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Practical guides for buyers of translation services - how to choose a provider, evaluate quality, manage multilingual projects, and navigate regulatory requirements.

10 guides Written for buyers, not sellers Useful without buying from us

Buying translation is unusual among procurement decisions: you commission something you cannot check.

The deliverable arrives in a language you do not read, from a supplier whose process you cannot see, and the errors that matter - a reversed torque value, a wrong regulatory term, a certification that the receiving authority will not accept - are precisely the ones that are invisible to you.

These guides are written for the people who have to make those decisions anyway: procurement and legal teams, technical documentation managers, regulatory affairs, and anyone who has been handed responsibility for a multilingual project without a language background. They set out what to ask, what the answers should sound like, and where the standard answers are misleading.

They are deliberately specific. Where a rule differs by country - as it does for certification, for sworn translation, and for which languages a product must ship in - we say which country. Where something is a genuine trade-off rather than a right answer, we say that too.

Nothing here requires you to buy from us to be useful.

Start from your question

What are you actually trying to decide?

Ten questions we are asked most often, each pointing at the guide that answers it.

Which of certified, notarized and sworn does my authority actually want? Certified Translation… Is this supplier's ISO 17100 claim real, and how do I check it? ISO 17100 Explained… Can I use machine translation for this document? AI Translation… How do I judge a translation into a language I do not read? Translation Quality… How do I stop paying to translate the same content twice? Preparing Technical Docume… We ship into 14 markets on one date - where do I start? Managing Multilingual Prod… Which languages must my device documentation be in? Regulatory Translation Req… What should our NDA and privilege handling look like? What Legal Departments Nee… We are running a tender - what should we be scoring? How to Choose a Translatio… We have used the same provider for years. Is that working? Working With a Language Pa…
All ten guides

Grouped by where you are in the decision

Read in order if you are starting from scratch, or jump to the stage you are in.

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