JULY 2017 — On July 28, Gengo staff and translators came together for a meetup in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district. It was a rare opportunity for the operators of Gengo to meet and speak with translators from all walks of life and backgrounds, each with a unique Gengo story.

CEO Matt welcomes translators to the event and discusses the future of Gengo

We met translators both new and old to the Gengo platform, from translators who had yet to translate their first job (but keen on getting started) to seven-year veterans with hundreds of thousands of units translated on the Gengo platform.

A translator from Japan talks about her experiences with Gengo

Attendees represented 10 different language pairs, covering not only Japanese and English but also Chinese, Korean, Russian, French and Spanish. Geographically, translators traveled to the event from different cities, with one translator coming from Osaka, Japan, and even from as far as Seoul, Korea!

Community manager Lara shares recent improvements made to enhance the Gengo experience

With a community close to 22,000 translators, events like this give Gengo the much-needed opportunity to get to know our translators on a personal level and a chance to hear their stories, experiences, issues, and ideas. We learned that several attendees specialize in very advanced topics and that they’d like to be able to work on projects in their respective fields. Others expressed the disappointing feeling when an available job gets snatched up right away, leaving hopeful translators empty-handed. These are two issues that we are committed to solving and have prioritized for the future.

Attendees mingle and exchange ideas with Gengo staff and fellow translators

For translators, this meetup was also an opportunity to meet other like-minded translators, which can be difficult in the translation industry, where most work is done in isolation. Gengo is very proud to support a community where translators can easily discuss various topics online, and it adds something a bit special to be able to engage with other community members in person from time to time.

Tokyo is just one of the thousands of places around the world with a strong Gengo community. In the future, we’d like to hold events in other cities in an effort to get to know more of the translators who make the Gengo community so special.

If you’re interested in helping us organize a translator event in your city, please let us know by sending an email to Lara, our community manager. Once again, thank you to all those who took the time out of their busy schedules to make this translator meetup a memorable event!

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