International Business Correspondence Editing and Proofreading Services

One phrase in a confirmation email cost a supplier a quarter. The letter told a new distributor overseas that the parties would table the pricing schedule at the next review. The distributor's team, reading in their second language, understood that pricing had been deferred. The supplier had meant that it would be brought forward for discussion. Both readings are defensible, because the phrase means opposite things on either side of the Atlantic, and neither side had any reason to check. The gap surfaced three months later, when nobody could find the conversation that was supposed to have happened.

The documents we edit for International Business Correspondence

Quotations and pro forma documents come to us in steady volume, along with cover letters for distribution and agency agreements. Tender and proposal responses, letters of intent, and payment and credit correspondence follow. We also edit shipping and customs instructions, notices of variation or termination, escalation and dispute letters, and the everyday email traffic that holds an international account together. Our editors read the letter as the party at the other end will read it.

What the editing involves

Fluency written for a native ear is the usual fault in an international letter, and it is invisible to the person writing it. Idiom, phrasal verbs, and figurative usage give way to plain equivalents in the edited version, because a reader working in an additional language decodes an unfamiliar idiom literally. No dictionary warns them that the literal reading is the wrong one. "We will revert on Monday" and "we will action this shortly" are both fluent English, and both are read as something else in a good number of the markets they are sent to.

Expressions that shift meaning between jurisdictions need defining at first use or replacing outright. Two parties can read the same clause confidently, differently, and without discomfort, and discover the difference only when one of them acts on it. Dates should name the month in words, and every figure should name its currency, since 03/04 is two different days and a dollar is several different currencies. A commercial letter is not the place where either question should first arise.

Sentence length matters as much as vocabulary. Heavily subordinated English survives a native reader's parsing and frequently does not survive translation, whether the translator is a person or a machine, so one clause of meaning per sentence travels further intact. Commitments also read better set apart from courtesies. A paragraph that mixes goodwill with an obligation lets a reader carry away the goodwill and leave the obligation behind, and we put the obligation in a sentence of its own.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including contract terms, pricing, and commercial relationships. We are editors, not lawyers, translators, or trade advisors, and we offer no opinion on the terms you are agreeing to, their legal effect in any country, or the commercial merits of the arrangement. Where a document carries legal force, the document should be reviewed by someone qualified in the relevant jurisdiction. What we can do is make the letter say one thing to both parties.