Flitto Review – Earn money translating online
Welcome to our Flitto Review. The Korean entrepreneur, Simon Lee, is Flitto’s founder. The platform launched on September 1, 2012.
Their philosophy is to crowdsource translations. Crowdsourcing is a specific sourcing model in which Flitto employs contributions from users to do translations.
Flitto supports 25 languages. Here are the languages:
European languages: Czech, Dutch, English, Finish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
Asian languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.
African languages: Arabic and Swahili.
Flitto Review – Summary
Name: Flitto, click here to check it out!
Review: 45/100
Pays through: PayPal (threshold $35 USD) and Amazon US Gift Cards ($10 USD)
Available on: website and App (Android and iOS)
Free to Start: Yes!
How does Flitto work?
Flitto’s structure encompasses four sections:
a.) Language Service: here is the meat of Flitto. You can request translations and also participate in translating. Translations can be done by crowdsourcing or choosing one translator and working with him.
b.) Arcade: Flitto can feed bite-size translation requests to those interested. This option does not require much commitment on behalf of translators because they can pick up their phone, do a couple of translations, and then move on with their day.
c.) Discovery: Twitter accounts of big news companies, politicians, artists, and athletes appear in this section. Flitto themselves also publish content on this section. There was a time when Flitto paid you to translate this section. But gone are those days.
d.) Event: now and then, Flitto opens special events where you can translate phrases or record them to earn Flitto points (which translate into cash). The payment is higher than regular during these events.
You can earn money while translating on Flitto.
You can earn money translating on Flitto. I can share my personal experience here. Flitto is not a scam. They pay their users.
Crowdsource translations: I have earned money doing crowdsource translations. However, because many do the same translation and only one gets picked and paid, I ended up giving up on this option. My translations got picked a couple of times. But there were more times when I was not chosen (and didn’t earn anything). I must say that it felt that the first that submitted the translation was the one elected. And there could be better translations delivered a minute or two later, but they hardly ever got picked. Thus, I felt that the system was not fair and ended up stopping my submissions in this section.
Pro translations: I applied to become a Pro translator. They perform several tests on applicants. I got approved. About four to five times a week, a translation request would come into my Flitto inbox. I would review it and submit a price. I initially would fill in the application with the price suggested by Flitto but never got picked for the Pro translation. Thus, I began submitting the lowest price offer (seeking to do one or two translations to get things moving), but not even this way did I get picked. I also got disappointed with this option on Flitto.
Arcade: overall, I commend this feature on Flitto. Having bite-size translations (of one or two sentences) is good. You pick up your phone, do two translations, and get paid for them. The next day, you do the same thing, and after a few months, you have earned quite a bit. However, there are a few things I do not like about this feature.
First, the bite-size translations pay very little (it could be from $0.003 USD to $0.01 USD for a sentence or two).
Secondly, the translations take time to get approved. They could even take months.
And last, the option of bite-size translations is not always available. Sometimes you have a few free minutes and want to do a few translations, but they are not available. It could be this way for several months. Even when the flow of bite-size translations is regular, you may take about three months to get to the threshold of $35 USD to cash out.
Events: these are the best. They open randomly. But I would say about once a year, and they last 4 to 6 weeks. They pay more than the Arcade (but yet not that much).
Discovery: there was a time in Flitto when you could earn money translating tweets from famous accounts. Since there were always tweets available to translate, it was an ever-green feature to earn money. The payment was low (you had to translate about 145 tweets to make $1 USD). But they stopped paying for tweets back in January 2018. I had translated several tweets and noticed, back then, that I had not gotten the points for them in about three days. I wrote to Flitto asking about it, and they pointed out the new arrangement in which they would not pay for tweets allegedly because too many users were using Google Translate. However, they did pay me for the tweets I had translated during those three days after they had rolled out this new update.
How much money can you earn with Flitto?
Flitto works with a point system, where 1 USD equals 1,450 points. And as you have read in the section above, in my experience, you can not earn much with Flitto. With the features that have worked for me, it will take you several hours to even earn $1 USD.
I have prepared a post in which I explain how to convert your Flitto points to cash. If you’re interested in reading about this, click here.
Wrapping up
I came across Flitto in March 2016 and even now in 2023 I will hop into the app, do a couple of translations on Arcade and continue with my day. Will Flitto be my main source of income? I doubt it. It’s just fun to test your translation skills and have something to think about while you’re waiting in line or commuting.
Once you hit the threshold, they pay what you have earned, so thumbs up there too!
Flitto does not have an Affiliate Program, so there are no affiliate links here. In other words, I do not earn money if you join or not join Flitto. I am just sharing my experience and opinion with you.
Since you may want to practice your target language, translating on Flitto may be something good. Flitto is the right site for you if you want to practice your Italian skills or any other language that you have been learning.
After reading our Flitto review you can try it out yourself by clicking here.
If you’re actually looking for a way to generate a job replacement income online, I can suggest you check out this platform. It will teach you how to build and monetize websites (such as the one that you’re currently reading).
Hey, Henry!
I absolutely loved the idea of making money with translations online.
I’m checking this website Flitto today. Maybe I’ll make some bucks translating Portuguese articles and/or tweets… Who knows?!
Thanks for the info.
All the best.
Hi, Eliane! It’s great to know you liked Flitto! And it’s really easy to use. Earning some bucks with Flitto is fun. And you get paid for doing things you normally do like reading the news or checking out your favorite Twitter accounts! Thanks for stopping by!
Hello Henry,
I am absolutely surprised to discover this platform. So many thanks for this information. I am going to try it right away.
I will have to come back to your site anyway, there is much to learn about “how to learn”.
Thank you for sharing your Knowledge.
See you soon,
Françoise
Hello, Françoise! Thank you very much for stopping by! I greatly appreciate your comment. Just a quick update: since January 2018 the Discovery section were you can translate tweets from accounts of big news companies, politicians, artists, and athletes is not paying the 10 points reward it used to. I’ll continue commenting on this point when the platform states if this is a temporary situation or a permanent condition.
But in all the other sections, it continues working and paying as it has always been.
It’s an honor to have you and you’re more than welcome to continue visiting us. All the best! 🙂
Hi, I am one of Flitto’s translators. Actually I’ve asked Flitto regarding this matter. And their answer is… Nope. They won’t give points for translating Discovery section anymore. It is due to many violations by fraudulent users who make use of translation software for translating content in this section. So the only hope to earn income from Flitto is when your translation is selected in Crowdsource section; or when you have became translator Pro 1:1 and complete the translation job submitted by a requestor.
Hi Asriza! I really enjoyed translating tweets and am sad that because of these fraudulent users Flitto had to close this opportunity of earning something through these micro translations.
I would like to find a similar concept on another site, but so far I haven’t.
I remember that when Flitto cancelled the opportunity to earn through tweets, I wrote to them because I had translated quite a few tweets and hadn’t received the points. And they answered that they had closed that option, but they would do an exception an give me the points I had earned those days I had continued translating tweets without knowing they had changed. It was generous on their part. Thank you Flitto!
Hi Henry
Thank you for sharing the article.
I am also interested in Flitto, but I have a question for you:
Are the rates all the same for any language pair? Or some language pair might be higher, and some might be lower?
Thank you!
Hi Sabrina! Thank you very much for stopping by my site. I greatly appreciate your comment.
Rates fluctuate from one pair of languages to another. Rates are based on demand.
In the crowdsources sections rates vary. But in the 1:1 Pro Translation section rates vary even more.
Hope this helps. All the best! 🙂
This is the first time I have ever come across this idea of making money translating. Thank you so much for sharing it. I’ll check it out. It sound like a good option for me due to the fact I was raised hearing 2 languages simultaneously. I have bookmarked this website.
Hi Russ. Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you found this platform useful.
It’s always a treat to learn about something new. I can say with all honesty that I had heard of this concept before. I don’t quite understand it, however. From what I gather I would have to speak one other language besides English in order to participate.
Also, can’t a person just go to Google in order to have any language translated? I know I have used google translation before when I came across a facebook post for instance that was in German.
Might be a great opportunity for my girlfriends. She is Swiss and is fluent in English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian.
Hi Ray. There are ocassion when using Google translator is enough. But there are ocassions when we need more accurate translations and that’s when Flitto may come in.
Thank you very much for stopping by and for your comment.
Being able to follow tweets of our favorite athletes and artists even though they don’t post in English is quite a unique idea.
I don’t know a second language. But I would like to follow this platform to read their tweets. Thank you.
That’s an interesting feature Flitto has included among it’s services. Presently, they don’t reward users for translating tweets so there is not as much activity translating them (as used to be some years ago). But it continues to be a nice platform to get a quick and affordable translation for any request you have.