Pros
- Lots of work - and I mean really huge volumes of texts from all technical fields - coming in and going out after being given a 1-minute check per full page of text. - Good playground for bad translators, beginners and students who can pick up editing jobs and practice on them any time they want, for a bit of pocket money. - Crowdsourcing system - once in the system, whoever feels like working can go to the portal at any time and pick up a job from the current queue, and gets a mix from all sorts of fields and topics to play with.
Cons
- Unbabel delivers horrible translations. Quality work is impossible due to extreme time restrictions and low payment. - Texts and linguists are not matched. Anyone on the panel can do anything in the job queue, without consideration of skills, qualification or specialization. - Unbabel recruits amateur linguists with the promise "You can earn up to $18 per hour!" This is obviously an unacceptable rate for any professional linguist, although I must say they paid me $31 per hour, so don't hesitate to ask for more if you are a qualified professional and want to try them out. However, actually only a small part of your time is really paid, because (A) you have to read the job instructions (unpaid), (B) then you can do some work on a full page of text (1 minute paid), (C) then you have a minute of grace to continue the work (1 minute unpaid) and (D) if you hesitate to submit the unfinished work in time you lose the 1-minute payment altogether. - The technical system often has glitches and faults (you can't access work, or submit work done, or you get wrong language pairs offered, etc). - Communication with the "support team" is very slow. It can take days to get a reply if you report a problem. - Communication with clients is not possible, the linguist cannot make them aware of mistakes in the source texts or ask questions for clarification. - The only communication platform for exchange with colleagues is in a closed Facebook group and you can get "fired" if you criticize the company there. - The company leaders and the "support team" are not linguists themselves and they give bad advice to the clients, for example to address the readers "informally". They also enter translations full of mistakes into their AI-driven translation machines and make them "non-editable", so the mistakes cannot be fixed, ever. The leadership totally ignores fault reports and advice given by their linguists regarding errors and mistakes, and does not correct them. - Altogether, the Unbabel platform is perhaps useful as a playground for AI, IT and language students, but definitely not ready to serve corporate clients.