Lightning-fast online translation services at rock-bottom rates
Gengo is an internet-based translation service offering human translation at machine-like speeds and rock-bottom rates. The secret to Gengo's low-cost model is crowdsourcing. Rather than having paid translators on staff or retainer like other translation services, anyone can sign up to be a Gengo translator by taking a simple test and can start translating as soon as they pass the test. Translators immediately start accumulating credits for jobs that are approved, and can request a payout via PayPal at any time.
Overall, I have had very good experiences with Gengo translations. The rates simply cannot be beat, and the translations are lightning-fast (generally coming back within a few hours), although I should say that I have found that for very long jobs, I get an even faster result if I break them up into multiple, smaller jobs (which costs the same).
The question many people have is how good Gengo's translations will be, given that they are translated by random, anonymous internet translators. In my experience, Gengo translations are generally good enough for most purposes. If I really needed a nearly perfect translation, I would not hesitate to pay a bit extra for their "pro" translation, which is translated by a slightly more vetted translator who has had to pass two translation tests, the second of which is much more difficult than the first. In my experience, the pro translations are generally very good (and *still* cheaper than almost any other service). Plus, for either pro or regular translation, you always have the option of rejecting the translation and sending it back for retranslation, at no additional cost to you.
And if you really must have the most perfect translation possible, there is also an "ultra" service, where your translation gets looked at by a "pro" translator and then vetted by an even more advanced translator, although frankly this seems like overkill to me (and also takes longer).
Overall, Gengo is a very useful service that provides both run-of-the-mill and excellent translation at unbeatable cost and speed. I daresay this should be your go-to option for almost any type of translation, unless you have extremely specialized needs (such as medical translation or literary translation).