Dear colleagues,

Returning from my vacation I see that several Arabic to English translations had to be canceled because no translator was able or ready to pick the offered job.

I therefore decided to contact you to help and to see if there are any problems. In the last few minutes you should have received a new job offer (207 words; Arabic to English).

Please share any thoughts and comments you might have. Whether or not you actually received a job offer to your Inbox; if you experience any problems with the system. Simply anything that could help us to improve the current situation.

With kindest regards,
Ursula

Dear colleagues,

Lately I received inquiries concerning the right way of informing LingoZ about planned vacations.

I requested to add a “Vacation Flag” to the translator profile some time ago, but honestly I believe that this will be ready, let’s say, in time for the Christmas holidays

Now sarcasm aside:
1.) for holidays shorter than two weeks do not bother yourself to inform us.
2.) Colleagues taking a longer break: simply send my an email (ursula[at]babylon.com ) and I will manually freeze these accounts for the time of their holidays.

From the bottom of my heart: enjoy your holidays, refresh your mind and body, just add some more moments to your life, you like to remember over and over again.

Best,
Ursula

By now each one of you should have gotten several job offers through LingoZ. This is what I can see in my stats and the email lists. Still I receive letters by team members that say that they haven’t gotten any job offers by emails. First of all I encourage everyone in this situation to shortly inform me and I will see if there are any problems with the profile of the specific translator.

In general I would advise you to:
• Check your Spam/Junk folders
• Please add noreply@lingoz.com to your “Approved Sender List”. (How to do…)

With best regards,
Ursula

We had it twice recently, once a 3 word job and once a 4 word job had to be canceled as no translator was ready to accept the job!

I can understand that it is not appealing to do such a short job.
Money wise it simply doesn’t pay off. But here are two reasons why you should consider doing so.

1. LingoZ Translations is new on the market. We expect to have new customers that want to try out our service with small jobs first. We have to serve them, to convince them by our quality and hopefully gain a constant customer.

2. We do not give penalties to translators declining a job. But we do promote translators that show initiative and dedication. So if you want to invest into your place on the team, please pick up also small jobs.

Please act on your discretion,
Ursula

We all are constantly learning from each other. This time I would like to share a painful lesson with you.

A colleague of ours was working on a 1100 word translation job for LingoZ. She did the translation directly on site, using the text area on the Project Detail page. Of course this translation lasted for some time and by the time she reached the end of the translation her session on LingoZ already ended. She was asked to log in again and ALL HER WORK GOT LOST.

Honestly, when building the system, we didn’t see the need to tell the translators, that they have to copy and paste the source text onto their computers and to work on their computer instead of relying on an Internet interface. We are very sorry for the hard way we learned this and also thankful that our colleague despite her frustration will stay on the team.

1.) To avoid similar occurrences I added a note to the Project Detail page:

(Click on image to enlarge)

The link of the “Learn more” leads to a new paragraph in the FAQ for Translators:
10. Who is responsible to avoid data loss?
You are. The text window on the Project Detail page is no work space. This text window is to be used only for pasting your finished translation for submission. Using this text window for making your translation might lead to data loss in case your Internet connection gets lost or your session on LingoZ ends. Please copy the text to be translated to a file on your local computer and save your work frequently.

We added the request to have a “Save” button on the Project Detail page, but it entered our long list for future improvements with a low hierarchy. The solution right now is just there at your finger tips: Save your works on your computer.

Best regards,
Ursula