Gengo Arvostelua 37

I requested my payment on the 3rd of January, 2025 and received a date that my payment would be sent out by the 25th of January, 2025 after missing the deadline of January 10th.

It should be $100 paid out to me today. My paypal is this same email address on my account. Nothing has changed.

I am the leader of a technical team composed of highly skilled professionals, including engineers and technicians, who work on demanding projects for high-profile clients like Meta. Despite our expertise and contributions, Gengo’s handling of payouts has been deeply disappointing.
1. Payout Delays and Poor Scheduling:
Gengo promises payouts on the 10th and 25th of each month. Today is December 22nd, and I was assured my payout would be processed on the 25th. However, I have now been told I won’t receive payment until January 10th—even during the Christmas period, when timely payouts are critical for many of us. This is unacceptable, especially when Meta and other clients Gengo contracts us for are known for paying on time.
2. Lack of Flexibility and Communication:
Gengo’s support team has repeatedly ignored the urgency of the situation, despite me explaining that I need these funds to pay my team. They refuse to escalate my request to a senior finance manager and instead stick to generic, unhelpful responses. This demonstrates a lack of care for the people who keep their projects running smoothly.
3. Hidden Fees and Transparency Issues:
Our earnings are already reduced significantly due to Gengo’s platform fees, PayPal fees, and poor exchange rates. These deductions are not clearly communicated upfront. For a company that expects the highest level of professionalism from its freelancers and teams, this lack of transparency is both frustrating and unfair.
4. Disrespect for High-Level Professionals:
We are not just individual translators; we are a team of engineers and technicians who deliver technical expertise to Gengo’s clients. For a company working with globally respected brands like Meta, their failure to meet basic financial obligations reflects poorly on their operations.

While the projects we’ve worked on through Gengo are rewarding, the payout system and lack of respect for freelancers and their teams overshadow any benefits. Other platforms, even those handling similar high-profile clients, are far more transparent, timely, and professional.

If this issue is not resolved, I will be left with no choice but to escalate the matter. I will inform my entire team to share their complaints on all relevant platforms, including Trustpilot, Glassdoor, and professional forums. Additionally, I will notify our clients directly about these issues, as their reputations are tied to Gengo’s performance.

I urge Gengo to reconsider its payout policies, especially during critical times like the holiday season, and treat its technical teams with the respect they deserve.

Bad quality translation. They use Google translate.

This company is selling machine translation at human translation prices.
If you actually speak the language natively you'll understand this when you see translations for words like "Sign up" directly converted into phonetic foreign borrow words like サインアップする instead of the natural and correct translation of 登録する.
I rejected the translations stating this, but Gengo staff said my rejection wasn't valid and that these were "quality translations."
AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS.

Google can provide the same translations for 0.00 cents. It's a much better deal, and no, it doesn't matter if you pay for their "higher quality" service, Google can still do the exact same job... why pay for it?

I have been translating for Gengo for a couple of months now and have had a read through the reviews with many clients complaining about issues with their translation. I basically only ever work on jobs at the Pro level rate of $0.09 because only this rate allows for enough time to produce a quality translation.

In regards to the bad reviews: I believe this is a matter of you get what you paid for. If you submit your translation as a standard translation the translator gets paid a measly $0.03 to $0.035 per word which is way below industry standards (at least a third lower than what a professional translator usually charges). Generally speaking, a translator translates around 300 words per hour. This means a translator makes around $9.00 per hour at these rates. In most countries this would be below minimum wage and without any of the perks that come with being employed (annual leave, sick leave, paid public holidays. So, in order to make some money a translator will need to churn out at least 600 words per hour if not more. Hence, the quality of this translation will never be as good as a translation done for the Pro rate of $0.09. Put simply if you want a high quality translation please submit your job as a Pro job and a professional translator will work on your translation. You simply cannot expect a high quality translation at the standard rate. For even higher quality translations, provide as much context as possible and a glossary if needed. Also, if you submit your translation through their system it gets split across different translators. This means that your final translation will be inconsistent in style and terminology. In order to avoid this simply submit your translation in a word document or excel spreadsheet. A professional translator will then ensure style and terminology are consistent across your whole document.

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks,

Your Master educated Professional Gengo Translator

I dont wana give them even a single star as well.
They are hiring translators worldwide, they take tests, and then they say "oh we dont have much colections ye ye ye...then they say install rss feed....thats always empty....then their support says umm we hv preffered translators...ye ye ye.... I am a pro translator and didntget job since months... I think there are indians behind it making people fool, as the girl talking me on the behalf of their support looks indian hindu....

Their big headline on the website says "Professional translation within hours" which is a complete lie and any translation you order will take at least a week before corrections.

The home page also says "Ready to get started? Translate instantly using our order form." - Yeah right.

I rejected my translation because it did not meet our needs and there were errors on every email (11 emails / 5500 words) and explained that I only used them because of speed, so what did they do. Gave it to someone else to translate so now it's going to be another week or more.

Complete and utter discrace - will never use again and I will be publishing this review over social media.

Just took the MCQ test to be approved as Translator (French to English). I have been reading, writing and speaking both languages for 35 yrs. And been doing professional technical translations for the past 10 years. I got only a 1 out of 5 correct... either i am completely inept or their tests are biased/ wrong.

The test is absurd, because i know English well enough to pass. They refuse to communicate about the results, which i also find very unreliable.

Even if you're native, tests are extremely dumb and unrelevant. Gengo is toxic and should be avoid by anyone and by any means.

Gengo is unreliable and poor quality. I submitted a document for translation, and when they had completed this, I compared it to a free translation through google. It cost me over 300$ and when I rejected this, because I am not able to use it, my money was not returned. It has been an awful experience and I will not be returning or recommending this service to others. Save your money, Google translate will provide you with the same quality. Or connect with a freelancing company to help you. When I rejected the work and it went under review, they decided this met quality standards and that I should be more specific as to my requests. Poor customer service and an absolute rip off for your money.

I used Gengo to once translate a letter from Eng->Japanese that I wanted to send to my girlfriend's company about their poor COVID work-from-office rules. I received the translation in less than 24 hours and upon showing it to a JP friend they said it was mostly perfect.

There are lots of negative reviews on this site, but this is my own experience

Wish I had read the reviews before wasting time and money on Gengo. Save yourself some hassle and just use google translate because that is what they will do. Although I paid for a pricier bespoke service, I was given a translation that was a word for word Google translation. It lacked nuance and was riddled with 'Google translate' mistakes that a native speaker would never make. Even though I repeatedly pointed out the errors to the supposedly 'native speaking' translator, the issue was never resolved. The customer service team was equally unhelpful and they seem to operate a "no refunds no matter what" policy. An altogether unpleasant and highly tedious experience, I will not use this company again.

The worst translation platform ever. The navigation is terrible, it works really slow and the translation quality (PRO plan, btw) is pretty controversial.

I asked for a translation of 30 page text for which I paid US$ 760 as soon as I requested the translation. I initially sent in a pdf file, but was asked to send the text in a format where the words could be counted. I later found out the reason for this this odd requirement.

The first translator held on to the job for 10 days without translating anything, then declined it. It went on for a few days like that, a translator accepting the job and then later declining it. Finally a translator promised to deliver the translation within few days, and although the time that the task had taken by then exceeded what I was promised in the beginning, I accepted it.

Once I received the translation, the text did not sound right. Being bilingual in those languages myself, I found some major errors in the translation, and the text looked odd to me. More of out of fun, I decided to "google translate" it. To my utter surprise, I found every word, every sentence, to be an exact copy paste from Google Translate, except here and there where some very minor changes had been made.

It took me hours to communicate with ever changing persons in charge at Gengo both to get the translation speeded up, and later to point out to them what had happened.

I got fully refunded in the end, but I ended up loosing four important weeks. I ended up with a translation I could not use.

Except for getting the refund, the company did not offer any compensation and just put the whole blame on some unscrupulous translator of theirs.

Apparently, there is no quality checks done and no monitoring of the translators.

Appalling experience.

It sucks. It is not ethical and treats translators as machines. I doubt how good the quality the final translation would be, produced by translators under a harsh deadline and toxic environment.

It's a super terrible company. Their translation is like a sheet and the freaking translator told me she is a native speaker. What the hell.

I'm a professional freelance translator, and taken their test just to see. They rejected my translation, and they just said that "I made too many errors" citing just one example. This example was not exactly an error, which just showed how illiterate and ignorant the "native" reviewer is about his (my) language. If they think they are hiring qualified translators this way, you can just guess the level of translation you will get. Don't waste money on them.
If you think I'm just taking out on them for rejecting me, fine, please go on and waste your money and time.

There are very few jobs available. After a month of constant monitoring I didn't manage to get any job. Besides they don't allow you to move to the ProLevel. They reject your translations giving absolutely stupid explanations so that it becomes obvious that they just want you to remain at the lowest paid level.