GengoReviews of gengo.com

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.