Translation and Localization Editing and Proofreading Services

A buyer asks three agencies to quote for forty thousand words. The prices come back at eleven pence, nineteen pence and thirty-four pence a word, and none of the three quotations explains why. They are not quoting for the same work — one is post-edited machine output, one is a single translator with a spellcheck, one is translation with independent revision by a second linguist and a terminology pass. The buyer, having no way to see this, chooses on price and forms a view about the industry.

We edit what translation and localisation companies produce — service tier definitions and what each includes, quotations and pricing structures, translation and revision process descriptions, quality assurance and error typology documentation, style guides and terminology management documentation, client onboarding and brief templates, machine translation and post-editing service descriptions, software and website localisation documentation, subtitling and multimedia service specifications, linguist recruitment, testing and qualification documentation, complaint and rework procedures, and framework and public sector tender responses. Our editors work on the document that tells a buyer what they are actually purchasing.

Service tier definitions are the most useful thing a translation company can publish and the most commonly reduced to three unhelpful words. Standard, professional and premium tell a buyer nothing; what they need is who touches the text and what each person does. We write these so every tier names the number of linguists, their role and the order they work in — translation by a native-speaking subject specialist, revision by a second linguist against the source, a monolingual review for register, a terminology check against the client's glossary; so what is excluded is stated at each level, since a tier without independent revision should say so plainly rather than implying it through omission; so machine translation is disclosed where it is used, with the post-editing level defined by what the post-editor is and is not asked to fix, because the difference between light and full post-editing is a different product sold under one name; so each tier names the content it suits and the content it does not, given that marketing copy through a tier designed for internal documentation is the commonest source of complaint in this industry; and so the price difference is explained by the work rather than left as a mystery. Buyers who see this stop treating translation as a commodity, which is worth more to a good agency than any individual job.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client material, pricing and linguistic resources. We are editors rather than translators or language service advisers, and we offer no view on linguistic quality, methodology or pricing. What we can do is make the tiers describe the work rather than the price.