etzee

Reporting a wrong or awkward translation

Worth doing, and the one detail that makes a report usable.

The Metzee team18 Oct 20262 min read

Send it through Help, under Feedback & ideas. Ideas go to the team building Metzee, and a translation report is one of the most actionable things that arrives there.

The one detail that makes it usable

Where you saw it. A screenshot, or the screen and the button.

Without that, a report of a wrong word is often unfixable: the same English word appears in several places and is translated differently in each, correctly. "The word for 'bid' is wrong" cannot be acted on; "on the item screen, the button under the price" can.

What to include

  1. The language.
  2. Where — screenshot, or the screen name and what you were doing.
  3. What it says now.
  4. What it should say, if you know.
  5. Why, briefly, if it is a shade of meaning rather than a plain error.

That fifth one matters more than people expect, because the hardest translation problems are not mistakes.

The kinds worth reporting

A plain error. The wrong word, a word from another language, a typo.

Technically right, wrong in use. A formal word where everyone says something else. This is the commonest and the hardest to catch from the inside, because it reads correctly to anyone checking.

Wrong register. Too formal, too familiar, or the wrong one for money.

Something that does not fit. Text overflowing a button, or cut off.

A number or date in the wrong format.

What is not a translation problem

What a seller wrote. Titles, descriptions and chat are in the seller's own words and are not translated by Metzee. Using Metzee in your own language

An English server message. Some refusals from the server are still English — a known gap being cleared, not a bad translation. Reporting one is still useful; it is just a different queue.

What happens next

You may not get a reply — the app says so plainly rather than promising one. What you will see is the wording change in a later release.

Why this is worth your two minutes

Eleven languages means eleven versions of every line, and no team can feel all of them. The people who notice are the ones reading in that language, which is you.

A single word fixed on a checkout button is read by everyone who ever buys in that language.

More: using Metzee in your own language, can I suggest something, eleven languages.

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