International Business Correspondence Editing and Proofreading Services

A supplier confirms arrangements with a new distributor overseas and writes that the parties will table the pricing schedule at the next review. The English is fluent and idiomatic. The distributor's team, reading in their second language, takes it that pricing has been deferred; the supplier meant that it would be brought forward for discussion. Both readings are correct, because the phrase means opposite things on either side of the Atlantic, and neither side has any reason to check. The gap surfaces a quarter later, when nobody can find the conversation that was supposed to have happened.

We edit correspondence that travels between organisations in different countries — quotations and pro forma documents, cover letters for distribution and agency agreements, tender and RFP responses, letters of intent, payment and credit correspondence, shipping and customs instructions, notices of variation or termination, escalation and dispute letters, and the steady email traffic that holds an international account together.

The English of an international letter is what determines whether a reader in their second language arrives at your meaning or at a defensible different one, and its failure is fluency written for a native ear when the ear at the other end is not native. We work through these so idiom, phrasal verbs and figurative usage give way to plain equivalents, since a reader working in an additional language decodes an unfamiliar idiom literally and no dictionary will warn them that the literal reading is the wrong one; so expressions that shift meaning between jurisdictions are defined at first use or replaced outright, given that two parties can read the same clause confidently and differently and discover it only when one of them acts; so dates name the month and figures name their currency, because 03/04 is two different days and a dollar is several different currencies, and a commercial letter is not where anyone should be discovering which was meant; so each sentence carries a single clause of meaning, since heavily subordinated English survives a native reader's parsing but frequently does not survive translation, whether the translator is a person or a machine; and so commitments are set apart from courtesies, given that a paragraph mixing goodwill with an obligation allows a reader to take away the goodwill and leave the obligation behind. Correspondence edited this way reaches the other side intact.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including contract terms, pricing and commercial relationships. We are editors rather than lawyers, translators or trade advisers, and we offer no view on the terms you are agreeing, their legal effect in any country or the commercial merits of the arrangement — where a document carries legal force, it should be reviewed by someone qualified in the relevant jurisdiction. What we can do is make sure the letter says one thing to both parties.