How to handle common issues in the source text?

General Guidelines

As a general rule, specific instructions provided by customers should always be prioritized over any Gengo style guides or rules. For example, if a customer asks you to stick to the source text as much as possible and keep source errors in your translation, it’s compulsory for you to comply with this requirement. You will not be penalized for following what the customer asks you to do.

However, when no instructions are provided, if you spot any issues in the source text when translating, please do one of the following:

Leave a comment to inform the customer that you have found a mistake or made a correction.
Ask for clarification from the customer, but do not pause to wait for their reply. Use your best judgment and prioritize the completion of your translation.

Below are some common source text issues, with real examples and the corresponding actions that the Gengo team asks you to take:

1. Spelling Mistakes

If the misspelled term results in the word becoming ungrammatical, becoming a word that does not exist, or clearly does not make sense judging from the context, you are expected to revise the mistake in your translation.

Examples of mistakes resulting in ungrammatical words:

Don’t be agraid to ask them for help.
Importtant points
The following types of clothing should be worn for court: Pants suit, dress, slaks, dress shirts, and dress shoes.
Our products an services are the best ones fore the price.

Examples of mistakes resulting in a meaning error:

My favorite desert is the strawberry cheesecake from Berry’s across the street.
During the course of the school day, they attend math, science, social students, and other general education classes along with English-speaking students, but they also will receive ESL instructional support in a variety of forms.
The Board of Education of the School District is committed to the success of every student in each of our schools and to achieving our missing of ensuring that all students graduate ready for college, career and life.

2. Lack of Context/Colloquialism

Research any unclear sentences or terms online. If you don’t find any references or additional information, ask the customer to clarify the unclear parts of the source text in your comment. We recommend that you use your best judgment to deliver the translation in time and don’t stop working on the translation while waiting for the reply. As an alternative, you can also contact Gengo’s Support Team and ask for assistance with getting in touch with the customer.

Each of these examples is a single-sentence job:

“That means you. We’ve got art. The old stuff. The new stuff. The weird stuff, and the stuff made of bike wheels, beer bottles and recyclables. That stuff.”
Aesthetics in the Wild: Art and design practices and pedagogies after the situated turn.
Aqua Blue Crush. A first glimpse at “the new black”.
If the heart is a bone, now if the bone is a heart, then I could understand the emotions that would follow the bone to heart but not heart to bone.
PROBLEM SOLVING YOUR PROBLEM?

3. Sentence Structure Errors

(1) If a syntactic error does not affect the meaning of the sentence and the sentence is still understandable (with minor issues), please fix the mistake so the translation is grammatically correct and flows naturally.

(2) If the source text is ambiguous or hard to understand, please go with one of the most likely possibilities and try your best to convey the meaning in a grammatical way. In this case, it’s recommended to leave a comment to ask for clarification or inform the customer of your interpretation of the text.

My mother never made chocolate cake, which we all hated.
After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.
Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.
This property offers 3 good size bedrooms – two bathrooms, walk in robe and ensuite to the master and built in robes to bedrooms 2 and 3.
I love to write poems I would write a few every day doesn’t matter if I had time or not.
I love that it there’s a water tracker.

4. Extra Spaces

Extra spaces should be removed unless they are clearly added for formatting purposes (e.g., to divide a list of terms or short strings, extra line breaks between some paragraphs, etc.)

Examples:

Intended extra space that shouldn’t be removed:

This method returns a list of words: Mary had a little lamb

Extra space that needs to be removed:

Your iTunes Account will be charged #CURRENCY_SYMBOL##PRICE# weekly after the first three days.

5. Punctuation Mistakes

A punctuation mistake should be revised in the target text. It should be recognized if the text is not grammatical or does not make sense in the context. For more information about Gengo’s general rules on punctuation, read the Style Guide.

The cat was licking it’s tail.
In case you haven’t noticed my real name doesn’t appear in the article.
After searching, for a customer, clicking the menu displays the options shown here.
A user simply enters a receiving address and if the person possesses the private key associated with the bitcoins they are trying to spend the transaction is sent and verified with the help of miners confirming blocks of exchanges (transactions) within the Bitcoin blockchain.
If you would like to visit the projects just contact us and we will provide all necessary information.“

6. Poetic or Artistic Expressions

If you are confident with being creative and handling this kind of challenging content, do your best to carry over the source meaning to the target. Please note that although there may not be one specific correct answer for the translation, we expect the target text to read grammatically as our minimum requirement.

She’s got a face like a bag full of spanners.
After finally setting off on the trail, the night felt more exciting.
The swirling lines of the rose like blasphemy causes the world to take an unhallowed feel.
Light a candle, light a motive, this means no fear and steering clear.

7. Unknown Abbreviations/Acronyms

First, research, and if you can’t find any reliable reference for the unknown abbreviation/acronym, you must ask for clarification in your comment to the customer. You can leave the abbreviation/acronym as it is if you don’t get a timely response.

If the same abbreviation/acronym is mentioned many times throughout the translation, and one of them is misspelled, please consider it a spelling mistake and revise it.

Show that you’re proud of your pal by throwing him a UDM.
The opportunity for an HVI sale may present itself in your location.
VL Date of Entry
Citation: Pol. 102.1

8. Factual Errors

Please keep factual errors in the translation. If you know the topic and are able to revise the error, you can correct it in your translation; however, in this case, a comment to inform the customer about the correction is a MUST.

Of those people, 97.5% completed interviews, and 25% refused.
Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States.
All long-term out-of-school suspensions and expulsions require a Formal Hearing with the procedures and protections outlined in Section H. (There is no “Section H” in the file. The said procedures and protections can only be found in “Section G”. )

9. Poorly written* source text

*“Poorly written” means: understandable but reads literally translated from another language or written by a non-native speaker with grammatical mistakes.

Please do your best to translate. We expect the translation to be free of grammatical mistakes as our minimum requirement.

When I try to log to Facebook with my app throw an URL like this: [link]
She tried to sneak out of the house once her mother saw her leaving.
You should be with me I gotta pack of full of Reezers.
My merit is not for me – there are children who need the more!
Chinese Remote we can provide, but the Chinese Instructions need dear friend you provide to us, we only have English Instructions. Our other Chinese customer’s Instructions also translation by themselves.

10. Slang/Jargon*

*Jargon are special terms or expressions used by a professional group that are difficult for others to understand.

If the text contains any unfamiliar slang or jargon, we expect that you research the terminology and come up with an accurate translation. If you are unfamiliar with the topic, please decline the job. If you can’t find any reliable references, ask the customer for clarification and, in the meantime, translate it with your best guess based on the context.

Some software companies issue crippleware demos. Others issue shareware or nagware. Still others issue nothing but vaporware.
BTW, we got off track but I want everyone to know that Ninja’s comments on trickle down economist is a lie.
Let me throw you a long bomb and see if this sentence lands a touchdown in your head.
Just grab a book, have a dekko, pull the top off a tinnie and get a mullet up ya!