What do I do if I’m uncomfortable with the language in a task?

As you’ll know if you work with us, the vast majority of our tasks are written by support professionals or by our clients which are then translated into the target language to help communicate with a customer. However, an important part of our service is also providing translations the other way around. This means that people are writing emails to customer support in their native language, it’s our job to translate them back into English for agents who don’t speak the source language.

Sometimes, the customers writing the text can express their dissatisfaction in a way that you might not be comfortable translating, even if you’re able to. This could be through profanity or language that is insulting. It can be tough to know what to do in these situations, and we rely on the discretion of our editors to make the right decisions. In these instances, you’ve got two options: skip and report the task, or translate it as best you can.

Editors always have the right to skip tasks, and if you feel like you’d like to, you’re completely free to do so. However, it’s also worth bearing in mind that we are trying to provide a true representation of the source text to the client, and it’s not the role of editors, or for Unbabel, to pass judgment on what the author would like to say. You won’t be marked down in your evaluations for translating profanity or uncomfortable language if it’s a true representation of the source.

In short, it’s your decision whether or not to skip and a lot of this will depend on the specifics of the language used. We trust editors to make the right call based on their knowledge of the source text. However, if you do choose to skip, please report it and let us know why you’re not comfortable translating it - this allows us to bring that feedback to the client and improve the process for everyone.

Please note that if you’re uncomfortable with a task because it’s in a different language or dialect to the one you normally work with, you should always skip and report this rather than attempt to work on it.