…at least at zoopa.com.br

Dear Josh,

after your invitation to help Brasilian friends on Danone Actimel project I decided to do so, put the hard work in, sent the web banner to competition and
won the first prize chosen by client and 500$. You could of seen the work „ Antivirus protection“ by author: „sulky“ in the winner’s section but they removed it today.
The work is still available at: http://zooppa.com.br/ads/actimel-danone/banners/antivirus-protection
After a week I’ve sent e-mail to Zooppa Brasil in order to arrange a way of payment since I can’t receive money in my country via Pay Pal and they replied me that I won’t be able to receive money at all because I was disqualified. They say it was because my banner wasn’t in Portugese.

My questions are:

1) How come my banner was good enough to enter the competition, good enough to be presented to the client, good enough to be chosen by client as a winner
but it aint’t good enough to be paid.

2) Can You have international competition and demand entries in Portugese

3) If You can have international competition but accept entries only in Portugese, wouldn’t it be right to inform international competitors about that. We, competitors that found about Danone competition at Zoopa USA weren’t informed about that in the short version of Brief at Zooppa USA and there was no English brief at zooppa.com.br. Wouldn’t it be right if You call Zooppa USA members to join your competition that you provide them with the brief in English or at least with such an important rule as language condition wich can lead to disqualification.

Dear Josh, although I am not responsible for this situation, I offerd Zooppa Brasil to adapt that one little banner sentence to Portugese in order to make everything right, but instead of replying they removed my work from winner’s section.

Dear Josh, I sincirely hope that You will correct this great injustice that was done to me or else this whole great Zooppa thing doesn’t make sense. How can I continue to participate in future competitions if I am not sure I will get paid, or at least that I won’t be punished for other people mistakes.

I sincerely belive in Your help and Thank You very much in advance,
Albin Salkić ( sulky )

Hi Sulky-

Sorry for any troubles.

I will talk this over with the Brazil team.

Thanks,

Josh

Sulky - I translated the brief online and it does say “ATTENTION - All works must be in Portuguese.” I also translated some of the forums on the Brazilian site and it seems like some of the Brazilian Zooppers were complaining (I feel rightfully so) that a work that did not follow the brief won. Someone commented that if a Brazilian posted a work on the US zooppa site that it probably wouldn’t even be looked at….so I think even though you “won”. But maybe someone should’ve caught your mistake and notified your prior to the deadline so that you might have a chance to translate and re-submit it.

Lesson here - Always read the brief carefully. Easy to use an online translator to help.

Thnx Josh and Thnx rellance! I understand You and I certainly uderstand the guys in Brazil! They have a right to complain! The truth is I didn’t know for “google translate” at the time and so considered the short brief posted at zooppa.usa as the One. If I knew entries were accepted only in Portugese I sure wouldn’t bother competing at all cause I don’t know a word of Portugese.
But tell me this…lets say I went to google translate, read the Brief in Portugese, produced my work, go back to google translate and translate my English copy into Portugese…and we all know that google translate ain’t 100% accurate…the possiblity for me to end up with spelling and grammar mistakes in Portugese are enormous. So, what’s the use of google translate in such cases anyway? Either I can get disqualified for not having Portugese or for having a bad Portugese!
It seems to me that future contests, if they will be held internationally, should have English brief or shouldnt be held internationally at all, or at least entries should be accepted in all languages where the contest was held. I don’t know, there must be a solution for this problem! Still, there is a bitter taste in my mouth…why I wasn’t warned or disqualified at the beggining, why my work was presented to the client, how come the client didn’t mind, how come I was noticed about disqualification only week after when I asked for payment, how come they refused my ofer to adapt the banner lately etc. I don’t know, it just seems unfair to be punisked for something I don’t feel responsible for.

Sulky:

In case that you need help to translate, I offer myself to help. I always try to enter on italian contest, us contest, and , of course, brazilian contest. When I need help to translate something (most times on italian contest, (on us contest I still have my poor english that helps me haha) I try to ask help to italian zooppers, and we are a community here so, they’ve never founded a problem to help me. I was one who said that was unfair a winning out of the briefing because, as it hard to you to translate to our language, its hard to us to translate to yours, or italian, but most time you see a brazilian work on foreign contests, its on the right language, because we try to respect it.
Even today, fremantle was making a work to “riachuello” contest, and he asked my help to translate to him. I dont think you should blame zooppa on this matter, its not their falt, as was said before, the rules were on the briefing.

When you need any help with portuguese, I can help you if you need.

See you!

But I agree with you with a thing, at least, they shoud have warned you while the contest was on.

THE SOUTH AFRICA PRIZES HAVE YET TO BE AWARDED EITHER. BRIAN AT GLOBAL FLUENCY IS COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE AND ZOOPA HAS DONE NOTHING!!! IT IS RIDICULOUS.

I haven’t gotten anything from RazorFish contest either.

“Quote”:

Has anyone received prizes from razorfish contest? I haven’t gotten anything yet.

I received my razorfish prize normaly…

Wow… really?! Interesting. I don’t know what to say…
For those who got their prizes in a timely fashion, congrats. For those who haven’t, I guess it’s just the way it is.
It’s both frustrating and irritating not to get what was awarded, after all the hard work everyone has put into their project.

Quote:

…at least at zoopa.com.br

Dear Josh,

after your invitation to help Brasilian friends on Danone Actimel project I decided to do so, put the hard work in, sent the web banner to competition and
won the first prize chosen by client and 500$. You could of seen the work „ Antivirus protection“ by author: „sulky“ in the winner’s section but they removed it today.
The work is still available at: http://zooppa.com.br/ads/actimel-danone/banners/antivirus-protection
After a week I’ve sent e-mail to Zooppa Brasil in order to arrange a way of payment since I can’t receive money in my country via Pay Pal and they replied me that I won’t be able to receive money at all because I was disqualified. They say it was because my banner wasn’t in Portugese.


My questions are:

1) How come my banner was good enough to enter the competition, good enough to be presented to the client, good enough to be chosen by client as a winner
but it aint’t good enough to be paid.

2) Can You have international competition and demand entries in Portugese

3) If You can have international competition but accept entries only in Portugese, wouldn’t it be right to inform international competitors about that. We, competitors that found about Danone competition at Zoopa USA weren’t informed about that in the short version of Brief at Zooppa USA and there was no English brief at zooppa.com.br. Wouldn’t it be right if You call Zooppa USA members to join your competition that you provide them with the brief in English or at least with such an important rule as language condition wich can lead to disqualification.


Dear Josh, although I am not responsible for this situation, I offerd Zooppa Brasil to adapt that one little banner sentence to Portugese in order to make everything right, but instead of replying they removed my work from winner’s section.

Dear Josh, I sincirely hope that You will correct this great injustice that was done to me or else this whole great Zooppa thing doesn’t make sense. How can I continue to participate in future competitions if I am not sure I will get paid, or at least that I won’t be punished for other people mistakes.

I sincerely belive in Your help and Thank You very much in advance,
Albin Salkić ( sulky )

Zooppa

Quote:

Hi Sulky-

Sorry for any troubles.

I will talk this over with the Brazil team.

Thanks,

Google translate is not 100% accurate, but for a simple phrase it is extremely close and right on most of the time.
I recently did a nearly 2 hour wedding video. The groom was from Japan and he was going to send some copies home. Problem all the text was going to be English only. I wanted his family to be able to enjoy it as much as the brides, (English speaking) so I used Google Translate to translate everything into Japanese. Nearly 100% perfect. The only phrase not 100% correct was “special Friends” and the reason that may have been off was the "". It came out especially, that was it. If I had left off the "" when I put it into Google Translate it may have been correct.
You may want to just TRY to enter the phrase and see what pops out. But make sure YOU choose both languages, do not let “auto detect” do it, it messes up.
Greg

There are lots of brazilians willing to help with translation (including myself) - If you plan to do another ad for brazil, I’ll be happy to help you.