MarsTranslation.com

Starting Mars Translation Review

An increasing number of visitors to our review site started expressing their interest in Mars Translation review. To be honest, we’ve never heard of this agency before, so after a brief discussion, we included it in our evaluation plans. As always, we decided to start with basic outside research and then slowly focus on the internal assessment. It was difficult to establish when the company was founded or how big it’s because the data we found was contradictory. It seems like it began to function back in 2012, but Mars translation reviews we’ve located are of much more recent nature. Similarly, the company’s site claims it has over 3000 linguists who are always ready to take on new orders, but facts published elsewhere indicate that it has only around 1000 workers. What we did find out for sure is that MarsTranslation possesses 5 physical offices around the world, in such cities as Beijing, Hong Kong, Lahore, Changsha, as well as Shenzhen. It made us a little wary because this agency has no officers in the US, yet it promotes its services heavily in this country.

Mars Translation offers solutions in the translation sector with a focus on localization. During our analysis, we have studied information located on both its site and other online platforms. The company isn’t featured in BBB reviews, and testimonials available on other independent websites are mixed. Some are positive since clients express their willingness to use the service once more, but another half is negative, with people complaining about bad quality and late deadlines. We went ahead and placed an order for business document translation, hoping to get a first-hand account of the nature of services MarsTranslation offers.

Services Offered

Mars Translation services cover more than 90 languages that is an average-to-high number that reveals the moderately large size of the firm. Not surprisingly, it offers various services in a wide range of industries. If you want to receive legal document translation services, software, and e-commerce localization, or financial calculations assistance, you’ll find all these options here. The agency also specializes in such rare and complex branch as promotional and medical translation. It provides well-developed API integration that helps minimize the efforts you invest in uploading the required content to have it translated. In addition, you may count on it in terms of gaming, tourist, technical, automotive, video translations, etc. DTP and file conversion options are available as well, and Mars Translations is also considered a website translation company.

But how effective are all these services? It’s essential to note that just because these options are listed on Mars’ website, it doesn’t mean that all of them are actually available. As the firm claims, it has a differing number of translators online, so if there are no appropriate experts around when you place an order, its processing might take a lot of time or it could be rejected. To get an actual and accurate account of what you can order, you have to place your request online, which is what we did. We settled on English to Indonesian translation of a business document as a relatively rare combination that could help us check the level of narrowly specialized linguists working for Mars and complete an unbiased review.

Prices at Mars Translation

Company’s website looks stylish, and there is also an online chat option, which we appreciated. Prices fall into this category as well — MarsTranslation openly discloses them, and we marked it as a strong advantage. You won’t have to waste minutes trying to find out whether you can afford this service. Mars Translation charges an extremely affordable price when it comes to translation: as it states, its customers have to pay $0.04 for one word on a basic level or $0.06 for a professional level. We were deeply impressed with this. Normally, the average cost is about $0.10 per word, so this price range is very low and thus pleasing to customers. Given the array of services offered, we were really interested in establishing whether they’ll be equally impressive.

Quality of Services

Mars translation delivered our document on time, so we were pleased with how it sticks to its promises. But when we got feedback from our Indonesian expert, we were taken aback — and not in a good way. As it turned out, the text had many flawed sentences and made-up facts. Instead of conveying our point strictly, the language expert made some key moments vague and added phrases that had no place in this context. The use of language itself also left a lot to be desired: there were grammar issues and problems with awkward sentence constructions. This showed us that you cannot be sure about the accuracy of translated work you receive from Mars. It’s a good thing when one is able to check it by yourself, but when you don’t know the target language, you only hope that your translator did a good job. Ours clearly didn’t.

We asked for a revision, indicating all issues we had noticed. Before this moment, communication had been flawless, but after our complaint, support operators became hostile. They kept denying us repeatedly, claiming how translation is not a science but art, so it presupposes some liberty with interpretation. That might be so, but we didn’t submit a creative order: ours was from the business sector, so you really can’t interpret phrases differently here. Almost five days later, we finally reached an agreement. After two more days, a revised document was sent back to us. Unfortunately, received document still wasn’t very good. Our expert singled out more instances of inaccurate translation of words, phrases, and terminology. Mars Translation offers its services at a low price, but it’s still essential to invest in a thorough and comprehensive process to get rid of errors and ensure excellency. Without it, there is simply no point in its other advantages.

Pros and Cons

Information in this review is quite vast, so if you want to get a quick insight into advantages and disadvantages of Marstranslation.com, you can check out the list below.

Pros

• Affordable diverse services.
• Informative website. Information about price is disclosed, so you have a chance to make an informed decision right away.
• Lots of languages are covered.
• Timely delivery.

Cons

• Low quality work. Our expert submitted a translated file that was all marked in red. Even the meaning was changed in several passages.
• Ineffective revisions. Quality control team evidently didn’t monitor our order even after the revision request, so the final result was still flawed.
• Communication depends on your questions. Before we complained, everyone was polite, but as soon as we asked for revision, the attitude changed and became confrontational. We received justifications that are unprofessional and don’t make much sense.

Summary

MarsTranslation attracts clients with its pricing, but you risk getting low-quality work in return. Just check online reviews. Such a combination is not acceptable, so regrettably, we can’t recommend this service. If it improves its performance, with clients’ reviews reflecting it, we’ll be glad to give it another chance, but until then, our assessment remains at the point of “poor.” After all, quality is everything.