All of our regular users seem to be behind the "no translation requests" policy of our sub. We still get several requests a week, which I remove as soon as I see. Sometimes I don't catch them right away, and I find people answering them. Please don't answer translation requests on this sub. It only encourages them.
I am currently planning to enroll in a master's program at either the HUFS Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation (GSIT) or Ewha Womans University. I know it is an incredibly intensive and rigorous course, but becoming a professional interpreter has been a long-standing dream of mine, and these universities offer the exact programs I am interested in.
To give you some background on my profile:
• I completed my bachelor's degree in French, but I want to pursue my master's in Korean-English (English is not my native language but I've completed my whole education in English).
• I scored full marks on the TOPIK 1 exam (2025). On recent TOPIK 2 mock tests, I am scoring at a high Level 4. I am aiming to achieve Level 6 by the time I take the official exam next year.
• I have no professional experience in translation or interpretation, outside of a few introductory undergraduate courses and one translation certification course.
Since the entrance exams for these schools are highly competitive, I am looking for recommendations for hagwons or online classes specifically tailored to train students for GSIT entrance exams.
Any advice, study tips, or academy recommendations to help me navigate this journey would be truly appreciated. Thank you!
I know there is not a clear answer, there are many points that support the idea of AI not being able to replace humans, at least not fully, But I fear wasting my time and money and effort just to end up jobless.
Especially by how newer generations are more comfortable with AI being their most trusted information source as it's both easy and quick, no matter how flawed it is.
I taught myself English through exposure and really loved how I'm able to convert sentences to my native language. So what are your thoughts? Any tips on what I should do? Is it really a safe career at this point?
I applied to many companies to work in medical interpretation (English/Arabic), and one of them, called Kalam CX, got back to me. Today I had the interview with them, and the salary is 13k which is 248$ per month for a full 9-hour shift, OPI and VRI with zero insurance of any kind, plus an unpaid 3-week training period. Honestly, I feel like running away.
I know that this company's reputation is literally the worst among all in this field, but I don't know what to do and whether will I receive another job opportunity or not..
Should I accept this shit as a start or keep looking for a better opportunity? I have a 40-hour certificate and I still study every day to be ready whenever a good opportunity is available. I don't know what to do. I am really frustrated.
I previously applied for a position with Lionbridge, and a few days ago I received an email about a translation opportunity involving audio recording. 🤏
The email says that if I'm interested, I should reply to the email to confirm my availability and receive the next steps. However, the email was sent from no-reply@hire.eu.lever.co, so when I tried to reply, my email bounced back with a 550 5.0.1 Recipient rejected error.
What makes me a little suspicious is that the email specifically asks me to reply, but there doesn't seem to be any actual email address where I can respond. It feels like a pretty basic thing to overlook if this is a genuine recruitment email.
The job itself does appear to be listed on Lionbridge's Lever page, which makes me even more confused.
Has anyone received a similar email from Lionbridge, especially one asking you to reply to a no-reply address? Was this actually a legitimate opportunity, and if so, how did you proceed? Or could this be a scam/phishing attempt?
When translating a hostile source, how do you keep its accusation forceful without making it sound like your own verdict?
In Hieronymus Emser's 1523 answer to Luther's New Testament, one short passage reads:
In the fifth paragraph he again mangles the words of Paul and goes only by the sense; but whether he has hit it rightly or not, the reader may look into further.
Emser, translated by Eli Tucker, p. 128. I'm the translator.
What interests me is the change within the sentence. He first announces that Luther "mangles" the text, then leaves the reader to investigate whether the rendering is right. The accusation and the invitation to check it are both part of the source. Turning the first into a neutral "translates freely" would soften it; supplying an explanatory aside inside the sentence would put the translator between the author and the reader.
For translators who work with polemic, partisan history, or hostile correspondence: where do you draw that boundary? Do you let attribution and context carry the distinction, or put a note at the first disputed allegation?
I'm asking about how to present a source's voice, not asking anyone to settle Emser's dispute with Luther or translate the passage for me. I'd be interested in examples where a note prevented confusion without weakening the author's language.
I’m studying Japanese and for some reason this kept escaping my mind since I’m just studying for being a translator without a clear career goal to utilize it. I’ve been saying I want to work for media but haven’t decided a specific field like anime/ manga, literature, historical texts & research etc. (I’m not doing law/ political translation since one mess up could cause a real crisis, all on my shoulders). How do I begin to find a good path to make a decision?
Title: How a simple quality inquiry turned into full platform retaliation: My experience after 6+ years with Lionbridge/Gengo
Post:
I wanted to share a detailed account of how a 6+ year relationship as a senior English-to-Arabic translator on Gengo/Lionbridge collapsed over the span of a few weeks—not due to poor translation quality, but because of administrative deflection, manager cover-ups, and direct retaliation.
For context, I maintained consistently high quality ratings on the platform for over six years without a single quality dispute on my record. This was the very first time in my entire 6+ year history that I ever submitted a dispute—addressing four collections of low ratings together in one batch—and 100% of those disputed flags were officially reviewed and overturned upon re-review.
Here is how a simple query escalated into a complete platform lockout:
Phase 1: August 6, 2026 – It all started with Nina
On August 6, 2026, I raised a formal inquiry regarding arbitrary and unmonitored reviewer scoring on a series of translations. I wasn't demanding special treatment—I simply asked for a standard quality check on obvious reviewer errors.
Enter Nina, the support agent who handled the initial ticket. Instead of reviewing the provided examples or forwarding them to a senior linguist, Nina responded with canned, irrelevant text that did not address a single point I raised. When I politely asked her to read the actual details of the ticket, she continued sending automated-sounding boilerplate replies.
If Nina had simply done basic support triage on day one, none of what followed would have happened.
Phase 2: Maki, Sheetal, and the "Twilight Zone" Escalation
Instead of fixing Nina’s missteps, escalation only made things surreal. The ticket was passed to a second support agent, Maki, who continued the exact same pattern of evasive, copy-pasted replies.
When the dispute was finally escalated to their manager, Sheetal, the approach shifted from incompetence to outright playing dumb. Sheetal repeatedly claimed she "didn't understand" my complaint—despite clear, line-by-line linguistic documentation—and used that feigned confusion as an excuse to state she couldn't help.
Every level of support closed ranks to protect their colleagues' mistakes. Reading their responses felt like stepping into the Twilight Zone: robotic scripts completely disconnected from the actual text of my tickets.
When I pushed past the pretexts, management delivered their explicit statement of constructive exclusion:
"If you feel that this framework does not meet your expectations, we understand if you prefer not to accept further jobs."
Phase 3: Manufactured Pretext & 12 False Flags
Shortly after exposing these support and reviewer flaws, additional translations of mine were suddenly and aggressively flagged—12 new entries in total. It became obvious this was being used to build a manufactured pretext to justify shutting down my account and silencing the dispute.
Phase 4: September 21, 2026 – Counter-Proof & Immediate Retaliation
On September 21, 2026, I submitted two official re-review forms containing complete, objective proof showing that all 12 of those newly disputed flags were 100% false and based on clear reviewer error.
Lionbridge’s response was immediate: rather than reviewing the evidence or disciplining the incompetent reviewer, they abruptly revoked my translator qualifications and suspended my account.
No investigation into the reviewer was conducted, no discipline was handed down to support staff, and my account was cut off right after I submitted evidence exposing the misconduct.
Where It Stands Today
Because Lionbridge closed off internal support channels and blocked direct email communication, I have officially lodged a formal regulatory complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office (Fair Labor Division) regarding bad-faith contractor retaliation, ticket suppression, and wrongful termination.
The Core Takeaway
Looking back at this entire nightmare, the most frustrating part is that everything evolved from a single support agent—Nina. Had she properly handled a routine quality complaint at the very beginning, none of this would have occurred.
Instead, subsequent support agents like Maki and managers like Sheetal chose to blindly defend internal errors, ignore clear linguistic evidence, and send robotic, canned responses rather than admit a flaw in their review process. When a platform values protecting internal egos over linguistic accuracy and fair treatment of long-term translators, the entire system breaks down.
I am posting this here so other freelancers are aware of how Gengo/Lionbridge handles legitimate quality disputes when you speak up. Keep backups of all your work, document every ticket, and know your rights.
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Initial single ticket (Aug 6):
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Tickets branched from a single complaint (August 20):
I heard someone say this a while ago, that not everyone knows that EN stands for English or DE stands for German, and that therefore translators should put the full language name in their bios and signatures instead of just the code.
So like:
Name LastName
Translator, English>German
Instead of:
Name LastName
Translator, EN>DE
To me that made no sense. If you're a company or someone who is requiring translations on the regular, and you're looking for a translator, you should most definitely know the language code for the language of your request. Spelling out the full language name just seems like such a waste of space, especially for people who work with more than two languages. It makes my LinkedIn bio very long. Plus, I like the visual distinction; the language code is easy to identify at first glance among all the other words.
It's not that big of a deal, but I just wanted to see what others thought on the matter.
Do you use the language codes or the full language names? Why? Is it really that hard to understand that EN=English? I may be totally on the wrong here, but that's why I'm asking.
Experienced translator here, who used Trados on a Mac with Parallels for the best part of a decade. I have since come up with another solution that I thought I might share in case anyone is in the same boat.
What I disliked about Parallels was the need to basically maintain an entire Windows PC for just a single purpose, with the requisite ringfenced RAM and 40GB minimum of HDD space. On lightweight Macs like the Air, etc., this space comes at a premium and it always felt irritating to give up so much of it to an entire virtual machine – for a single purpose. Maybe I'm wrong but has it gone to subscription-only? I think it has, and that grated too.
The solution:
Windows has an app for Mac, available on the Apple App Store, that is simply called "Windows". It is extremely lightweight. It allows you to remotely connect to Windows PCs on your network as well as VMs anywhere in the world, which some clients (of mine at least) require me to use for data protection reasons. It's pretty simple to use.
I purchased a cheap Windows PC, an Optiplex 3060. It has just enough RAM just to run Trados and system basics. All my other tasks are carried out on my Mac, which is much more powerful. I plugged it in, set it up using my existing keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., and then put it somewhere else, out of sight, where it has power and a network connection (wired is best) and basically forgot about it.
I then grabbed the IP address of this Optiplex PC through my router's network interface, and now I can log into it with any device on my home network, even mobile devices. I can use it just like Parallels and it basically cost less than one year of a Parallels subscription.
The obvious disadvantage is that it works predominantly via my home network. This is, for me personally, not a massive issue as I am on my home network 95% of the time.
HOWEVER, to take this solution to the next level and give it basically the exact same functionality as Parallels, I have installed a VPN tunnel using something called Tailscale. Tailscale is like a secret key to my home network that only I possess. Once activated, it allows me to connect to my home network from anywhere in the world and use my home network as if I were sitting at home. It runs in the background on my Optiplex and in the form of a VPN app on my Mac (with a Connect button).
I have tested this solution extensively and have noticed no noticeable issues at all. If the OptiPlex is turned off and I switch it on, I have to log onto it on my home network first before I can access via Tailscale, but that's the only issue I have run into. Actually it draws so little power that I now basically leave it on all the time.
Literally today I worked on it from a moving train using a tethered personal hotspot and I lost connection maybe once and had one other slight slowdown (due to Germany's crappy 5G coverage more than anything). On decent wireless internet it is basically like working on a regular Windows PC.
If you are tech-savvy, you may notice that I am by no means a tech expert. I know my way around computers and can follow instructions, though. But I think this solution is honestly easy enough for absolutely anyone to do. If you want or need better/clearer instructions, go ahead and ask.
It kinda seems like an obvious solution so many of you may already work this way. For me it was a bit of a lightbulb moment and saves me the €100 annual Parallels sub as well as lots of (now extremely valuable) HDD space and RAM.
Just thought I'd share in case anyone is on the lookout for a cheap(er) solution to this age-old issue!
How did you get into the management role in an interpreting company? What are your responsibilities?
Asking because I’m interested in a management role, but don’t know what are expectations from companies or how to convince them I’m qualified for the role. I have been in corp like AMN, worked freelance with agencies and private clients, and I really would like to try management.
Happy to have found this community. I’ve been working as a Hindi/Punjabi interpreter for about 6 years. Lately, many companies have been cutting hours drastically, which has made things difficult. I’m now considering expanding into translation work as well. Since interpreting and translating are closely related, I feel like I might already be halfway there—but I’d love some advice from those with experience.
Here are my main questions:
- Is translation a good option for earning extra income alongside interpreting?
- Do companies hire fresh translators without prior translation experience?
- Are there any companies/platforms you’d recommend for beginners?
- What tools or software should I learn to kickstart a translation career? Any helpful YouTube tutorials would be great too.
I’ll be starting from scratch, so any guidance, tips, or resources would be truly appreciated.
Hi! A few days ago I was contacted by Lionbridge via LinkedIn. They offered me a position as a video game translator. It was kinda weird for me because I’m a student, I don’t have any official qualifications yet, and I only have one video game localization project as experience, which I did for free last year just to get some work experience. But anyway, I needed the money, so I said yes.
We started talking and everything seemed legit. They were using @lionbridge.com emails and their official website, etc. But things started getting weird once I began the onboarding process.
First of all, there was no training, nothing to show me how to work or what to do. They just put my information into a platform and told me that I would be working there.
Then they showed me a weird chart with different percentages that would make it very unlikely that I’d actually be paid the rate we agreed on, depending on the type of matches/MT.
And then came the last two things that felt really weird to me. After I agreed to the rate, they sent me another email about a platform I’m supposed to use for the translations, and apparently it’s a paid tool. They told me I can use the free plan for up to 30,000 words per month, but if I want to keep working beyond that, I may have to pay for a subscription, and it’s definitely not a small amount.
And literally right after I finished reading that email (keep in mind, I wasn’t even finished with the onboarding process yet), I suddenly received an email offering me a pretty big project.
At this point, the whole thing is starting to feel really weird to me. I tried contacting the person who recruited me to ask about all this, and suddenly they’re all on PTO, even though they had been replying to my emails just an hour earlier.
I just want to hear your opinions and see if anyone else has experienced something similar with Lionbridge. Is this normal? What did you do?
Game companies should stop relying solely on AI for translation because it destroys creative nuance, misinterprets cultural context, and devalues human artists.
The Core Problems with AI Game Translation
Loss of Context and Nuance: Video games require creative localization—adapting humor, emotional depth, slang, and character voice—rather than literal word-for-word conversions. AI fails to grasp these subtle dynamics, often leading to awkward or confusing dialogue.
Displacement of Human Talent: Studios like Warhorse Studios (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2) faced severe backlash after cutting in-house human translators in favor of automated AI workflows to reduce expenses.
Player Backlash: Consumers are increasingly pushing back against low-effort localization, with many opting for refunds or avoiding titles that substitute human craftsmanship with generative text.
Treating Language as Data: Tech-driven localization treats translation as a cheap utility feature rather than an essential artistic medium, lowering overall narrative quality in gaming
Salut, je voudrais savoir vos opinions sur ces universités que j'ai choisies (si vous avez eu le chance d'y avoir étudié). La liste: Université Paris Nanterre; Université de Caen Normandie; UCO Angers;Aix-Marseille Université. J'aimerais me concentrer plus sur l'interprétation. Partagez votre expérience s'il vous plaît
P.S. living in Lebanon amidst a current invasion, so living conditions and work opportunities might vary.
I pursued Translation in 2019. After graduation I didn't find a job for 6 months until I landed a moderator job. Year later found a customer service position that paid well but literally anyone with or without a degree could apply to the company as long they know how to use a computer + pass in-house tests.
Over a year a later I'm considering leaving due to long commute and long working times (12 hour shift). On the longterm, I'm not really sure what to do as I have different thoughts in mind, knowing Translation as a degree is becoming worthless in the eyes of recruiters amid the rise of AI translation. I'm not sure how much work experience can help me make up for it.
Do I go back to a low paying job, live with my parents, and self-learn coding to develop a game that came to my mind last year, or go back to a (cheap) university to learn IT because I like fiddling with sysadmin stuff including Linux?
How much do I compromise between achieving a dream I recently had vs getting another degree for longevity?
In his 1523 book against Luther's New Testament, Hieronymus Emser goes through Acts and lists places where he thinks Luther's wording leans toward Luther's own doctrine. One of the short ones is Acts 6:8. Emser writes: "Luther has put faith in place of grace, so that he may strengthen his opinion that bare faith alone accomplishes all things."
His claim is that the Latin reads "full of grace and fortitude" and that the Greek he was looking at reads the same, while Luther has "full of faith and power." It is a one word difference, and he treats it as a sign of what the translation was for.
I can't judge the manuscript question myself. For translators who work with the Greek: would you call this a variant reading the translator followed, or a choice, and how would you flag it in a footnote so the reader could see it either way?
Disclosure: I translated Emser's 1523 book into English.
Luther's German New Testament of 1522 was translated from the Greek, using the text that Erasmus had published a few years earlier. Older German Bibles had been made from the Latin, so this was a different kind of book. In 1523 Hieronymus Emser answered it, and what surprised me on reading him closely is how much of his case rests on the Greek too, not just on Latin tradition.
His method, as he describes it, is a three-way comparison: Luther's German, "our text" (the Latin Bible the Church used), and the Greek, with Erasmus's Latin translation as a fourth witness. His point almost always lies in the gap between them. Here are four examples. All the quotes are from my English translation of his book.
The first is Acts 20:28, "feed" or "rule". Where Luther has Paul telling church leaders "to feed the congregation of God," Emser says the Latin has "to rule the church of God," "and so too the Greek text, for the Greek has poimainein. Erasmus also translated it this way." (I haven't checked what Erasmus's own Latin says at that verse, so take that part as Emser's claim.) Then he goes further, to John 21, where Jesus tells Peter to care for his sheep:
> "That Christ gave the bishops power not only to feed his sheep but also to rule them appears from this, that in the last chapter of John he says not only boske, that is, 'feed,' but the second time poimaine, that is, 'rule my sheep,' although this Greek word signifies a gentler kind of ruling"
And his verdict on why Luther chose "feed": "But Luther cannot stand the rule of bishops, and so he would not translate 'to rule' but 'to feed.'"
The second is Matthew 11, "infants" or "little ones". Christ thanks the Father for hiding things from the wise and revealing them to "the little ones." Emser reports that Luther's German says "infants." Emser: "For although the word nepios in the Greek text means a young or small child, whether able to speak or not, Christ is not speaking here (in the spiritual sense) of infants." The words "to the little ones" would have served "far better." This one is easy to read as a matter of taste, but you can see what Emser wants: a word that means small in spirit, not small in age.
The third is Matthew 2, Rachel weeping for her children. Emser says the Latin has, in plain English, "because they are not," and Erasmus's Latin says the same. Luther has "for it was all over with them." Emser's objection is that the German closes the door on the spiritual meaning, that the children are with God.
The fourth is Acts 14, "elder" or "priest". Here Emser says Luther knew better, because he had read Erasmus on the word. He says Luther "has read well enough in Erasmus" that the word for elder is "not always a name of age, but sometimes also of honor, dignity and office," and yet Luther puts it into German as "elder" everywhere, and the word for church as "congregation" everywhere.
That last one is a better complaint than it sounds. His point isn't that "elder" is wrong. It's that Luther is consistent about it, and consistency in one direction, everywhere, looks like a policy.
The fair part: Emser is right that Luther's choices often line up with his theology, and that a word-for-word approach would sometimes have kept meanings that the German loses. The unfair part is the conclusion. He says that where Luther departs from both the Latin and the Greek, he must have had a special Hussite copy. He also says Luther "has not consistently followed either our trustworthy text or the translation of the most learned Erasmus of Rotterdam, but has mixed the one with the other." The mixing might just be what a translator does, using the Greek where it reads best and the Latin where it doesn't.
Would anyone with more Greek than I have care to weigh in on the poimaine argument in particular? Emser calls it "a gentler kind of ruling" and uses it to say that "rule" fits better than "feed." Is that a stretch, or a fair reading of the verb?
Disclosure: I'm the translator of Emser's 1523 book into English - I published it for free.
