handle almost all translation formats and have a decent API.

mdemare
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.

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.

nso
What are your prices? Not interested in starting a whole quote scenario, just want to know the ball park.
mdemare
Starting from $0.08 per word.
jtsnow
I have used Lingotek (https://lingotek.com/). They offer human translation, translation memory, custom workflows, and integrate with various platforms.
db-dzine
Has someone every heard of translations.com?
stunt
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.