 Quick public service announcement. Apparently, pros.com is thinking of changing its rating system for translators. For those of you who are familiar with it, it's the WWE, the willingness to work again. And it's basically any time you perform a translation, you do a job for a service provider for a client, something like that, you can then ask them to rate you. And, but what they do is they don't rate you, they actually just send you this WWE that just says, I'm willing to work with this person again. It's a very simple thing. They can write a couple of comments at the bottom, but it's all positive. There's no risk, there's no downside to doing this. It looks like they might be changing this to a rating system one to five. Basically the same way we as translators can rate companies. So in a way, I guess it's fair, but it does mean that there are going to be some changes in the way things get rated. And here, let me walk you through it quickly through the email that I received. I received an email, but I'm listed on pros as both a translator and a provider, basically as a translation company. And I'm pretty sure they sent it to me as a translation company because they said they're still trying to work it out and they have a survey asking what changes or how I'd like to use it and stuff like that. So I'm pretty sure it's from the point of view as a, as a client. Anyway, let me show you quickly what I mean so you can kind of get a feel for what I'm talking about. So here, this is the email I received and by and large it just says that they're planning to announce enhancements to the willingness to work again. It will now support additional WDA rating. It will be a score of one to five and we'll express in more detail terms the outsourcers willingness to work again with that linguist, right? And then they also want to include the type of job, like if it was translation, subtitling, etc. and the language pair. And then they're going to do the, you know, the five year, 12 month average. This is basically like we have now for the blue board. Let me show you quickly what I mean. First of all, let me show you the blue board, pros.com blue board. Here we go. And you can get a feel. And then I also want to show you my profile. So you can get a feel for that. And let's wait for it to load. I don't know why it's so slow. There we go. So the blue board and I've mentioned this before in other videos is how you can rate. This is the LWA and this is how we can rate agencies. We can rate translation agencies that we work with. And so you pick a translation agency. I don't know, you know, there's some that everyone knows lying bridge. Let's say this is one of the biggest ones and the rating isn't all that high. But you see, you see what I mean. This is the average rating five. It goes from one to five. And usually you want to be around five. This one's pretty low. This line bridge down here. And so maybe let's click on that too and see what's going on. So we have here, processing too complicated. So as you see, usually it's a five. If something's wrong, it already goes down to a four. And payment issue resolved in time. So there was a payment issue. And so these are all fours. They're not too bad, but it means they have small issues. This is obviously bad for many months. Our corporation was good until last two invoices due to errors made by LB staff were paid ridiculously low. One took them four months, another a year and a week. Okay, that's pretty bad. And so this is the way that we can rate translation companies that we work with, right? Usually they should be around five. In fact, if you look most of these actually, I'm surprised at how few here. That's one. But usually they should be around five like that. And you know, maybe a bit lower every now and then you know, something can happen all the time. But here emails for the last three months without reply, that'll put you down quite a bit here. These are all bad. And these are all red flags here. If you look here, most of them, yeah, four points, something to five, that's usually how it ends up. And I guess line bridge is kind of low for some reason. Anyway, so that's what happens. That's how we can rate companies and we do it on the blue board. However, the way they rate us is quite different. So this is a feedback form that I have. And you can see it has positive entries. Basically, the only entries they make are positive, right? Because when you request feedback from someone, it comes out as a willingness to work again. And it's always yes. And then they can write their own comments however they want. But that's basically it. And that's how it goes. There's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because if it's no, then they won't write you a WWA. And so that's pretty much all you have. So in fact, maybe I can show you right away. If I write an email address, okay, I'm going to do a bogus one now. Joe Schmo at something.com. Joe, something, continue. Okay, I'm not going to go through with this because obviously I don't want it. Yeah, here. Basically, if you can send this to any company, they make it very easy for you. You can say they customize, they have a message written out, you can customize it as you like. But then you say, yes, I'd be willing to work again. So they can reply, I'd be willing to work again, or I prefer not to give feedback. That's it. So the only feedback they can give is yes. Now you have more feedback choices, which honestly, I don't even know what's in there. But anyway, they're basically just going to say yes, or they won't reply at all. So the moral of the story is that there has been no downside to requesting a WWA up until now. However, it looks like they're going to be changing it more to a system that they already have for the translation agencies. And so along with your name, you're going to get a score and probably the number of entries. And then when you click on it, it's going to show the average for the, I think, average overall, yeah, past five years in the last 12 months. And it seems like they're going to do the same thing for translators themselves. So what, what, what does all of this mean? And what does it mean for you? What I would say is, first of all, they have not implemented this yet. For now, they are still trying to figure it out. And that's why they sent me that survey with questions. And basically the survey just asked what I would like to see included, what I would, etc, etc. And so what I would suggest to all of you is if you have any translation companies that you've worked with recently, then ask them for their WWA for the willingness to work again soon. Because after that, they're going to transfer to a rating system. Now, if you're positive you're going to get a five, then sure, you can wait to ask them. I mean, I don't know how long it'll take for them to implement this. So you might have to wait for a while. So I don't know if it's worth it. But I would imagine that if they're happy with what you did, they'll give you a five and that's it. If they have any issues, they might go down to four, but you're looking for a four or five. If you're, you know, at a certain point, I'd prefer not to have any entry than to have an entry that says two, or even three. And so as long as you know, you're going to get a four or five from someone, then yeah, you can wait to ask it. But if you're not too sure, then maybe you don't want to risk that. And so you want to ask sooner than later. Of course, if they're not satisfied with you at all, they might, they might just not reply to the willingness to work again. But again, you have nothing to lose if they do that. Anyway, so this is a change that seems like it'll be coming about. And hopefully you can keep this in mind. And I'll let you know if anything changes, but it seems like they're planning on implementing this, but they haven't implemented it yet. So we'll see what happens. It'll be interesting. And that's about it for now. I'll talk to you in the next video. Hey everyone, just as a quick addition, I wanted to let you know that I will be at the 58th annual American Translators Association conference in Washington, DC. That's on the weekend of I think October 28th. So anyway, if you're there, definitely let me know. It'll be cool to meet up and talk. Otherwise, if you're not there, I will still, I would like to let you know how it is get my feelings about it. I have no idea if I'm allowed to film or whatever footage inside the meeting, but I'll definitely let you know my thoughts on it, my take on it, whether I think it's worth it or not. So yeah, that's the American Translators Association. They have this meeting every year. It's probably the biggest meeting for translators in the country and definitely one of the biggest in the world. And so yeah, so if you're there, I look forward to seeing you. Otherwise, I'll let you know how it was. All right, bye.