Getting started at Unbabel: a definitive guide

Hey there! Welcome to the Unbabel knowledge base.

Getting started as an editor with us is simple. This guide is here to help you with all of the basics so that you know exactly what to do, and when.

Signing up

There are some restrictions on who can work with Unbabel. To find out more, see here.

The first step to becoming an editor with us is to go to our editors' page on the website.

First, you'll be invited to join our waitlist. As Unbabel has grown, we've received more and more requests to join our platform, but we can't provide work for everyone who wants to work with us. We therefore operate a waitlist system. Please join the waitlist and we will contact you if we have vacancies for your language pair in due course.

We operate with what we call language pairs. We do this because translation works in one direction, and while it’s perfectly possible that you can work with translations the other way round, you will need to prove it as a separate skill. For example - if you have the ability to edit translations from English to French, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can translate French to English.

Select the language pair(s) you’d like to work with and follow the steps.

After this, you’ll need to add your email address. Please make sure you use an email address that is associated with your PayPal or Payoneer account if you have one - read more here. Once your account has been created, we cannot change your email address.

When a vacancy becomes available, you'll be contacted by a member of our community team who will create your account so you can begin your training.

Verification and training tasks

You’ll have to complete two sets of tasks before becoming an editor. This doesn’t take long, but you’ll want to prepare for them to make sure you have the best chance of passing. Check out our Language Guidelines before starting.

Verification Tasks

These are the tasks that you’ll do when you first sign up. These are designed to clear up two things for us – that you have an understanding of the languages you’ve signed up for, and that you’re not a robot or using any artificial translation tools.

Don’t worry too much about polishing these tasks – just correct the errors and move on. These tasks are graded automatically on a pass/fail metric, and once you’ve passed you won’t ever have to do them again for that language pair. By the way, you’ll get three attempts at these tasks and if you don’t pass the language pair will lock.

Training Tasks

The training tasks are the core of the sign-up process. They are texts specifically selected and designed to evaluate your competence as an editor. You’ll need to complete ten training tasks before the system sends them to evaluation to determine whether you’ll get access to paid tasks. It’s really important to take the time to get these tasks right: find out how here.

Getting paid

One thing that we believe in at Unbabel is that editors deserve to be paid quickly, frequently and the full amount that they’ve earned.

Setting up payments is simple – find out how easy it is by reading this article.

Your Unbabel journey

Even when you’ve set up your account and you’re already getting paid for tasks, it doesn’t stop there. Our community is made up of editors who are talented and hard-working, but we also expect our editors to keep on learning. That means checking the Language Guidelines regularly, and taking time to understand your evaluation results when they arrive.