MotaWord

TranslatorsHandbook

Important Aspects
How Is MotaWords Collaborative Approach Helpful To Me?
Do I Need To Download Anything To Work With MotaWord?
Registration Process
Translator Compensation
Consistency
Preview
Style Guide
Glossary
Translation Memory
Translator Quality Score
Comments
Tags
Split Sentences
Spellcheck and Spaces
Special Characters
Units of Measure, Currencies, Dates, etc.
Dashboard Guide
Overview Page
Projects
Project Page
Translation Editor

ImportantAspects

HowIsMotaWordsCollaborativeApproachHelpfulToMe?
We are a collaborative, simultaneous human translation platform. As you are not held to
any deadlines, you can just go in, contribute as much or as little as you want and make good
use of your time. We believe it is good to be informed and have the choice of being able to
participate in projects whenever you are idle.
Most of our projects are not assigned to any single translator. Our system is designed in
such a way to allow multiple translators working at the same project without intervening each
others work. We also eliminated the never-ending back and forth with clients before you settle a
deal. As soon as a project is submitted, you are invited to work on it.

Moreover, our approach allows translators to share their ideas on what terms, structures
and style to use, they help each other acknowledge mistakes and learn from them. Hopefully,
you will learn from peers as well and master your skills further.

DoINeedToDownloadAnythingToWorkWithMotaWord?
Our system is in the cloud. It means that you work only online in your browser and you
dont need any software to assist you. Everything is on www.motaword.com, its free and ready
to help you.

RegistrationProcess
We do not ask you to take any language tests or do any translation for free so that we
can evaluate your skills. Instead, you are required to attend one of our introductory webinars
and take the quiz on the specifics of our platform. After that we review your resume and
hopefully approve your account. Once you become one of our vetted translators, you get new
project notifications automatically.

Its relatively easy to start working with us, but we take quality seriously and never
compromise on it. We continuously track your performance with the help of our proofreaders
reports and Translator Quality Score (more info below). Any translators who do not live up to the
quality standards get warned first and suspended if the quality of their work doesnt improve
after the warning.

TranslatorCompensation
Each project has a per word rate that is calculated by our system and you are invited
with the rate offered. As you translate, MotaWord keeps a tab of the number of words
contributed by you for the project. You will not be compensated for translating an already
translated segment. It is important to make sure that you are not working on a segment that has
already been translated.

There are two criteria for your compensation to be processed automatically:

15 days after project completion
A minimum amount of $25

Once your earnings fulfill these two criteria, they will be processed automatically by our
system and sent via PayPal. You do not need to send us any invoices.

Consistency
We have all kinds of different tools to ensure quality and consistency throughout our
projects. But the most important of them is that you understand the context youre working in
when you are translating something. You need to make sure that you look through the whole
document before you start translating so that you have an idea of what you are working on.
Failure to understand the context may result in suspension and deprivation of your current
earnings on a project because your work is subject to re-translation in that case.

Preview
We have an option to preview the document you are going to work on: go to the project
page and click on the name of a document. You can also right click and open it in a new tab to
have it in front of you while you are on our translation interface. This can help you get an
understanding of what terms are used in the project, what style you should follow and, certainly,
what message the whole text is expressing. When you understand this message, you can go on
to translate.

StyleGuide
In style guides there are important notes for you to follow. Sometimes clients may prefer
a specific translation for a particular word and that information will be on the style guide. If ever
in doubt, it is always better to follow the neutral style or leave a comment for the proofreader
and project manager asking for advice. Failure to comply with the style guide can lead, just as in
the case with the preview, to suspension and deprivation of earnings. Style guides are shown
when you first enter a project, and you can also view them by clicking View Style Guide button
on project page.

Glossary
Another way for us to ensure consistency is a glossary. All the glossary terms are
underlined in the source text on the platform so that you can see them easily. When you point at
them with your mouse, you will see the translation and description of the term as provided in the
glossary. Its very important to follow the glossary.

TranslationMemory
One more way to keep our translations consistent is to consult our TM which stores all
the previous translations. The TM can show us both the translations from completed projects
and the translations from the current project. If you want to see how a word was translated
before, highlight it and search concordance button will show up. Click on it and you will see
how the word is used in the current project as well as the previous ones.

TranslatorQualityScore
TQS reflects the quality of your translations. When a project reaches 30%, a proofreader
comes in and approves or edits your translations. The more of your translations are edited, the
lower your TQS will be or vice versa for a higher quality score. For example, if you translated 10
segments and the proofreader edited 2 of them, your TQS for that project will be around 80.
 Think of it as of constructive criticism of your work take a look at them and if there is
anything to learn from it, take it. At the end of the day we are trying to understand a baseline for
the statistical analysis of projects in general.

This scoring system also allows us to eliminate really bad translators from our base. If
your quality score for each of the last 5 projects has been below the average for that project,
your account is automatically suspended.

Comments
You can express any concerns with the help of comments. Whenever you leave a
comment on a segment, all colleagues in the project, the MotaWord staff and the proofreader
are notified of your comment. It goes without saying that if you receive a notification about
someone commenting your translation, you are expected to reply. Please stay polite and
respectful when leaving comments.

Tags
<1>Re</1><2>d</2><3>d</3><4>esk</4> <1>Mesa</1><2></2><3></3><4>roja</4>

Youcanalwaysrefertooriginalfiletoseewhattagsrepresent.Youneedtomakesure
you always follow the same order of tags and spaces even if thewordorderchanges.Aslong
asthesetworemainthesame,youcanaddadditionalwordsordeleteunnecessaryones.

Herearesomeothertagexamplesyoucanencounter:
- {{translatedExerciseDisplayName}}
- <span>Mytext</span>
- (Last%(num)sproblems)
- %(num)swillbereplacedwithanumber.
- &amp;
- Encoded HTML characters, should not be modified. This specific
examplemeansampersand.

SplitSentences
Waxahatchee is the solo project of artist Katie Crutchfield, formerly of the punk group P.S.

Eliot, which she formed with her twin sister, Allison, when they were in high school.
Split sentencesappearwhenthesystemthinksthatasentenceendedandanewone
started but its not accurate. It can occur whenever there is a period (or other character
indicating an end of sentence such as ? or !), a space and the nextwordstartswithacapital
letter(e.g.Mr./Ms./Dr.).

 When you see a split sentence, translate the whole sentence together (2 strings) and
then split yourtranslationfromwhereveryouprefer.Thatsalrightaslongasyourtranslation
makessensewhenthesepartsareputtogetherinthefinalfile.

SpellcheckandSpaces
MotaWord doesnt provide any platform-wide spell check tool. You can turn the spell
check in your browser, though. Here are some links to activate spell checker for various
browsers:

- Firefox(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/language-tools)
- GoogleChrome(https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95604?hl=en)
- AppleSafari(http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html)
- Internet Explorer does not come with a spell checker, however a quickGoogle
searchshouldcomeupwithsomeadd-ons.

SpecialCharacters
All the special characters that you cant type with your keyboard (e.g. a dash or a
non-breaking space) are accessible through Alt+... on Windows and Option+... on
Macintosh.Googlecanhelpyoufindaspecificcombinationforeachcharacter.

UnitsofMeasure,Currencies,Dates,etc.
All units of measure, currencies, dates and etc. have to follow local standards of the
language you are translating into unless otherwise specified by the client. The same goes for
decimal separators and fractions (dots and commas - 5.06 or 5,06).
 DashboardGuide
OverviewPage

1. Yourlanguagepairs
2. Abuttontorefreshthestatisticstoreflectyourcurrentaccomplishments
3. Click on any ofthesethreeboxestoseeinformationabouteachoftheprojectsyouve
workedon

4. Statusofthepayment,pointatitwithyourmousetoseewhenyouregoingtobepaid
orwhyyouhaventbeenpaidyet.
5. Your score for the project. Click on any score which isnt 100% to see the segments
whichwerecorrectedand,possibly,learnfromyourmistakes(ifany).

Projects

1. Deadline
2. Number of words you translated/total number of words on the project
3. Rates (translation/proofreading)
4. Your current earnings as the number of words multiplied by the rate (we dont keep any
percentage of your earnings)
5. Button to go to the project page

ProjectPage

1. Preview of documents you are going to work on (click on a file name to open the whole
doc in a new tab)
2. The button to open the style guide
3. The button to go to the translator-editor interface
TranslationEditor

1. Filteroptions
2. Keyword/phrasesearchintheproject
3. Styleguide(download)
4. Preview(openasapop-upinthesametab)
5. Underlined words are glossary terms, point at them with your mouse to see the
glossarytranslation
6. TranslationmemorysearchinallprojectseverdoneonMotaWord