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Online translation services
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General

What is PeopleWords? PeopleWords is an online collaborative and community-driven website targetting translation jobs. If you need a translation, PeopleWords lets you meet the people who can do the job. If you are a translator, PeopleWords helps you to find people who needs your skills.

What are your translator qualifications? PeopleWords does not have any translator employees, and we do not check the background of the translators. We believe that translation skills are far too domain specific, and that worldwide education systems are far too diversified to provide any reliable notion of qualified translator. Instead, PeopleWords relies on a much more efficient community-driven rating sytem.

I want a translation, how does it work? Just register and go to the Create new job section. You will be asked 1) to describe your translation job, 2) to upload the documents that you want to be translated 3) to provide an indicative price. Your job offer will be put on public display and translators will be able to answer your job offer.

I am a translator, how does it work? Just register and go to the Browse jobs section. It takes 2mins to be able to answer job offers. If the offered price does not match your requirements, you can always propose higher counter offers.

What are the benefits of using PeopleWords? PeopleWords provides mainly three benefits both for people needing translations and for translators. First, PeopleWords has very low costs. We do not have expensive offices nor bureaucracy. Check out What are PeopleWords fees?. Second, PeopleWords provides community-driven trust ratings. Can you trust your translation job to be done properly and in time? Yes, check out our section What are PeopleWords ratings?. Third, PeopleWords provides an online collaborative system that lets you manage your translation jobs in a very productive manner (from document management to online payment solutions). Check out What is the PeopleWords collaborative system?.

Payments

How do I get a quote for a translation job? Just submit a job offer with an indicative price and wait for translator offers. You do not have to pay anything to submit a job offer.

What is the payment process? Payment is done by the job owner when he has received the translated documents. A translation job typically includes several steps from job submission to translator payment.

  1. A regular user (i.e. the ''job owner'') submits a new translation job. The offer is put on public display. The price is indicative.
  2. Translators make counter offers for the job.
  3. The job owner can accept or decline any translation offers.
  4. If the job owner accepts an offer, a translation workspace is opened. The translator gets access to the documents to be translated.
  5. In the end, the job owner proceeds to payment. The payment includes translator fees, PeopleWords fees and taxes.

What are the PeopleWords fees? PeopleWords takes a 10% fee with a minimum amount of 1€ (flat fee). This fee includes all online transaction costs. The flat fee amounts in other currencies are subject to change rate but are roughly equal to 1€.

What if I am not satisfied by the translation? As a job owner, you have the possibility to cancel a job; in other words, you can terminate a job without proceeding to any payment. Remember that canceling a job is very likely to hurt your reputation because the translator will have the opportunity to give you a negative community rating. Highly rated translators do not accept jobs from poorly rated (or unrated) users. Check out our New user tips.

What if the job owner does not pay? If the job owner refuses to pay a job after he gets the (properly) translated documents, then you are basically crooked. Accepting a translation job from an unrated or poorly rated user includes some risks whereas accepting job from a highly rated user is very safe. Check out our New user tips.

Will I get a receipt? Yes, you will get a receipt (both as regular user and as translator) through our Paypal payment system.

Community

What are PeopleWords ratings? When a translation job is completed, both the job owner and the translator get the possibility to rate the other user (positive or negative rating). Those ratings are public and cannot be removed. Building a good reputation (i.e. gathering a large number of positive ratings) is a highly rewarding process. As a job owner, it means that you can use the community ratings to judge how far you can trust each translation offer that you get. As a translator, it means that the higher your reputation, the more likely people will accept your offers even if your not the cheapest translator for the job.

Tips for pertinent rating comments Your rating comments (i.e. what you say about the other users) also appear on your public profile. Keep in mind that a good rating is a factual rating. Emotional comments (such as I hate you and I hate your dog too) usually have a strong negative impact on the author of the comment. Nobody is going to trust someone who insult other people. Therefore keep your comments as factual and objective as possible.

New user tips First of all, complete your Profile. In particular specify the languages and provide some minimal information about yourself. PeopleWords does not require any particular information besides an (undisclosed) email address. But remember that the other people will not trust someone who is hiding behind his login name without providing any personal information.

Why should I put files on public display? When a regular user submits a new translation job, he has the opportunity to put the documents to be translated on public display. If confidentiality is not an issue (ex: website localization), then you should think about putting your documents on public display. Indeed public display helps the translators to precisely understand the nature of the translation jobs. Since there is less uncertainty in terms of amount of work, translators will be able to provide more accurate, and possibly, lower prices.

Why does the job title matter? The job title is the first element that will be read by the translators. If your title is not pertinent, you will get less translation offers. A good title includes precise indications on the nature of the documents to be translated.

The job title is a list of keywords in the mind of the translator. Translators typically browse dozens of job offers. They are seeking jobs that match their skills and their interests. Do not include empty words such as Need a Translation, all PeopleWords offers are translation jobs anyway. Do not include languages or document size indications in the title, those elements are already specified in the job description.

Translation workspace

What is the PeopleWords workspace? PeopleWords provides a translation job management system refered as the translation workspace (workspace in short). The workspace features a document manager, a customer-translator discussion forum and a payment manager. Those elements are specially adapted to fit the needs of translation works. The objective is to let you be as productive as possible.

Why not just do everything by email? Good translations typically require some discussions between customers and translators to clarify the purpose and the context of the translation job. E-mail conversations are quite error-prone: customers are dealing with multiple translators (one translator for each language typically) and translators are dealing with a large number of customers. Additionally, if several versions of the same document are exchanged, the situation can be confusing for the customer that will not be able to check reliably whether he is holding the last translated version of each document or not.