Sylang News

Sylang translators willing to advertise their freelance translator activity may now publish an online profile from their Translator Account. We will be actively marketing profiles to search engines.

We are looking forward to your comments and suggestions about this new feature.

Formatting options are limited at this time to defining headings and using bold fonts. Here are some examples:

== Experience ==

will show as a the standard Sylang heading (black on green background)

'''this is bold''' will show as this is bold

Posted by Sylang Support at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may occasionally have received requests for translating French to English although your account shows English-French as your language pair (or conversely, get F-E requests when you should only get E-F ones.)
The reason is that some users simply pick up any language pair available at the time they want to ask for a translation.

This is not acceptable and we should not encourage this practice. It is unfair to regular users that those cheating ever get their translation, so in such cases, please bounce the request using the link at the bottom of the email.

Posted by Sylang Support at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The feature allowing a translator to bounce a translation request has been updated. You may now optionally include a personal message that will be sent to the user in the notification email. You could for example use this to specify in a few words that the context in not clear, or that (s)he has chosen the wrong translation direction.

Posted by Sylang Support at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sylang's translation dispatch system only accepts as many translations as we can handle. Because of this, we can assure the person who asked for the translation that he or she will receive a timely response. So whatever happens, you need to somehow reply to each and every request. In general, you'll simply reply with your translation. Here is how to handle the few special cases.

• incorrect source language selected (you are getting a French-English translation job because the person chose the wrong language option): use the refuse link at the bottom of the message


• the source language is incorrect English or French and can't be translated reliably: use the refuse link at the bottom of the message, and maybe also email the person about this


• the source language is in Dutch, German, etc.: use the refuse link at the bottom of the message, and maybe also email the person about this


• songs: use the refuse link at the bottom of the message (we are not allowed to translate copyrighted material and it would be a lost of your time since there are sites offering translations of many popular songs)


• other abusive requests (list of frequent cases) : use the refuse link at the bottom of the message

Please do not use the Refuse Link in other cases! Users will be confused if they receive a message saying their request was refused.

If you experience difficulties with a translations (specialized vocabulary, etc.), please do not hesitate to forward it to us.

Posted by Sylang Support at 05:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have ideas for improving Sylang, please let us know by posting a comment here. Also don't hesitate to comment on ideas formulated by other translators.

Posted by Sylang Support at 06:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When you do not want to receive translation jobs, sign in to your translator account and set you vacation status to Vacation. Press Save, and your done. You will receive a confirmation email.

You do not need to set your Number of Daily Translations to zero.

Posted by Sylang Support at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Once we have created your translator account, you will receive an email. Before you start receiving translation requests, you need to:

1. Set your language pair preference: English-French, French-English, or Any. Unless you are an experienced translator and you have been advised to do so, you are expected to translate only to you mother language.


2. Set the time zone to your current location. This allows the dispatch system to send you translation jobs mostly during regular working hours.


3. Set your account status to Active.

Posted by Sylang Support at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The translation request broker now optimizes requests allocation according to your time zone. Please make sure the time zone selected in your account corresponds to your actual location.

As a result of the change:

• you shoud receive most requests during regular office hours
• you may receive requests in the evening if no one else is available, but never after 8pm
• the service now operates 24/7.

Posted by at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)