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Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

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Re: Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

#51

Post by dualogy »

csytan wrote: post #6
Goosey wrote: post #3

Looks really useful. Question: What process do you use to ensure translation quality? I noticed I can sign up as a translator without any barriers.. are you only going to rely on feedback? What if someone gets angry that their translation was poor?

For now, anyone can get either get a refund with a click of a button, or repost the job to be worked on by another translator. Eventually, I'll be adding some safety checks to see that it isn't being abused.

The above commenter's question is paramount if you're serious about taking this somewhere.

Check out this German start-up: http://www.tolingo.com They have a bit of a head start but never mind. Crucial about their service is that 2 people work independently on each piece of customer copy.

How customers end up with one correct copy in the end, I have no idea, but this is part of their pitch and this is what customers are concerned about.

Also, your About page is an FAQ, but you need an 'About Us' page.

Great start -- not sure what about this took you 5 months -- now it's about execution and continuous improvements ;)

Re: Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

#52

Post by csytan »

tigerthink wrote: post #30

Hm, I'm inclined to think it would have taken me somewhat less time than that. I made this site in about one month: http://deanza.campuseagle.com/books/ Then again, Django is an awesome web framework, I copied someone else's recaptcha integration, I worked my ass off, and the code is generally full of hacks, such as discarding all but the longest keyword when a user searches. But I'm not the fastest: http://r09.rails…

Yours is a beautiful site, I'm impressed!

There's a few reasons why I think I took so long. Listed, in order of time taken:

1. Going off on many, many tangents before buckling down and focusing on the core product.

2. Design. I'm a poor designer, and it took me about 7 iterations to get to the version you see now.

3. Fixing bugs. There's just so many of them.

4. Learning about, and implementing custom localization on appengine (needed because there are no filesystem writes for .mo/.po files)

5. Working on it part time

Re: Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

#53

Post by waxman »

csytan wrote: post #50
waxman wrote: post #43

Cool site! I like the design. Clean and chic. I would maybe add a rollover or a button-like image to the "Basic translation" and "Freelancer" div/links because it's unclear that you can/should click those...

Done!

Awesome!

Re: Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

#54

Post by tigerthink »

csytan wrote: post #52
tigerthink wrote: post #30

Hm, I'm inclined to think it would have taken me somewhat less time than that. I made this site in about one month: http://deanza.campuseagle.com/books/ Then again, Django is an awesome web framework, I copied someone else's recaptcha integration, I worked my ass off, and the code is generally full of hacks, such as discarding all but the longest keyword when a user searches. But I'm not the fastest: http://r09.rails…

Yours is a beautiful site, I'm impressed! There's a few reasons why I think I took so long. Listed, in order of time taken: 1. Going off on many, many tangents before buckling down and focusing on the core product. 2. Design. I'm a poor designer, and it took me about 7 iterations to get to the version you see now. 3. Fixing bugs. There's just so many of them. 4. Learning about, and implementing custom localization on…

"Yours is a beautiful site, I'm impressed!"

Thanks. Actually I did everything but the design :-P

"1. Going off on many, many tangents before buckling down and focusing on the core product."

Yeah, if I had counted those tangents it would have taken me longer too :-) It took me a little over a month starting from scratch, but there were a few weeks of learning before that.

"4. Learning about, and implementing custom localization on appengine (needed because there are no filesystem writes for .mo/.po files)"

Nice. I actually initially built my site for App Engine, but I decided I needed to have control over my IP address (Amazon's Product API, which I will probably integrate with if I continue working on the site, throttles requests by IP address.) So I went with Linode, which gives you your own IP and the option of renting more for $1/month/IP.

I'll bet people would appreciate it if you open-sourced your app engine localization solution, especially if no solutions are currently available.

Re: Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months

#56

Post by jerryfist »

mromaine wrote: post #34
basugasubaku wrote: post #19

I like this idea, but the thing I would be most concerned about as a user is translation quality. You might look at these similar sites for ideas: https://www.onehourtranslation.com/ (they also offer an interesting free tweet translation service) http://trans-aid.jp/ (seems to be all volunteer, Japanese-oriented)

(full disclaimer - I work at myGengo) myGengo ( http://mygengo.com ) tests translators and does quality-checking for multiple levels to ensure customers are happy with the output. We also allow customers to rate translators and - I'm trying to be honest here - we're almost embarrassed to show the feedback comments because they sound too good ( http://mygengo.com/talk/customers/testimonials ). Customers also have the…

I've used Tomedes for translation services (http://www.tomedes.com). Also, was very satisfied with their quality. Just had a look at mygengo. I'll try it soon
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