TurboLingvo Contests

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to our translation contest page. Our translation contests allow us to train beginners and help them join groups of translators we know we can count on for various language projects. If you are an experienced translator, you are also welcome to participate: participation in contests is the easiest way to establish yourself as one of our translators of choice.

WHY CONTESTS?

Most agencies rely on information provided by translators in their resumes. Many agencies assess a translator’s skills by requiring a short translation test. Some agencies in fact pay for these test translations.

Our experience has shown that a translator’s self-evaluation is very often less than accurate. While translation of a short excerpt provides some notion of a candidate’s abilities, many translators are unwilling to take an unpaid translation test. And quite often, those who review sample translations lack sufficient professional and/or editing experience to make an adequate assessment.

Although we do not discount other approaches to finding good translators, we believe that contests offer greater potential benefit to translators, our clients and us:

1. Every translator receives specific peer feedback.
2. Finalists receive a detailed response from our reviewers. Typically, we have two to three reviewers for each contest. One reviewer is a native speaker of the target language with professional experience in the specific area represented by the contest. The second is a native speaker of the target language and a professional editor who possesses linguistic credentials and substantial editing experience. The third reviewer, where applicable, is a professional translator whose opinion we trust and value.
3. Every translator is given the opportunity to win a contest and receive a prize. Our cash prize is set two to five times higher than the going market rate for translation of the text in question. If we are unable to select a winner from among two or three finalists, each of the finalists will receive the full prize amount.
4. Rather than rely on the judgment of our agency, clients have opportunity to independently select those translators who meet their standards.

IF YOU ARE A TRANSLATOR

1. Register at the Registration page before proceeding. Because contest winners and finalists become our preferred translators, it is to your advantage to provide as much detail as possible.
2. Log in on our contest site (DON'T USE Vendor Portal; to login to our contest site, use "Sign In" tab) and go to the Contests page, where you will find a list of current and previous contests. Open contests appear first.
3. If the list includes an open contest in your language pair and area of specialization, go to the page for that contest. You will see a Source and Notes tab, where you will find the source text for this contest. Once the deadline for entry submission has passed, language notes aimed at helping your colleagues properly assess the quality of the entries will be provided under this tab. For additional detail, see Source and Notes.
4. After you have finished the translation, upload it under the Submissions tab. Your translation will become visible only after the deadline for entry submission has passed. Your colleagues will then be able to post their evaluations and comments. For additional detail, see Submissions.
5. Once the voting period is over, the Administrator will post the best translations — as assessed by your colleagues and our reviewers — under the Finalists and Winners tab. Both translators AND site visitors may post their opinions and comments there. Before long, the Administrator will present the winner along with an explanation for the selection. For additional detail, see Finalists and Winners.

NOTE:

1. The Administrator is authorized to remove any irrelevant or potentially offensive comments. Despite any possible errors in judgment, arguments with the Administrator are to be avoided.
2. English is the working language of this contest system. Don’t hesitate to express your opinion even if you feel your English is not strong — if you don’t translate into English, we will forgive your questionable syntax. If your command of English is very poor, you may post your comments in one of the contest languages. In this case, the Administrator reserves the right to translate your post into English and add the translation to your text.

IF YOU ARE A VISITOR

1. You are not required to register: everything that registered translators are able to see is also visible to you.
2. After the winner selection stage starts, you may post your comments under the Finalists and Winners tab using your login from a social network (LinkedIn, LiveJournal, FaceBook, Twitter, OpenID, Google+). We welcome the opinions of specialists. If you are a doctor, for example, we invite your comments on medical translations. If you are an engineer, your comments about engineering texts are important to us, etc.
3. Perhaps you will become one of our clients, in which case all translations submitted in a category relevant to your field of operation may be of interest. We will do everything possible to ensure that the translators of your choice work on your project.