Feel free to post any suggestions, bugs, or questions in this forum; we will be monitoring it closely :)
Best,Vindberg
Lingbay Admin - Always looking for Chinese translators, Arabic translators, Italian translators, French translators, Dutch translators, German translators, Danish translators, Japanese translators, etc.
Nice website & interface, by the way.
Looking forward to start the job :-)
Is there some sort of "exchange of services"? I.e. not being paid in money, well rather in credits usable with other users. Example: I translate for free and obtain in return a free proofreading of my CV.
Good stuff, the site looks great and I feel it'll be a big success. Lots of spelling and grammar mistakes though! Luckily, you're building a base of translators now to help with that ;)
I have one suggestion - merge language sub-categories like English (Jamaica), English (US) etc, and give us an additional option later on to select which of those sub-types we've mastered. This would then automatically include translations, proofreadings and other skills between the "mastered" types, without us having to spam the site and our profiles with dozens of skill combinations.
Edit: Also, there is no Serbo-Croat language. There is Serbian and Croatian (both in the list) - Serbo-Croat was spoken in Yugoslavia while it existed but they've both changed somewhat in the meanwhile.
Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.
Hi Swader, great to hear from you.
We did think about the situation you describe with related languages. We decided it would be too complex to handle by the user and too resource heavy for the benefits it would yield. We also believed that the differences between the related languages are large enough to discourage the selection of eg. all English variations. For instance English (Jamaica) must have several wordings that divert from common English and require special knowledge.
What you are saying is that we can remove the "Serbo-Croat" language from our list?
About the spelling and grammar mistakes, the proofreading jobs are already online"! lol nice comment :)
Hi Corentin, there are no exchange service on the site but it is definitely one of the things we are considering adding next. It would be separate from the paying area but visible in the profile (optional). Its a good idea.
Glad you like the site - we have invested many hours in the UI and workflow.
Hi vindberg,
yes, you can remove Serbo-Croat from the list, it hasn't existed since the Serbo-Croatian war :)
I have removed the Serbo-croat language. After doing some research online I can see you are correct, thanks.
We are also considering removing some of the other language variations as suggested in another post.
Good stuff :)
I also have two more suggestion if I may.
1) Please consider some sort of proof of skill for members. This being a freelancer community, there's no telling what kind of enthusiasts might storm in with cheap quotes, producing horrible results and trashing the reputation of the site and its members before they have one. Simply providing credentials in one's profile is definitely not enough. There's two approaches I can think of, of the top of my head: either make the buyers separate a 100-200 word part of the entire text they need processed and have the quoters process it while placing their quote. That way, a buyer would be able to compare initial results, narrowing down the choice of the people he can hire to those who produced satisfying transformations only. Another way (and quite possibly a more tedious and complicated, but also more consistent way) is adding Lingbay Tests: each member is, upon registration, given one free test attempt. When one passes this test, a "badge" shows up in their profile. These various language badges would eventually carry more weight than a supposed certificate from 15 years ago in high school. Naturally, this would require a team of experts in each language offered, hence the tediousness and complexity, not to mention cost. But I do think we need at least some kind of assurance, some kind of chance to get an edge over those people who always post the lowest quote.
2) Some more privacy regarding the "Site Activity" box. Right now it tells everything anyone does, from adding skills to precise quotes one places. Perhaps remove the quote notifications, or at least the amount from the message?
Cheers
Thank you for removing Serbo-Croatian from the list.
As Croatian am offended that my language gets degraded in that way since. That "language" was used during the ex Yugoslavia which ended in 1991. and we got our language back.
Croatian and Serbian are completely different languages, but similar enough for us to understand each other :)
I was just wondering...
What does "quotes" means i "Browse jobs"? Actually, I can't find the FAQ... Is it just me....? :)
But great site, keep up the work :)
It's really quite simple. Quotes are offers for a job. When you place a quote, you basically offer your services for a specific amount of money.
You can only quote after browsing for a job, that is, after clicking on Browse Jobs and finding one you think you can do.
That was also my guess, actually. But thanks for answering my question :)
Good feedback Swader. Regarding your first suggestion; its in our pipeline for the next release to add allow for pre-processing of sample text or a part of the translation job specified by the buyer.
Setting up online tests for freelancers is in the long-term pipeline, its a definite good screening process.
The site activity has two purposes. 1. It illustrates how active the website is to new users, 2. it allows active users to get more "screentime" on the frontpage. As the site get more visitors we will remove some of the activities that are recorded.
Why would you want to hide the quote amount?
Kikeb: it sounds like Croatian and Serbian is similar in the same way Swedish and Danish are :)
Tikka: the FAQ is in development. Maybe I can use some of your words Swader?
Great! A sample text before quoting (like the one you can do now when posting a language skill) would improve things drastically, even though a person who needs a translation will rarely know the difference between a good and bad translation :) It should at least help separate the wheat from the chaff and help buyers remove translations without punctuation or capitalization from the offers.
I understand the purpose of the site activity, but the detailed quotes could be potentially harmful (just as showing all quotes in jobs when you click on them) to serious freelancers. I don't mean to be rude or cruel to some members, but when a job has a 30-250 budget, posting a 9€ quote is a punch below the belt, regardless of how bad the situation in your country is. I also live in a country that's built on corruption, poverty and greed (Croatia), but I still wouldn't undermine the efforts of other translators in such a manner. Of course, the aforementioned sample translation when quoting would probably eliminate most of such offers (since people who make them obviously don't have much experience officially translating) but right now it's not very pleasant to see and might nudge potential inexperienced buyers to hire the cheapest prices, thus getting the lowest results. Perhaps, at least, limit the input field for the quote to the budget's minimum?
As for screen time, I hadn't thought about that. It makes sense, yes, but I'd still rather see something like -Swader just quoted for "Proofreading Lingbay's terms of service and use"- rather than -Swader quoted 40€ for ....-. It's not that big a deal though, so no worries.
As for the FAQ, sure thing, feel free.
I couldn't agree more, in all matters!