Translate an application into your language
Applicants write in their own language. Optible can translate their answers and their attachments into whichever language you have picked, so you can assess an application you would otherwise not be able to read.
The translation happens on your own computer. Nothing you read is sent to Optible or to anyone else. That is also why the first use needs a download, which is covered below.
Translating an applicant's answers
Open an application. If the answers are not in your language, a Translate link appears under each one, and a Translate all answers link sits above the list.
- The link under a single answer translates just that answer.
- Translate all answers does the whole application. Answers appear as they finish, so you can read the first while the rest are still going.
- Show original puts the applicant's own words back. Switching between the two is instant. Nothing gets translated twice.
No link means either the answers are already in your language, or there is too little text to tell what language they are in.
Translating an attachment
Open the attachment. If it is not in your language, a Translate button appears at the top right of the document viewer, next to the search icon.
The translation sits over the page itself, so headings, tables and page breaks stay where they were and the document still reads like a document. Show original brings back the file as it was sent.
Every page with text on it gets translated, one after another. A long report takes a while. The percentage on the button tells you how far along it is.
The first time you use it
The first translation into a given language downloads a language pack of roughly 70 MB. This happens once. Your browser keeps it afterwards, so later translations start straight away and work with no internet connection at all.
During the download you will see Preparing the translator and a progress bar. Keep the tab open until it finishes. Reloading part-way through starts that download from the beginning.
Open Optible on a different computer, or clear your browser data, and the download happens once more on that browser.
Check anything you quote
This is machine translation. It will tell you what an applicant has written. It is not accurate enough to quote from in an assessment.
Names come out worst. A programme called "Padrinos Globales" came back as "Global Godfathers" in one of our tests, and people's names are mangled just as often. Read numbers, dates and amounts from the original rather than the translation. Bold text and links inside a paragraph are lost, though line breaks and paragraphs survive.
When you record a decision or quote an applicant, switch back to the original and check the words you are relying on.
Which languages
Translation into English works well from German, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese, each using a model built for that specific language pair.
Translation out of English works into German, Spanish, French, Indonesian and Chinese. If you have picked Japanese, Hebrew or Portuguese, you will get English instead and the note above the text will say so. There is no offline translator into those three that we would trust yet.
Scanned attachments
A scan or a photo has no text in it, so Optible reads the page with text recognition first and then translates what it read. That takes longer than a document produced on a computer, and it is less reliable: anything misread from the scan gets carried into the translation. Treat a translated scan with more suspicion than a translated file.
If nothing happens
- No Translate link or button at all: the text is already in your language, or the document is an image with nothing readable in it.
- The button says Try again: the language pack could not be downloaded. Check your connection and click it again.
- It is very slow: translation runs on your own processor, so a long document on an older machine can take several minutes. The percentage will keep moving.
If none of that helps, message us through the chat in the corner of Optible.