Stepes.com

Adding to Stepes Translation Reviews: Our Experience

Stepes is an agency that engages in the provision of many-layered translation services. Since many of our visitors expressed their interest in it, we decided to read stepes translation reviews and test it. This review is the end product of in-depth research into the company, its background, prices, services it offers, and their quality.

We started with learning some basic information. Stepes was founded in San Francisco at the end of 2015, so it’s a pretty new company. Despite its lack of long history, it’s very enthusiastic and determined, launching new services and striving to outdo its competitors through constant innovations. Its focus is establishment of a crowd-platform where translators work right from their smartphones, being able to help their clients in real-time. Stepes covers six continents and boasts of having more than 100,000 translators. We felt a bit skeptical here because the firm hasn’t been operating long enough to acquire such an incredibly large network of trusted employees. It seems like it hires all people applying for a job, hoping for the best and avoiding performing the required thorough checks.

But we wanted our Stepes review to be objective, so we proceeded further. As it turns out, the company is not listed on the BBB website, and when we scoured the web for more information, we found mostly mixed reviews. Some customers were pleased, others not so much. So, we made an order ourselves, asking for a professional translation of a creative media-based project.

Services Offered

The services that are offered by Stepes are diverse in nature, which we found intriguing. For a young firm, it sure developed quickly, so now it offers document, video, software, as well as website translation services. There is also localization that applies across industries — you can order it for video game, mobile application, software, etc. Interpretation and multilingual survey translations are offered as well. So, if you need assistance to understand conversations during a meeting, phone call, or conference, Stepes will supply you with an expert. If you want to translate a project into many languages at once, it could easily make it happen, too. What is more, Stepes.com provides certified services, so in case you have to move or face legal proceedings in an international court, these employees will give you help you request. Company offers automated cloud-based translation, and it covers 32 large industries at once.

You could seek help in the area of retail, media, finance, life sciences, engineering, banking, agriculture. Healthcare, hospitality, and legal industries are also supported. There are many more — you should check the website yourself to make sure it has what you need. As for languages, there are 100 of them covered. Until this moment in our Stepes.com review, we could only admire diversity it managed to achieve, but what we noticed is that language pairs themselves are rather limited. English is the dominant language in this service, so if you want other pairs, you’ll have to clarify whether they are available. For expample, you'll have to clarify whether they can provibe the best Karen language translation services or not. This is among significant shortcomings of the agency. After all research, we finally placed an order, settling on a translation from English to German.

Prices

Many Stepes reviews complained about the high prices, and we found it to be true. On the one hand, they are disclosed online, which is a great thing. You won’t have to waste even a minute looking for how much you’ll be paying — “pricing” page is right there. Costs start at $0.09 for a word for a standard type of service, but in reality, they are closer to $0.17. That’s very expensive. The most complex industries like medical and legal ones cost about $0.23 for one word, which is also a high number. Stepes is an expensive agency - this is a disadvantage. The only hope we had concerning quality — if it is high, then prices might be worth it. German translation service is considered a semi-complex task, so we had to pay 15 cents per word.

Quality of Services Stepes Provides

We got the document back right by deadline, which is a plus. Then we began our evaluation process. We had a team of English to German translators who went over the file and scanned it thoroughly for any errors or cases of mistranslations. Results they reported to us were not encouraging since they found that there were some poorly translated words and phrases. More than that, creativity and liveliness that had to be present in every sentence of such tasks were missing. Film industry is represented by creativity. Our original text had double-meanings, humor, and sarcasm. Translation had nothing authentic in this regard — it was boring and mechanical as if done by a robot. That’s not counting grammar mistakes.

As always, we asked for revision, hoping that the second time, we would have more luck. But sadly, that didn’t happen. Even the revised document was flawed. There were some significant mistranslation instances in several sections of the document, which has the potential of message distortion. Operators were nice, we can’t complain here, but Stepes translation was inadequate, leaving us disappointed and frustrated.

Pros & Cons

Take a look at advantages and disadvantages of using this service that could bring you. This will help in making your decision.

Pros

• Good website layout & easy navigation. Stepes’ design isn’t particularly intricate, but it’s functional and intuitive. All relevant sections are present.
• Stable customer support. Support representatives are polite and reply to each question.
• Various services offered. Whatever assistance you require, this firm could help you.
• Innovativeness. With a type of real-time app translation this service provides, we can only applaud the creativity of its development team.

Cons

• High prices. Translation rate is not reasonable if quality suffers, which was the case with Stepes. Since numerous other individuals expressed the same opinion in Stepes translation reviews, this is a pattern.
• Low quality work. Both times, our order was flawed. It can’t be a coincidence, so you take risks when hiring it.
• Ineffective revisions. There is no point in offering revisions if the text remains virtually the same.

Concluding Our Stepes Translation Review

After the experience we got, we cannot evaluate Stepes in a favorable light. It’s not a part of our suggested agencies list for a reason — quality is insufficient, which makes this service unprofessional. We believe the mistake lies in its eagerness to hire as many translators as possible. There is no way it can control performance of more than 100,000 people and clients have to pay the price for it. It's better to start with fewer but more trustworthy employees who won’t damage the firm’s reputation. Read other translation services reviews to find your perfect fit. Stepes might still improve, but that moment isn’t here yet.