Translator rank dynamics
Just a forenotice: we are improving translator rank system. Take it easy if you see the rank drops. Despite the possible change of 'R' tag, your actual evaluation remains the same - The higher ranks are still high and the lower still low, relatively.
As always, let's know if you have any questions.
© 2011 Translia. US Patent Pending (No. 12/783.568). Using this site means you accept its terms.
I think your concept of
I think your concept of ranking may be too complex, you are trying to combine too many different things in one single concept.
For instance, I am asking myself. "What does ranking mean on this site?", and I am simply not sure. Does it mean that a person is a good translator? Not necessarily. Does it mean that his clients are satisfied? Not necessarily. Does it mean that he has contributed a lot to the site and its community? Again, not necessarily. There is really nothing I can deduce from a person's ranking other than something happened and he got a higher or lower ranking than others - for the moment.
A somewhat disturbing aspect of this whole thing, at least to me, is the choice of the word itself, "ranking". "Ranking" suggests - at least to me - a measure of a person's skills. So if translator A has a higher "ranking" than B, the implication I will naturally draw is that A is probably also a better translator than B. Of course, it is not so bad if you are the one with the higher ranking, but it is sort of annoying when the ones who do are other persons, who in reality may or may not be better translators.
If we compare with e.g. the system at proz.com, I think their system may be clearer.
If a client wants to see if a translator has any satisfied customers, they look at his WWA score (Willingness to Work Again); if they want to see how much the translator has helped his colleagues with terminological issues, they look at his Kudoz score.
Also, another thing I definitely think is better with their system, is that these measures do not change so much - they are stable and therefore reliable. I can work hard to get a high WWA or high Kudoz point and rely upon the fact that my scores won't decrease if I take a month's vacation.
So my suggestions are:
(1) Change the name, "ranking", unless it actually is a reliable measure of a person's skill as a translator.
(2) Instead of using one single measure, use several ones, each one indicating a specific factor (e.g. number of satisfied clients; number of endorsers; number of activity points accumulated though site contributions, etc.)
(3) Make the values more stable, more reliable, less volatile, so that a person can feel confident about his values and not need to worry about keeping them high.
I know something about Proz from you!
Thank you, Thomas!
Just days ago I was told that our Kudos is "confusingly similar to" their Kudoz, bla bla... I never used Proz before and don't know what is "confusingly similar". Now I know the difference.
As you suggest, we are still optimizing Translator Rank and Client Rating - from what Translia is for. Ranking the translators by language pair is better then we need to find a solution for ones who do translation for several languages.
Eh, how is it that someone
Eh, how is it that someone who is working in my language combination and has been here for just 3 days has a rank of 7 while mine is just 4 (having fallen from 7 to 4 a couple of weeks ago)?
Possibe reasons
His/her clients gave a good rating for his/her translation, while your client may not. Now many translators have no client rating for various reasons, so the translators who have a better rating get a higher rank. I did rate some translators who did my jobs yesterday.
Endorsement. S/he may have some endorsers.
Client rating, endorsement, kudos and pageview altogether decide the Translator Rank but have different weight of course. We start to have some Swedish translation recently and I believe that you surely will get a higher rank too after doing more translation and getting client rating.
dynamic again
Oh, god, this afternoon I was at R5, now I saw that I was falling down again to R4. Would you be so kind as to give us the possible reasons for this wholesale fallingdown?
about possible reasons
Do you also start to have some Chinese translation recently? I've been here for more than 15 weeks, busy with community jobs, yet still no sign of getting any translation jobs with client rating.
Thank you for your
Thank you for your contribution, Leon! Our team needs to work hard on S&M so we have more clients then more translation jobs for all.
Have a look at our guide pls
http://www.translia.com/node/115526
More words about our concept of rank. Traditioanlly, one's rank always gets higher with time and never decreases. The result is that there are so many high rank members and rank may mean nothing to all. On Translia, one's rank can decrease - not because you do anything wrong, just because others do something to contribute their rank.
The system calculate the rank of all everyday and there may be changes for some.
one more question
Do you calculate the rank of all translators of different languages as a whole or just by language pairs? Does the up and down of ranks from other language translators influence ours? Thanks.
Reading the guide
Thanks, Yolanda. I read your guide once more:
For improving the rank, you shall
1.keep delivering satisfactory services to clients for positive ratings.
Yes, I agree and keep in mind of delivering good service, but now I can only keep waiting for clients.
2.endorse seven colleagues who do very good translation jobs.
Can I endore anyone at higher ranks despite of their language pairs?
3.earn Kudos by contributing to the community.
Yes, I contributed to the community, but no Kudos earned, except for the Kudos I earned for my comments here. Vic Dicson said you will add community translation projects to the rank system. Have you started yet?
4. keep active on Translia site.
I don't know if I am active enough here with about 6000 pages viewed, translating and reading/writing comments.
Thank you, Leon!
A good question about endorsement. Client rating will be passed on to your endorser (or from your endorser to you). To ensure you endorse good translators, you'd better to know their translations and you can help each other to deliver good transalation.
Kudos for free translation. Sorry the dev team is busy with client side's feature but this task is in the quene. Maybe we can find a way to convert the done work to kudos when the feature is available. Right?
possible reasons
Is it possible for a translator who just joined 3 days ago to do much translations here and get a higher rank?
It's decided by how many
It's decided by how many clients give you rating.
One client can give only one rating for each translator, so if others have no client rating, you have one then it makes difference.
Why my rank fell down?
I was just writing to you in order to know why my rank fell dangerously form 9 to 7. Thank you.
Translator rank dynamics
It would be desirable that Translia systematically informs Translators the individual cause(s) of each rank change. I am sure that most translators would welcome this educational and transparent feature.
ftruccoh
The new 7 works same as the old 9
The change "decreased" ranks for the most members. However it doesn't damage the active members of high ranks by any means. It's not "dangerous" at all. For example, in the past editing a Ready to commit segment requires 9 or higher rank. Now it requires 7 or higher. That means, you are as good as before indeed :-)
Doesn't look the same!
But it doesn't look the same!
Cheers!
the new4
Hi, Vic, Does the new 4 work same as the old 8? am I as good as before indeed:-)?
We need take client jobs for high ranks
Leon, I have to confess R4 does not look as good as R8. However you are as good as before! :-) Considering the fact that most translators don't have a rank at all, I want to say R4 is still high. Also we will add community translation projects to the rank system. I believe you will get higher ranks soon. Cheers!
about client jobs
Hi, Vic, thanks for your kind reply. I quite agree with you that we need take client jobs for high ranks. Yet upto now I still can't see any chance of getting any client jobs, public or private, after I have been here for about 12 weeks of hard work on community jobs. I don't complain about my rank, fell down dramatically from 9 to 8, and now to 4, for i am still on the top. Neither shall I compare others without a rank to satisfy myself, because they haven't done anything for the community. In my opinion, translator rank only represent one's ability or skill of translation( in either paid or free jobs), which is more important for a client to choose a translator than any other factors. You tell us"rank matters", and we are now working hard to keep it or for a higher rank. You say I am as good as before, but except you, who will believe me at such low rank. To tell the truth, I really can't understand your ranking systerm well, it's too "dynamic". Thanks for your patience.
Everything is gonna be ok
Sorry for the unpleasant up and down those days. It's too dynamic because we are trying, learning, and improving.
I agree your point. Ideally the rank shall reflect the capability and skills of translation. However as so far we haven't find out a good way to measure the capability, we have to "down grade" to measuring client rating and activity. If you have any ideas on improving the system, please share them.
BTW, I noticed you as one of the top Chinese translators receive only R4 (see http://www.translia.com/dir/chinese_translators). That inspired me that ranking translators by language pair would be more better?
Everything will be OK
Hi, Vic, Thanks for your sincere concern about this unpleasant "down" those days. I also think it is a good idea to some extent to rank translators by language pair, yet we still should try a bit to keep some kind of balance of ranks among translators of different language pairs. I admire some translators of other languages high at rank 10, 9 or 8. I viewed their records and found some of them did no more than I did here, even one said he was new here, then how were they ranked? Maybe paid jobs and client ratings make the difference. I am not a fault picker. I am sincerely wishing this site to become an OPEN and FAIR workshop, attracting translators from all around and encouraging them to work hard for this community. Thanks for your reading. I sure believe everything will be OK.
Thanks Leon
Can't agree with you more. I'm in the same language pair as you are. It's really upset to see the rank down, however, the improvement on Translia is also exciting.
Thanks, mysearch,
for your agreement with me. I was saying what I thought about. Yes, it's better to see the improvement here. Let's wait and see more reajustments. Best wishes for all.
I was thinking the same
As I read this thread, I was thinking the exact same: make ranking by language pair. However, that would be very messy because multiple-pair translators would need to have different ranks for each pair (I am not knowledgeable in programming, so I'll just assume that is a lot of work). Maybe we could start off by the native language only?
More ups and downs?
I don't know much about programming either. Maybe there will be more ups and downs I guess ;-)
Rank by native language
Good idea. From technique view, ranking by language pair or only native language are same complex. However we may consider to start from native language ranking since many language pairs don't have enough translators at this stage.
Advocating language-pair sensitive ranking
Since you're confirming to us it's none of a technical issue, language-pair sensitive ranking is common sense for multi-pair transliators and I advocate its implementation at some point.
A definite rank for a definite pair tells nothing about the quality level at which another pair is being handled. Transliators profiles are multi-facet and that's what makes them unique. An educated client needing an English to Dutch translation may as well go for an English-Dutch rank 5 / English-German 6 rank combinator over a English-Dutch rank 6 / English-Italian rank 8 combinator, on the grounds that Dutch and German being close parent languages, a transliator encompassing both of them even just about decently is more prone to having developed a *feeling* for the linguistic dynamics of either one than a transliator whose focus, however stronger, is more scattered. Of course this is but one eventuality among many.
Additionally, ranking is inherently dynamic, so allowing it to reflect the pair-by-pair transliators' own evolution is a definite incentive.
Handling multiple language pairs is not easy
While ranking translators by language is feasible, it is rather complex allowing a translator to set up multiple language pairs and receive a rank for each language pair. In fact just multiple language pairs for each translator would make things hard enough. Basically we will go in the direction of a single language pair each translator and sooner or later we will apply limitation on changing languages. Sorry Panglosse - It might be a bad news to you but our programmers haven't found out a perfect solution for multiple language pairs.
Never mind
Never mind Vic and keep up the good work. Whatever you're implementing on Translia, this is still miles ahead from any other web translation platform !
I agree.
I agree with "panglosse". Translate and enjoy yourself. Cheers