What’s this article about?
The use of blocked segments, otherwise known as high-confidence segments, how the reporting system works, and raising concerns outside of the platform.
What is a blocked segment? What’s the point of them?
A blocked segment is a segment of a task that is unavailable for editing. They appear as grey, uneditable segments on the interface with a report flag next to them.
These are usually frequently used phrases, or phrases that the customer has specified they want to stay in a particular way, and they are blocked so that translators can focus on the segments which have been highlighted as needing edition. In some instances, they may be blocked for edition because our internal quality estimation has deemed that they are of sufficient quality, as is the case with ICE matches, which you can read more about here.
How do I report an issue with a blocked segment?
You can report an issue with a blocked segment using the flag button to the right of the segment in question. You should use this when there is a clear and indisputable error, or where the segment may read correctly in isolation but in context it does not work with the rest of the task (for example cases where the gender/number doesn’t match). Please remember that you should never use this report button because of personal preference.
Can I submit a job with faulty blocked segments?
Yes, and you should. Blocked segments are not the responsibility of translators, but of the Unbabel team and the requesting client. By all means, please report the segment, but it should not stop you from submitting the task you’re working on.
What happens to the report once I submit it?
When you press the report flag and the job is submitted, it sends a notification to our internal database that that particular segment in your working language has been reported. The process after this is not quite first come first served, but essentially it gets put into a list. The more reports a segment has, the higher priority it will be for the teams who review these segments, and the quicker it will be reviewed.
Why can’t I provide an explanation for why the segment is wrong?
In a word: time.
This would be the main constraint for two reasons:
- It would be a poor use of your time as a translator to write out an explanation when you could be working on the rest of a translation or another one;
- It would create a bottleneck on the other side as all reports (regardless of their category) have to be independently verified by an independent linguistic professional anyway, and with the current size of the company it makes much more sense to send these in batches for investigation and correction.
What should I do when I have reported a segment lots of different times but it keeps recurring?
Blocked segments are not the responsibility of translators. They never factor into evaluations, and we track them from our end and do our best while working with our linguistic experts and clients, and all the people in between who form part of our behind-the-scenes teams.
We know it can be frustrating to submit tasks which you know contain errors, but it’s better not to think of it like that: your personal task, which is to check and review the segments you can edit, will not have errors if done right. All the rest of it is up to us.
This isn’t to say that you can’t get in touch with support about this, or indeed anything - we will do our best to help and to triage your issues so that they can be resolved. Due to the number of reports we receive, it’s logistically impractical to provide you with progress on your feedback, but rest assured we are looking into them as quickly as possible and do value your reports.
Why have blocked segments if there are errors in them?
This system exists primarily at the request of our clients and a desire to meet their wishes for consistency. There are issues, but speaking holistically and considering jobs on the platform as a whole, which no one in the community has more than a small amount of visibility over, it is not the biggest issue.
Fundamentally, translation is a service, and services must be provided to the customer’s specifications, even if they don’t quite match with what we would like them to be. This is why the best way forward when considering blocked segments is to report and carry on with your day, doing the vital translation work that we know you can excel in.