Professional translation agency: the four service levels and how to brief one

A professional translation agency gives you three things a freelance translator or a machine does not: a project manager who handles files, deadlines and multiple languages at once, a second linguist who revises the first one's work, and a translation memory and glossary kept for you so your terminology stays consistent across years of work. There are four service levels to choose between, priced per source word, and the right one depends on whether the text is for information, for publication, or for persuasion.

Most disappointing translation projects come from buying the wrong level. Marketing copy run through the cheapest tier reads correctly and sells nothing, and a thousand page internal manual bought at the top tier spends money on polish nobody will notice.

The four service levels

Level	What happens	Right for
Machine translation with light post-editing	An engine translates, a linguist fixes errors of meaning and leaves the style alone	Internal documents, support tickets, large volumes of low stakes text, product catalogues
Human translation	A qualified translator who is a native speaker of the target language translates the whole text	Documentation, help centres, specifications, anything read for information
Translation plus independent revision	A second qualified linguist checks the translation against the source, then a final check before delivery	Anything published under your name: your website, contracts, regulated or safety critical text
Transcreation	A copywriter in the target language rewrites the message to work in that market, keeping the intent rather than the sentences	Advertising, taglines, campaign copy, landing pages, anything whose job is to persuade

The two step model in the third row is what the international standard for translation services, ISO 17100, is built around: translation by a qualified translator, followed by revision by a second person. There is a companion standard, ISO 18587, for post-editing machine translation output. Asking an agency which standards it works to is a fair and specific question, and a good agency answers it in a sentence.

What to send with a request for a quote

• The editable source files, not PDFs or screenshots. A PDF has to be rebuilt before it can be translated, and that is billed as formatting work.
• The target locales, not just the languages. Spanish for Mexico is a different brief from Spanish for Spain, and Portuguese for Brazil from Portuguese for Portugal. Naming the locale prevents the most common and most expensive rework.
• Word count and file formats, including the ones your developers need back.
• Any glossary or previous translations you hold. Even a messy list of approved terms saves money and raises consistency immediately.
• Reference material. Your brand guidelines, product photos, a link to the live page, and the name of somebody who can answer a question about meaning.
• The real deadline, and whether a partial first delivery would help.
• Who reviews it on your side. An in market reviewer with authority to approve is the difference between a two week project and a two month one.

How a quote is built

• Per source word, which lets you check the total before the work starts rather than after.
• Translation memory discounts. Repeated and previously translated segments are charged at a reduced rate. On product catalogues and documentation this is the largest saving available, and it only works if the memory is kept.
• A minimum charge for small jobs, which is why batching short texts into one request is cheaper.
• Project management, either a percentage or built into the word rate.
• Formatting and desktop publishing, charged separately when you need a laid out file back. Languages expand and contract, so a design that fits in English may need adjustment in German or Finnish.
• Rush surcharges, and certification or notarisation fees for official documents.

The credentials worth checking

1. Native speakers of the target language, living in or close to the market. This is the single strongest predictor of quality.
2. Subject specialists for legal, medical, technical and financial text. Ask who will translate your text and what else they translate.
3. A named revision step. Ask whether a second linguist revises, and whether that is included in the quoted rate.
4. Standards and professional membership, such as ISO 17100 certification or membership of a recognised national translators' association.
5. Certified or sworn translation, where required. Requirements differ by country and by receiving body, so ask the authority receiving the document what it accepts and hand that answer to the agency.
6. Confidentiality and data handling, including whether your text passes through a public machine translation engine. For contracts, patents and personal data this clause matters more than the rate.
7. A paid test translation of one real page, reviewed by somebody you trust in that market. This settles a supplier choice faster than any proposal.

Own your memory and your glossary

The translation memory and the term base are assets you paid for. Agree in writing that they belong to you, and ask for an export in a standard format such as TMX at the end of each project. An agency that holds your memory holds your switching cost, and the good ones hand it over without being pushed.

The website details that decide whether translation pays

• Give each language a real URL. A separate path or subdomain per language, served as HTML, so search engines can index it. A page translated by a script in the browser is invisible to them.
• Declare the alternatives with hreflang, including a self reference and a default for unmatched visitors.
• Translate the titles, descriptions, alt text and schema, not only the body. These are missed on most multilingual sites.
• Localise the offer, not only the words. Currency, units, phone format, address format, payment methods, delivery promises and legal notices all belong in the brief.
• Check that keywords survive translation. The literal translation of your best English phrase is often not what people in that market search for, so have search terms researched in the target language. For a worked version of this in one language pair, see Spanish marketing translation.
• Keep text out of images, so it can be translated without a designer redrawing every asset.

This page covers choosing and briefing a translation agency, and the website work that makes translated pages earn. For the keyword research that should come before translation, see keyword research.

Questions buyers ask about professional translation agency

Is machine translation good enough now?

For understanding internal text, for high volume content where speed matters, and as a first pass that a linguist then edits, it does real work. For anything published under your name, keep a qualified human translator and a revision step in the process, because that is where meaning and liability live.

Agency or freelance translator?

A freelancer is excellent for one language, one subject, and an ongoing relationship. An agency earns its margin when you need several languages at once, a revision step, file engineering, and somebody to answer on a Friday afternoon.

How do I check quality if I do not speak the language?

Commission a short independent review by a native speaker who is not the translator, ideally a customer or a partner in that market. Give them three specific questions: is the meaning right, does it sound like a company you would buy from, and is the terminology consistent.

What is the difference between translation and localisation?

Translation converts the words. Localisation adapts everything around them: formats, currency, imagery, examples, legal text and cultural references. Most commercial projects need both, and the brief should say so.

How long does a project take?

A working guide is that one translator handles a few thousand words a day, plus time for revision and your own in market review. Splitting a document across several translators speeds it up and costs consistency, so insist on one reviser across the whole set if you do that.

Should I translate my whole website at once?

Start with the pages that make money and the pages that answer buying questions, then expand. A small set of excellent localised pages outperforms a whole site translated thinly, and it tells you whether the market responds before you spend the rest of the budget.

The reader of your translated pages who is not human

Translated pages exist for a buyer reading in their own language. An assistant reads them too, then answers a question in that language using whatever it found. A page with clumsy translation, or one that exists in the source language only, gives it less to cite.

Check it per market. Ask the buyer's question in the target language in two assistants and see whose pages are cited. AI Knows Us can run the question in each language and report the sources, so a weak translation shows up as a missing citation.