Translated.com

Introduction

Translated.net (now Translated.com) is an Italian-based online translation agency that has been in the online translation service for 18 years. It has a long history or work and feedback on that work. It boasts over 100,000 customers and over 250,000 translators – that’s quite a few. This translated.net review is based on several factors – the website content, customer testimonials on the website, quality reviews found on the web, prices, and services.

Services Offered

The company offers an array of official translation services in the following areas – business, technology, marketing, industry, science, localization, legal, professional (e.g. resumes and CV’s) and personal. It is also known as a good  medical translation agency. 

Translated.net relies heavily on machine-based translations and states that it uses the latest technology, including AI, in order to perform more routine translations, and that human translators are utilized for more complex work. Most projects, then, have a combination of machine and human activity.

The company further states that it only utilizes human translators that have a minimum of three years’ experience in successful translation.

Prices and Addons

This is an area that is not fixed. In fact, the company states that price quotes will vary based upon the availability of translators and the specific languages requested. Here are some important factors in pricing:

• Clients may choose three levels of translation – economy, professional, and premium. The economy level is for personal translations that are not for publication. We ordered a 436-word personal letter. The price was $20.31 at the economy level and would have been $76.12 at the premium level.
• The economy level means a single translation (machine and/or human) with no proofreading; the professional level means that the second set of eyes will select parts of the piece and proofread; the premium level means that the second pair of eyes will review and proofread the entire piece. Obviously, the premium level is necessary for legal and for-publication purposes.
• Pricing varies in real-time based upon availability of translators, and the economy level is not available for certain originating and target languages. Mandarin translations, for example, must begin at the professional level only. If the availability of translators is limited, prices will go up. With over 200,000 translators, we wonder why this is ever an issue.

Quality of Services

The company lists several well-known companies as clients. Digging deeper, however, we find that its work for Google, for example, relates to AdWords and keyword translations only, and that actually Google uses a wide variety of translation services for this task.

On-site testimonials are uniformly positive, as we expect.

Off-site reviews and feedback are mixed. Some complain that there are linguistic and stylistic problems, especially with the nuances and syntax details of a language.

We took our translated letter, a simple personal piece but one with language nuances, to an expert in our target language (German) and found that the translation of our satirical and humorous phrases was “lost” in that translation. It appears that it was fully completed by a machine that had not “learned” these nuances yet.

Pros & Cons

In terms of “pros,” we can state that Translated.net has been around a long time and does use some of the latest technology in its translation, and, of course, that technology is getting much better. And, based on customer feedback, the company does meet deadlines consistently.

In terms of “cons,” we have several concerns. The constantly changing pricing, based upon the availability of translators, is an issue, especially when the company boasts over 200,000 professionals to do this work. Then, there are the mixed Translated.net reviews that we have found on the web and the issues with the translation we ourselves ordered.

Summary

In total, our review of Translated.net is mixed. When even a simple translation such as our letter contains errors, we can provide an overall rating of “Fair” or “Mediocre.”