Guides
Practical guides for buyers of translation services — how to choose a provider, evaluate quality, manage multilingual projects, and navigate regulatory requirements.
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.
If your question is not covered, ask us directly — we would rather answer it than have you guess.
A practical guide for procurement teams and decision-makers evaluating translation providers. What to look for, what to ask, and what to avoid.
Understanding the difference between certified, notarized, and sworn translation — and which one your submission actually requires.
What ISO 17100:2015 actually requires, why it matters for buyers of translation services, and how to verify that a supplier is genuinely certified.
How to prepare your technical documentation for translation to reduce costs, improve quality, and avoid common problems.
How to plan and execute a product launch across multiple languages simultaneously — from documentation to marketing content.
A practical guide to understanding when AI translation is appropriate and when it is not — and how to make the right decision for your project.
How to assess the quality of a translation you have received — even if you do not speak the target language.
What medical device manufacturers need to know about translation requirements under EU MDR, IVDR, and other regulatory frameworks.
A guide for in-house legal counsel and legal operations teams on selecting and managing a translation provider for legal content.
What a productive long-term relationship with a translation provider looks like — and how to build one.