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.
Optible's own translator runs on your own computer. Nothing you read is sent to Optible or to anyone else, and that is why the first use needs a download. On Chrome or Edge you can choose your browser's translator instead, which makes fewer mistakes and needs no download, but which Optible cannot make the same promise about. Both are covered below.
Machine translation tells you roughly what an applicant has written. It gets details wrong, and it does that while reading perfectly fluently, which is what makes it risky. Check the original for anything you are going to quote or score.
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.
Optible works out which language a document is written in from the text across its pages, and tidies up letters that some Word-to-PDF conversions garble, so a Spanish document is no longer mistaken for Chinese because of a stray character.
Using your browser's translator
On Chrome or Edge on a computer, Optible offers a second translator the first time you translate an application. In that prompt it is called Use Chrome's built-in translator.
Your browser's translator makes fewer mistakes than Optible's own, needs no download, and handles more languages, including Japanese, Hebrew and Portuguese. It copes better with long answers too.
Your browser does this translating, not Optible. We have tested it with the internet switched off and it still worked, so it can run entirely on your own computer. But your browser controls that and we cannot check it, so we cannot promise it will never send what you read to Google.
Choose Translate on your device for an application that must stay off other companies' systems. That is the translator we can account for. For everything else, your browser's will give you a better read of the application.
Google describes what its translator does with your text in Client-side translation with AI, which is the translator Optible offers you here. It is not the same as Chrome's translate-this-page feature, which works differently.
You are asked which translator to use the first time you translate, and your answer is remembered in that browser. To change it later, use the small arrow beside Translate, on an answer or in the document viewer, and choose On this device or Chrome built-in. What is on screen is translated again with your new choice. The arrow only appears once you have made a first choice, and only where Chrome can translate that pair of languages.
The first time you use it
With Optible's own translator, the first translation into a given language downloads a language pack of roughly 70 MB, which takes up about 110 MB on your computer once your browser has unpacked it. 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.
Freeing up the space
Language packs stay on your computer so that you never wait for the same download twice. A few of them together can come to several hundred megabytes, which is worth knowing about if you are short of room.
Go to Settings and then Downloaded models to see how much is stored and what each pack is for. Every row names the languages that pack translates between, so you can remove the ones you no longer need and keep the rest. Remove all clears every one of them.
Nothing is lost by removing a pack. The next time you translate in that language it downloads again. A pack you have not used for a fortnight is removed on its own, so the space comes back whether or not you think to ask for it.
If a translation looks wrong in a way it did not used to, removing that language's pack and letting it download again is worth trying. It makes sure you are using the current version rather than an older copy your browser kept.
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.
Your browser's translator covers all of these in both directions, including Japanese, Hebrew and Portuguese. If you have picked one of those three, it is the only translator that will answer you in your own language.
Japanese is the weakest language we support. On-device Japanese, for attachments and for form answers, is something we are actively improving. Until that work lands, treat a translated Japanese application as a rough guide: company names come back wrong routinely, figures can shift, and a sentence is occasionally dropped with nothing on the page to show it happened.
This applies to Optible's own translator. Your browser's handles Japanese better, and is the one to choose for a Japanese application.
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.
No choice of translator was offered: the browser translator needs Chrome or Edge on a computer. It is not available on phones or tablets, in Safari or Firefox, and your IT team can switch it off.
If none of that helps, message us through the chat in the corner of Optible.