Dear all,

be notified that the next payments will be released on January, 17.
Reason: As we are located in Israel, tomorrow - January, 15 - is already the start of our weekend. We are back on Sunday.

Reminder: Don’t forget to request your payment as withdrawal on the site and send us the invoice.

Thanks for all the work done,
Ursula

Hi all,
nothing spectacular, only a small job by a a very nice customer I would like to help:
Is there anyone on the team who can do English to Apache translation?”
Or do you know a translator I could recommend to our customer?

Either place a comment or contact me (ursula [at] babylon.com).

Thanks,
Ursula

(Lunch will have to wait).

Remember, late October I sent out an email to the whole team inviting you to fill in your additional language pairs in a Google online form. By this I was trying to evaluate which language combination (others then the existing form and to English ones) I could add to our regular online service. This is what we call in Babylon jargon and in a terrible wrong way: Cross-Translation.

The whole thing turned out to be a catastrophe! The forms we filled out wrongly and I ended up with data I couldn’t use. Still I think that “Cross-Translation” would an important step forward for BHT and for you. So please let’s give it a second try:
1.) Send me emails (please either send it form the email account you use for BHT or clearly state your BHT email account - this is the only way I can connect between you and your translator ID)
2.) Because this is missing in so many of your profiles - let me know your native language.
3.) List all the language combination you work with.
4.) Use this as the subject line of your email: Cross-Translation

So the email I would like to get should simply look like this:

BHT email account: test@test.com
Native language: Japanese
Language combinations:
German to Japanese
French to Japanese
Italian to Japanese

Please - the sooner I get your feedback, the sooner I will be able to finally have your full potential represented in the system.

Thanks,
Ursula (very hungry)

No - still not about the new features, sorry, but certainly of general importance:

Once in a while I am using our system to request special tasks. I saw that this can lead to some confusion (especially when translators accept the job before reading it

I therefore will use in the future the following as the first line of a job submitted by me that lies beyond the regular jobs: BHT - SPECIAL JOB ASSIGNMENT.
So whenever you encounter a text to be translated starting with “BHT - SPECIAL JOB ASSIGNMENT” take some time to read the instruction and then act.

I am using this mainly in the following cases:
1.) Translations that cannot be submitted automatically through the system, such as images and screened texts. To help out some of our customers I make a manual word count of the material that needs translation. So here I give general information about the job, while the specific text has to be requested from me per email.
2.) Large jobs by business costumers that come with a different rate; so here I first have to check which translators would agree to the new job with a lower rate.
3.) Locating translators with experience of certain terminology.
4.) Locating translators with language pairs that are not covered by the system (e.g. German to French).

IMPORTANT NOTE: For some of these jobs I clearly state NOT TO ACCEPT THE JOB. So please don’t!!

Again - should be done anyhow for any text that you consider translating - review the text first, before accepting a job.

Regards,
Ursula (gone for lunch)

Hi all,

before addressing the new version, I simply must use this opportunity to point out some of the most common mistakes done by translators. Mistakes that cause us a lot of problems and consume a lot of our time and energy:

1.) Missing parts in translations:
It happens over and over again that you miss out on parts of the translation. One reason - you simple do not scroll down to the end of a text that was entered in the plain text area.

2.) Spelling mistakes!
Our customers are entitled to receive even the shortest translation without spelling mistakes. Therefore - just as mentioned on the website - do not make your translations directly in the translated text area. Always use MS Word or any other application that has a spellchecker.

Regards,
Ursula

Dear colleagues,

some important issues need my attention right now.
I will post about the new features during the next three hours.

Sorry and please return,
Ursula

Dear team members,

We added new languages to our service: Danish, Korean and Urdu.
Active team members that happen to cover one of these languages may add them to their “Translation Skills”.

Regards,
Ursula

Dear all,

one function of our system needs clarification: Uploading your translation as a file.

The main point is that uploading the file still doesn’t submit the translation!

You still have to click the “Submit Translation” button to complete your translation.

Best Wishes for the Holidays
and Happiness throughout the New Year 2010!

Ursula

Hi all,

we still don’t offer Korean as a regular service on BHT, but I got a job request for an English to Korean translation. Team members that work with this language pair, please contact me (ursula [at] babylon.com).

Thanks,
Ursula