How to request a translation?

This is a page to guide you through the most efficient way to request a translation, and guidance on how to work efficiently with language service providers (LSPs).

Your initial request

When requesting a translation, there are a number of information the LSP will want to know, regardless of the project. Providing this information in your initial request will make the process smoother and faster, as it will avoid back-and-forth, allowing the LSP to get to work on your project as fast as possible.

Necessary information:

1. The type of file you are providing us. This will let us know right away if we will need to convert the file before working on it, and if we have the required tools. This will help us give you a more accurate quote for the work we will have to do. If you are sending a PDF file, please also read the Translation of PDF files section
2. The privacy and confidentiality requirements of your project. If your project is secret/confidential, we may not be able to use all of our usual tools to complete it, which may impact our time estimates and quotes. As such, indicating it upfront will let us give you a more accurate quote and schedule for the project.
3. The purpose of the translation. Depending on wheather the translation is to be published, or used internally, we may use different translation strategies, which may make the translation faster and cheaper. We will also use this information to adapt the tone of the translation to the expected audience
4. Previous related translated works you did. If you have already requested translations from another provider, or did any in-house, please include them in your request– we may use them as basis for terminology, which will gain time, and result in a cheaper quote. Particularly, if you had a translation done, and have a “Translation Memory” or “Term Base” for that translation, make sure to include it in your initial request. Those are files that contain very helpful information about the translation, and that we will be able to use in our work.

Translation of PDF files

PDFs are generally very hard to translate well. If you have the original file used to create the PDF, please send that to us instead!
While PDFs are editable, and we have tools to work with them, formatting issues can easily show up, and it takes a really long time to fix those. We might charge extra or request more time to work on a PDF than a comparable Word document.

Getting your translations faster

While human translation is a complex task that might take a while– and we never cut corners on quality to make up for it, if you need your files translated as fast as possible, there are a few tips you might want to keep in mind!

1. Provide domain-specific information: terminology, company-specific roles, etc. This will allow our translators to work faster, and avoid spendingg too much time in the research phase.
2. Scatter deliveries: if you do not need the entire document translated at the same time, or may wait a few more days for some of the languages, specify it in our request! We will focus on delivering the most urgent parts first, and make a second delivery later. You may also request an early, unrevised translation that will be faster to produce, but of far lesser quality than the final product. We will then deliver the finalised translation at a later date.
3. Get in touch as early as possible: even if your final document is not ready, send us an email as soon as you can, that way we can start setting up the project on our side, and do the preleminary research on the topic of your translation. We may even be able to provide advice on how to best format your document so that it is as easy as possible for us to translate!