Gengo Reviews 

Google translate is way better don't waste your time!!! 😡😡😡

Bad translations not suitable for professional use, literal translations with no attention to detail. Use Google translate and you will get very similar results.

We are an online furniture retailer and have spent over $10k on translations for our European expansion to find out upon going live that almost all of the translations done are just copy and pasted from google translate. It’s an absolute disgrace and utterly fraudulent as a service. We are now in the process of escalating this issue now that we have found out about it. In the event we get resolution I shall come back and edit this review.

Requested a translation from Gengo for which I had to pay in advance. Then told there was no translator willing/able to take it on because it was too difficult but they were going to keep the money anyway as a "credit" in my account! Alternatively I could pay more for their premium service. Not on your nelly. Will stick to reputable/serious translation agencies in the future or Google Translate rather than throw my money out of the window.

Imagine that you're translating subtitles to a video, and the person speaking is stuttering, starting and ending a sentence, changing tense, etc. You translate it in line with the tone of the original translation, as well you should.
Then the Gengo review comes in and marks your translation as "awkward". "Well, of course, it's awkward, because the original is awkward," you say. The Gengo support team dismisses you with a repetitive statement of, "As a translator, it's your job to make it not awkward."
So, when the original is, "I...I mean...I don't know, I wasn't...I couldn't have...I'm not sure I..." according to Gengo, your translation should be: "I don't know."
Anything else will be marked as "awkward".

This is a terrible experience for a translator AND a bad result for the customer.

Please do not use this company it is a waste of money for a poor standard translation.

Spent around £500 ordering translations for a client with the quality service, only to be presented with mere Google Translations, spent weeks asking for a refund with customer support, absolutely useless company with no morals.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS! JUST USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE AND SAVE YOURSELF MONEY, GENGO SUCKS!!!!!!

Worst company ever

I would never trust this company for my translations since their proofreaders are absolutely horrible. It seems as if this is a bad paying environment with many people trying to make more of an income by excluding others from getting in.

I passed their test on the first attempt only to be greeted by another "Standard" test for "Standard" jobs that pay around 0.03$ per word. This amount is a total disgrace for a serious, professional translator. Nevertheless, I received a rejection on the test and a personal message from their "professional" proofreader, where he had marked errors that are non-existent. If these people have the highest responsibility of proofreading translations, I cannot even imagine what a crappy result that must be. Don't waste your time taking their tests or working for that company.

I had a critical document that had one paragraph needing translation to Chinese. They said it would take between 2 - 5 hours, which was fine. At 4 hours I sent in a request to find the status and they told me that "hadn't found a translator yet." Are you kidding me?!!!

Needless to say, I would not recommend this company to anyone.

Recently ordered a translation from English to Czech from Gengo. I received the initial translation quickly, which I then passed to a Czech agent to double check. He replied that it had clearly been passed through Google translate as it was word for word the same as Google Translate and wholly inaccurate. He advised me that a native speaker of Czech would just laugh at it because it was so bad. I contacted the translator who reviewed it and 'made some changes'. Again, I passed it to the Czech agent, who laughed at the ridiculous amends that had been made. I contacted Gengo for a refund and surprise surprise, they 'QUALITY CHECKED' the translation and found it to meet their standards. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!! Complete waste of time and the translations are of a poor standard. WILL NEVER USE AGAIN.

We had been using Gengo for quite a while. We are a global company, and before we use the translations in our product, we often have regional contacts from our parent company review the translations. Almost every time there are at least 2 or 3 languages that receive terrible feedback from our proofreaders. They have mentioned that it's as if it is being translated by a robot, which leads me to believe that lazy translators just use google translate. We've also had customers write in to our support telling us how awfully things are translated. We've moved on to a much more professional quality service.

I was made lots of promises by the sales rep, only to get massively overcharged. For instance, they "translated" filenames that they actually just copied and pasted since they were strings like "09_g_hi_res_bb_7.jpg" which their system counts as 7 words! So I was charged for literally THOUSANDS of words that were not actual translations. I was assured that they would sort it out the following week. 2 weeks went by, nothing.

Not only that, but I was told that they used something called translation memory, so that the same phrases would only need to be translated once and I would not get repeatedly charged for things like a product variable value like "green" being translated for every single product.

Then I found that in fact they had not only counted all these multiple instances of the same word as each being an individual word translation, but they had several translators working on it simultaneously, each translating the same words differently.

With all this I was forced to tell my client that we would have to delay the project launch, and go find and hire vetted translators to redo all the translations, which they told me had been done very poorly and were full of inconsistencies.

After several requests to have it rectified, with constant promises of "next week" and no resolution, I demanded a refund, and have continued to be led on and have my requests ignored by them, in apparent hopes that I'll just forget about.

We've done several translations using gengo.com and had been satisfied so far. Last translation we rejected a translation due to three mistakes related to the meaning of our sentences and only got a short mail, that after a review, gengo.com is on the opinion that the original work meets gengo's standards.

No word on the examples we mentioned in our complain; no offer.
I'm not satisfied with this

I have used Gengo a few times now and it always delivers fast and grammatically correct translations! I can't emphasize how important that is especially in the digital marketing industry.

The speed and quality of the translations are top notch.

We need quick translations for my clients and Gengo really fits the bill. They're able to give quick turnaround for many languages at a reasonable cost. I highly recommend them.