JANUARY 2017 – Low volume is expected at the beginning of the new year due to businesses starting the year off slow. This kind of time-based pattern that repeats over a one-year period is called seasonality, and January 2017 was no exception. Last month, we saw our community translate 19.4M units, a slight decrease from December 2016 (but still more than 8 months of last year!). Despite this seasonality, our community started the year off with one of the best performances we’ve seen.

Volume in top 10 language pairs

Our top 3 January language pairs were unchanged from December. The Japanese to English community translated 2.4M units in January, a small decrease from December. English to French and Dutch to British English followed, translating just above and below 2.0M units, respectively. English to Japanese saw a reduction in volume of 300K units while English to German volume increased by 200K units.

Pickup time

Pickup times continue to improve for the third month in a row! In January, our 95th percentile pickup time was 39 minutes. While some of this speed improvement can be attributable to our seasonal dip in volume, it also reflects a healthy community with translators ready for more work. We hope to see our pickup times stay low and our turnaround times to customer stay quick in the months ahead.

Quality score

In December, we saw our average quality score decrease down to 9.06. This was a cause for concern as we know that quality is the number 1 priority for translation buyers. In short, we needed quality to improve and that’s exactly what the community delivered in January. Average quality score improved to 9.21. This means that, of the translations assessed by our Reviewer team, the average score received was 9.21 out of 10. As we ramp up in volume over the next few months, we hope to see quality scores stay up and lots of happy customers.

With speed down and quality up, our community performance is looking as strong as ever. And with the seasonal dip behind us, the real test starts now.